#758: Bob Henderson

A young Bob Henderson

Bob Henderson is an 80-something year old retired electrical engineer who thinks “Albert Einstein was a dunce.” Indeed, he is so convinced that this is the case that he has written several books on the subject, the latest being Einstein and The-Emperor’s-New-Clothes Syndrome: The Exposé of a Charlatan. According to himself, he came to this realization gradually: “It began to occur to me that this is all gobbledygook … His theory was so lacking in common sense.” Because, of course, whether the theory conflicts with Henderson’s intuitions is a neglected but decisive test for scientific theories – insofar as common sense is the test, one assumes that Henderson’s next project will be to show that the sun orbits the earth rather than vice versa. Of course, Henderson has not actually tried to test whether Einstein’s theory is correct by doing experiments and observations. The powers of his intuitions appear to be enough for him.

Diagnosis: True crackpot, though since his impact is probably rather negligible his rants are presumably more amusing than anything else.