Professor Calculus

Professor Calculus
Professor Calculus (Professeur Tournesol), by Hergé
Publication information
Publisher	Casterman (Belgium)
First appearance	Red Rackham's Treasure (1944) The Adventures of Tintin
Created by	Hergé
In-story information
Full name	Professor Cuthbert Calculus
Partnerships	List of main characters
Supporting character of	Tintin

Professor Cuthbert Calculus (French: Professeur Tryphon Tournesol, 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, 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.

Calculus is a genius, who demonstrates himself throughout the series to be an expert in many fields of science, holding three PhDs in nuclear and theoretical physics, planetary astronomy and calculus. He is also an experienced engineer, archaeologist, biologist and chemist. Many of his inventions precede or mirror similar technological developments in the real world (most notably the Moon rocket, but also his failed attempt at creating a colour television set). He seeks to benefit humankind through his inventions, developing a pill that cures alcoholism by making alcohol unpalatable to the patient, and refusing under great duress to yield his talents to producing weapons of mass destruction. Much of Calculus's more dangerous work is criticized by Captain Haddock, although Calculus usually interprets this the other way round: his deafness often leads him to misinterpret Haddock's words, preventing him from hearing his real opinion.