Sidney Harris

The cartoons of Sidney Harris are well known to older scientists, since they were (for many years) a staple of the journal American Scientist. Harris’ work had a demythologizing influence, by presenting scientists as fallible human beings and by casting an irreverent perspective. on scientific investigation.

Einstein Simplified is Harris’ most popular compilation, as judged by the numbers of copies of his collections at LibraryThing. It consists of cartoons that appeared in American Scientist as well as The New Yorker, Playboy and Saturday Review in the early 1970s through the late 1980s. The humor is gentle, understated, and deadpan, offering ironic commentaries on science and society. One appropriate drawing is captioned: “Immediately after Orville Wright’s historic 12-second flight, his luggage could not be located.” In a group of indigenous tribesmen sitting in a circle of discussion, the evident leader says: “So by a vote of 8 to 2, we have decided to skip the industrial revolution completely, and go right into the Electronic Age.”

These are not cartoons for the daily newspaper, since many require a bit of familiarity with their subjects. In ancient Greece, one toga’d man says to another “There goes Archimedes with confounded his lever again.” Then there’s the department store counter that advertises "Pheromones: Lanvin, Dior, Chanel, ..."

While not laugh-out-loud funny, the selections are amusing enough, and many have been and will continue to be posted on faculty office doors and laboratory walls and bulletin boards.… (more)