Ronald Mallatt

On the way to Home Despot today, I heard the tail end of This American Life. The profile of Ronald Mallatt, who recently wrote a memoir, was wonderfully strange: a boy whose father dies when the boy is 10 becomes obsessed with building a time machine so that he can see his father again. This obsession rules his life; eventually he becomes a physicist, specializing in black holes, but still secretly holds onto the idea. Finally he comes clean, and writes a scientific paper that relates to time travel. Although the reviews of the memoir all talk about how inspirational the story is, for me it brought up questions about how we define sanity, and about the uses of madness.

Reminded me a little of Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.