When he was seven years old, he tried to stab a Spanish solider with a lance
When he was eighteen, he talked a friend out of assassinating Napoleon
He once angered an archbishop so much that the holy man punched him in the face
He has negotiated with bandits, been chased by a mob, broken out of prison
He is:
François Arago, the most interesting physicist in the world
If you asked to describe what a “typical” physicist looks and acts like, what would you say? The picture that most people would paint wouldn’t be terribly flattering, and would conform to rather negative stereotypes. Studies have been done in which children are asked to draw a scientist, and the results are quite uniformly of the “mad scientist” variety. Shows like “The Big Bang Theory” on television typically depict physicists* as socially inept, unathletic, genuinely unworldly individuals, conforming to stereotypes that I’ve personally been familiar with since I was very young.
Real physicists, however, are much more varied and interesting than the popular image suggests. For example, I myself jump out of airplanes as a regular hobby, and my friends and colleagues have an incredibly diverse spectrum of backgrounds, personalities and interests.
One physicist, however, blows away the stereotypes more than any other I’ve encountered. As the preamble above suggests, the French physicist François Arago (1786-1853) lived a lifetime’s worth of danger, adventure and intrigue in just his first 23 years of life — and he would go on to make crucial discoveries in optical science as well as become an important politician of his time. In the course of some recent research, I happened across Arago’s autobiography of his early years, and the story it tells is remarkable and worth recounting, at least in part. Arago’s biography was unpublished during his lifetime; in fact, it is unclear exactly when he wrote it or who the intended audience was. What is clear, however, is that François Arago was a badass, and his story should be “exhibit A” whenever someone dredges up tired stereotypes about the demeanor and toughness of scientific persons.
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(h/t 
Skulls in the Stars 