Professor Calculus

Professor Cuthbert Calculus (French: Professeur Tryphon Tournesol [pʁɔ.fɛ.sœʁ tʁi.fɔ̃ tuʁ.nə.sɔl],[1] meaning "Professor Tryphon Sunflower") is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. He is Tintin's friend, an absent-minded professor and half-deaf physicist, who invents many sophisticated devices used in the series, such as a one-person shark-shaped submarine, the Moon rocket, and an ultrasound weapon. Calculus's deafness is a frequent source of humour, as he repeats back what he thinks he has heard, usually in the most unlikely words possible. He does not admit to being near-deaf and insists he is only a little hard of hearing in one ear. Calculus first appeared in Red Rackham's Treasure (more specifically in the newspaper prepublication of 4–5 March 1943[2]), and was the result of Hergé's long quest to find the archetypal mad scientist or absent-minded professor. Although Hergé had included characters with similar traits in earlier stories, Calculus developed into a much more complex figure as the series progressed.