Professor Calculus - Calculus and His Peers

Calculus and His Peers

Before Calculus appeared in Red Rackham's Treasure, Hergé had featured other highly-educated but eccentric scholars and scientists, such as:

• Dr. Sarcophagus of Cigars of the Pharaoh who showed signs of being clumsy and forgetful before going completely mad.

• The absent-minded professor who appeared in The Broken Ear and who forgot his glasses, wore his cleaning-lady's overcoat, held his cane upside-down as if it were an umbrella, mistook a parrot for a man and left his briefcase next to a lamp post. (In the original edition published in 1935 his name is given as Professor Euclide, after the Greek mathematician known as the "Father of Geometry".)

• Professor Hector Alembick in King Ottokar's Sceptre, who had a bad habit of throwing his cigarettes on the floor.

• Two astronomers from The Shooting Star also showed unusual and, in one case, mad behaviour: Philippulus the Prophet represented the dilemmas some face over religious belief and scientific research. In his case the conflict took a toll on his mind when the end-of-the-world appeared to be imminent. He then went around wearing bedsheets and beating a gong to warn of the event and later disrupted the eve of departure of the expedition sent to find a meteorite.

• His colleague, Professor Decimus Phostle, though not mad, looked forward to the end of the world whose prediction he thought would make him famous. In contrast, he showed signs of maturity during the expedition when he called off the search for the meteorite in order to help a ship in distress.

Calculus's introduction appears to have supplied Hergé with the bizarre nature he wished to portray in a man of science. Other figures of high education were shown as more stable and level-headed. The members of the archaeological expedition who fall victim to The Seven Crystal Balls show no apparent signs of eccentricity. The most prominent member of this group is Calculus's friend Hercules Tarragon, with whom he attended university. Tarragon is a large, ebullient man, possessing a jovial nature, but not necessarily eccentric.

While he sometimes appears aloof when absorbed in his work, Calculus corresponds with other scientists and also collaborates with many of them on his projects. Notably, he works with Baxter and Frank Wolff on the Moon rocket and corresponds with ultrasonics expert Alfredo Topolino of Nyon in The Calculus Affair.