Death By…Science?
Mark Atwill describes the strange causes of five peoples deaths
Photography: ....Tim(flickr)
1) Death by the prediction of death itself
Gerolamo Cardano is considered the father of mathematical probability theory hence his nickname ‘The Gambler’. His skills went further than mathematics with an occasional dabble into inventing, philosophy and finally astrology, and there lay his downfall. Not only did he earn himself an inquisition through his horoscope of Christ but he also used his astrological skills to predict his exact time of death. When this time came and death did not, rather than lose his credibility, he committed suicide. Insanity, perhaps. Commitment to studies, definitely.
2) Death by the lack of a home cooked meal
The mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel demonstrated the existence of paradoxical solutions to Einstein’s field equations in relativity. He even presented them as a 70th birthday present to the man himself. Most would see the giving of ‘paradoxical solutions’ as a gift as a sign of insanity but this unfortunate fate did not occur until his later life. Prior to his demise, Gödel had an obsessive fear of being poisoned and refused to eat food which was not prepared by his wife, Adele. When Adele was hospitalised for six months, Gödel died of ‘malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance’.
3) Death by the plot of a graphic novel
Although the scientist Louis Slotin’s death was strictly not written into a graphic novel, the parallels with ‘Watchmen’ are there to be exploited for an eye-catching subtitle. Whilst working on the Manhattan Project, Slotin accidentally began a fission reaction (much like Dr Manhattan although not due to a misplaced watch). The radiation levels created (equivalent to standing 4800 feet away from an atomic bomb) killed Slotin in the second incidence of a death caused by a criticality accident.
Photography: SquidgeyFlint(flickr)
4) Death by a Nobel Prize
Perhaps the most famous on the list, the chemist Marie Curie was killed by the subject of her Nobel Prize winning research, radioactivity. Curie is the first and only person to receive two Nobel Prizes in science in two different fields. She eventually developed leukemia and died in 1934 due to her prolonged exposure to high levels of radiation.
Photograohy: rosefirerising(flickr)
5) Death by the cure for balding
It’s hard to find something that Alexander Bogdanov did not try his hand at. The physician, economist, philosopher and science fiction writer’s legacy is perhaps best seen in his work on blood transfusions. As well as establishing the Soviet Union as a base for research in the field, Bogdanov claimed to have successfully suspended his balding and improved his eyesight through blood transfusion. Unfortunately for him, the lack of understanding in the field caught up with him and he died after contracting malaria and tuberculosis from a transfused sample.
