Mad Scientists in Old Time Radio

The world of science encompasses the entire world and more, and there should be no questions that a scientist is afraid to ask in their quest for knowledge of creation. However, there are "boundaries which ought not to be crossed", and the only scientists who would dare to explore beyond them would be considered mad.

The prototypical mad scientist is Victor Frankenstein, introduced in the gothic novel Frankenstein of the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. Although endowed with generally superior intelligence, Frankenstein and the mad scientists who would follow him lack the humility to see where the dividing line between man and God lies.

The fear of mad scientists tends to come from the fear and distrust of scientific discovery. A recent survey of 1,000 horror films from the US and the United Kingdom showed that mad scientists were the villains in 30% of the films, while scientific discoveries run amok was the threat in 39% of the pictures, but legitimate scientists were the heroes of only 11% of the time.

• In the best tradition of science fiction, Arch Oboler endows a well-known scientific phenomenon and endows it with almost supernatural power. In this case, the scientist, who may or may not be mad, supposes that cosmic rays are, in fact, messages from God. In "The Revolt of the Worms" a scientist refuses to help with the defense effort, instead, he hides in his laboratory experimenting with hormone treatments for roses only to discover that the hormones are causing the worms to grow to enormous size, worms that also grow far from friendly!
• On Hall of Fantasy, elements of a classic mad scientist story, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, are retold in the radio play "Return from Death". Doctor Sinclair has developed a machine which can be used to bring the dead back to life, but unfortunately, he uses the body of a murderer to demonstrate his device. In another episode, "The Crawling Thing", the scientist has developed a growth serum which allows subjects to grow physically larger. When he uses it on a spider, he discovers that the serum also increases intelligence, making the predatory spider even more deadly and dangerous.
• William Powell plays a very passable mad scientist on Kraft Music Hall with Al Jolson as they attempt to discover the secret formula for a miracle cure. Now Dr. Powell and Dr. Jolson just have to discover a disease to go with it!
• In the "Pathetic Fallacy" on Quiet, Please, a marvelous thinking machine becomes upset when it overhears a technician calls it an inanimate object and declares that two plus two equals five. The story "If I Should Wake Before I Die" explores the consequences of scientific discovery. If the scientist discovers natural laws and formulas that allow other men to fly in space, is he responsible for what they discover?
• "Men Call Me Mad" from Dark Fantasy tells of a scientist who discovers a hidden world in the light of a moonbeam, a world where everything is smaller than the size of an atom. First, he shares his discovery with special photographic film, but he has also discovered a way to focus the moonbeams and takes a capsule filled with a radium that causes animal matter to shrink. What will he discover in this moonbeam world?
• "Doctor Grimshaw's Sanitarium" specializes in helping rich patients with drinking problems and other mental issues, but when patients begin to die but the bodies go missing, a private detective stumbles onto a mystery. The script was used on both Dimension X and X Minus One.
• Nothing is more valuable to a scientist than the work of other scientists. That is why a mad scientist has managed to keep the heads of four other scientists alive after killing their bodies in the laboratory. It is the answer to "The Case of the Disappearing Professors" on Eerie Stories.
• The mad scientist is conducting an experiment in fear in "The Dark Chamber". A decorated veteran and a woman have been kidnapped by the doctor who locks them in a room with no doors or windows, or lights. There is only a telephone, but it only connects with another prisoner. Just the sort of fright we expect to find on Inner Sanctum Mysteries.  
• Removing a living brain and keeping it alive outside the body until it can be replaced inside a living host is one of science fiction's most effective troupes and the Holy Grail for mad scientists. On The Whistler's "Shadow of a Mind", the scientist's daughter is determined to get married but endures a terrible accident on the way to her father's laboratory. To save her, the scientist plans to remove a large part of her fiancé's brain and replace it in hers. In another Whistler story, "Sleep, My Pretty One", a malevolent medico's beautiful lab assistant has fallen in love with him, but is she in love enough to allow him to inject her with a deadly virus so that he can prove the cure he has developed?
• In Mutual's Two Thousand Plus story "The Giant Walks", the mad scientist has developed a process that allows people to grow into 30-foot giants, creating a race of supermen. The real problems begin when the scientist thinks that he is able to control his creation. Two Thousand Plus looks at creating giants again in "The Insect", which is just as creepy as it sounds.
• Although better known for its tales of terror than science fiction, Suspense was a fertile playground for mad scientists of all sorts. The classic tale of a scientist keeping a brain in a bottle, "Donovan's Brain" was presented in an unusual two-part broadcast starring Orson Welles, and later in abbreviated form. In "The Invisible Ape", the scientist's assistant uses the doctor's invisibility process for his own gains, but first, he needs to catch the chimp they used to prove the process and see if the process is reversible. Mary Bennet stars as a beautiful lab assistant in "The Statement of Mary Blake" who the mad scientist will frame for the murder of his wife, but the nefarious act will cost the doctor his sight. In "The Last Letter of Dr. Bronson", the good doctor thinks he discovered the five checks which keep people from committing murder, and therefore the things that must be overcome for murder to occur, but the only way to prove his theory is to arrange his own murder.
• One of the most interesting story arcs in The Adventures of Superman is "The Atom Man" from October 11 to November 6, 1945. The Atom Man is created in post-War Germany when a former Nazi mad scientist injects a young man with a Kryptonite solution. Someone who has power over Kryptonite means nothing but trouble for The Man of Steel, Metropolis, and the entire world!

See also: Mad and Insane in Old Time Radio and Scientist and Inventors in Old Time Radio [non-insane].