Mad Scientists, Wacky Inventors and the Crazy Ways They Died

Kurt Godel

Source (Godel with Einstein)

Godel was an Austrian-American mathematician, philosopher and one of the most significant logicians of all time. Godel was also one of the most paranoid individuals in human history and when his wife died in 1977 he refused to eat food prepared by anyone else and died of starvation weighing just 65 lbs. His death certificate says that he died of “malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance”.

Thomas Andrews, Jr.

Source (Titanic at Southhampton prior to voyage)

Designer of the RMS Titanic, he died along with 1,516 passengers aboard the ill fated ship after it struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Andrews design did not allow the bulkheads of the ship to be sealed off so once the ship started leaking the water just kept flooding to the top of each bulkhead and then over to the next part of the ship until it sunk.

Source (Iceberg with red paint on it in vicinity of Titanic sinking)

William Nelson

Nelson was an inventor working for General Electric in 1903 when he rode off a hill while testing a new motor he made for his bicycle and was killed instantly.

Henry Smolinski

Source

Smolinski was the founder of the Advanced Vehicle Engineers (AVE) company of Oxnard, California which built the AVE Mizar flying car in the early 1970’s. The Ave Mizar was really just a Ford Pinto car with wings attached (see picture above). Smolinski was killed along with pilot Harold Blake after the prototype of the AVE Mizar lost its wings in its initial flight due to bad welds and too much weight resulting in a fiery crash.

Henry Winstanley

Image via Wikipedia

Winstanley was an English engineer who designed and constructed the first Eddystone lighthouse which was finished in 1698. During construction, a French privateer took Winstanley prisoner causing Louis XIV to order his release with the words “France is at war with England, not with humanity”. In 1703 a great storm struck and took with it almost all traces of the lighthouse and Winstanley who was inside at the time. No trace of him was ever found.

Image via Wikipedia (current lighthouse)

Roland Garros 

Image via Wikipedia

The famous French aviator and fighter pilot during World War I helped to invent the device which allowed machine gun fire to pass straight through spinning airplane blades making planes much more effective for killing. Garros was flying a prototype plane behind German lines when he was shot down. German aviator and inventor Anthony Fokker inspected the downed plane and improved upon Garros’ design with the interrupter gear which was soon adopted by the Germans. Garros escaped from the Germans and in 1918, just one month before the War would end, he was shot down and killed by a German fighter plane using Fokker’s improved machin gun design which was directly modified from Garros’ own invention.

Image via Wikipedia

The French Open grand slam tennis tournament held yearly in Paris, France and the court they play in are named after Roland Garros.

Rudolf Diesel 

Source

On September 29, 1913, the inventor of the Diesel Engine boarded the post office steamer Dresden in Antwerp on his way to a meeting of the “Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Ltd.” in London . Deisel ate dinner and then retired to his cabin at about 10 p.m., leaving word for him to be called the next morning at 6:15 a.m. He was never seen alive again. Ten days later a Dutch boat came upon a badly decomposed body floating in the sea and removed personal items from the corpse that belonged to Rudolf Diesel. Today no one knows how Deisel died and speculation runs from suicide to murder.

Image via Wikipedia (Diesel engines in a museum)

For more see Twelve Bizarre and Wacky Deaths