History can be extremely forgiving if you are a genius. So much so, that most people seem to have forgotten that the following five geniuses were massive assholes when they were alive and kicking. Petty fights, driving people to suicide, and even electrocuting an elephant – it is all here.

1. Thomas Edison

The Genius:

Thomas Edison realized the benefits of teamwork in the invention process. He created one of the first industrial research laboratories with the purpose to profit from the patents behind the ideas it generated. The phonograph transformed entertainment and his version of the light bulb lit the night. Edison pushed the world into a modern industrial era by thinking up and implementing power generation and distribution. The secret to Edison’s success was fairly simple: own the rights, be first to market, mass produce, and relentlessly attack competitors.

The Asshole:

Unfortunately, Edison had a habit of stealing ideas. He famously promised Nikola Tesla $50,000 to improve his direct current generators and then balked when Tesla delivered, saying: “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.”  This, along with Edison’s dismissive attitude towards Tesla’s ideas on alternating current, led to the War of Currents. Edison took out page-sized newspaper ads, created the electric chair (which some people argue he stole from an employee), and even electrocuted an elephant to death to prove that Tesla’s ideas were unsafe. Edison also ruined groundbreaking French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Méliès had spent a fortune creating creating the popular film Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip To The Moon) but never saw a cent from the profits in the United States because Edison distributed pirated copies of it and ignored Méliès’ pleas. Méliès eventually went bankrupt and died a penniless vagabond.

2. Nikola Tesla

The Genius:

Nikola Tesla thought up, or invented, practically all of the technology we enjoy today. Edison’s light bulb would have been worthless if it wasn’t for Tesla’s genius. He crushed Edison in the War of Currents, making alternating current the basis for practically all electricity on the planet. Tesla was also the mind behind the X-Ray, wireless technology, radio, radar, and fluorescent lights but never got credit for any of it for various reasons. Tesla became obsessed with developing death rays in his later years and might have been responsible for the Tunguska explosion.

The Asshole:

While Edison later regretted his mistreatment of Tesla, Tesla never forgave. The only negative comment in coverage the New York Times ran after Edison’s death came from Tesla:

He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. [...] His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense.

While this burning hatred might be justifiable, Tesla’s treatment of people he felt were below him earns him a spot on this list. He had an unmatched disgust for overweight people and once fired a secretary for knocking over equipment. When she begged for her job on her hands and knees, Tesla launched into a diatribe about her physique. An impeccable dresser, Tesla expected all of his staff to dress to the nines while in his laboratory. He frequently sent people home for not dressing to his standards.

3. Ludwig van Beethoven

The Genius:

Ludwig van Beethoven was damn good with the piano. The son of a piano teacher, Beethoven was considered a miraculous prodigy by the age of nine and was considered to be one of the most influential composers by his twenties. He even wrote some of his most famous pieces after going completely deaf. Most music historians consider him the most influential figure during the transition from the Classical era to the Romantic era.

The Asshole:

Beethoven redefined the term “crabby asshole”: he threw things at people speaking during his concerts and attacked anyone who asked him to repeat himself. Beethoven outdid himself  after his brother passed away. Even though he never cared much for his nephew, Karl, but he hated his sister-in-law so much that he put composing on hold for a few years and doggedly focused on making sure she had no custody over the child. He used his connections to win guardianship and dragged his sister-in-law’s name through the mud in multiple trials. All of this was too much for young Karl, who attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived and was eventually taken back to live with his mother.

4. Robert Hooke

The Genius:

Robert Hooke discovered the law of elasticity, pioneered use of the microscope, and coined the term “cell” to describe the smallest part of an organism that can be classified as living. Hooke was also an influential architect who was responsible for surveying London after the Great Fire. As the curator of the Royal Society, he was involved in hundreds of experiments. These led him to become one of the first people to promote evolution, to suggest that air expands when heated, and to develop one of the first gravitational models. Just like Tesla, he never received credit for large portions of his work.

The Asshole:

Unlike Tesla, who was an asshole to anyone he felt was beneath him, Hooke rarely received credit because he was a jealous douchebag who used his position to bully people around. He routinely claimed full credit for work that involved multiple researchers , would dramatically claim he had been plagiarized every few months, and was incredibly caustic towards anyone who stole his limelight. Hooke’s relationship with Isaac Newton transformed into an intense feud after Hooke forced Newton to present a working reflecting telescope and then openly tore his ideas apart. Newton was so offended that he refused to debate in public again and would respond to Hooke only by writing letters back to him. When Hooke claimed Newton stole his ideas about optics, Newton wrote back:

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

If you missed the masterstroke, I’ll explain it: Hooke was a short hunchback and Newton was implying that Hooke was both a physical and mental midget.

5. Isaac Newton

The Genius:

Isaac Newton was one of the most intelligent people, ever. He built the first practical reflecting telescope and  figured out that white light was made up of many colors, all of which formed the visible spectrum of light. But, his biggest accomplishment was publishing Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It laid the core for classical mechanics by describing universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. Newton’s discoveries influenced practically every major scientific discovery for the next three centuries. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that most scientists consider him to be the most influential scientist that ever lived.

The Asshole:

Newton was also a passive-aggressive curmudgeon who spent his entire career involved in nerd battles with his peers. His behavior bordered on the bizarre so many times that many historians believe he might have suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome. His feud with Hooke ended with Hooke’s death, but Newton had the last laugh years later by pettily making the only  authenticated portrait of Hooke disappear. Historians still debate Hooke’s appearance because of his action. When Newton disagreed with astronomer John Flamsteed‘s zealous approach to research, Newton stole his work and published it under Edmund Halley, Flamsteed’s mortal enemy. Newton’s douchebaggery is most apparent in his feud with Gottfried Leibniz. Newton discovered calculus first but Leibniz was published first. Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarism, orchestrated a “review committee” filled with his personal friends, personally wrote the committee findings, and even wrote the anonymous review of those findings. Discredited and heartbroken, Leibniz died of a heart attack. When Newton heard about this, he reputedly commented that he had enjoyed breaking Leibniz’s heart.

You might also like the following:

• 15 Famously Filthy People From the Pages of History
• 6 Historic Figures That Were Celibate
• 7 Unbelievably Vain Historic Figures
• 10 Incredibly Dangerous Doctors
• 10 Historic Badasses (Who Never Hurt a Fly)

Even though the rules of hygiene were extremely relaxed during some periods of history, the following 15 people – royalty, actresses, philosophers, and more – became known not only for their accomplishments but also their disastrous hygiene.

1. Benedict of Aniane

Saint Joseph once preached, “He who has bathed in Christ has no need for a second bath.” Early Christians took this literally and never bathed. Benedict was an odd monk that spent most of his life in rags, rarely eating, and speaking only in awkward outcries. He was canonized for saving monasticism in the 8th century, through which he spread the idea that bathing was a vanity that facilitated sins of the flesh. This meme stuck with Christians until the 18th century.

2. Henry IV of France

One of the most popular French kings, Henry tried to provide his citizens with a “chicken in the pot every Sunday.” Even though he believed in changing his shirt every morning, a rarity in 16th century France, he also loved hunting and refused to bathe or mask his odor with cologne afterwards. His mistress often told him he smelled like carrion. His second wife fainted from his stench the first time she met him and doused herself with perfume just to have sex with him on their wedding night.

3. Miyamoto Musashi

The Japanese have a long history of promoting hygiene, but Musashi was a different story. He spent most of the 17th century wandering Japan as a vagabond warrior, sword fighting anyone he ran across. His fighting style involved wielding two swords above above his head and was so complicated that none of his pupils ever mastered it. He never married, cut his hair, or bathed unless he was visiting a feudal lord because he did not want to be caught unprepared. Besides, there were better things to do like sword fighting.

4. Louis XIV of France

During the 72 year reign of Louis, France established an absolute monarchy, Versailles was built, and The Sun King waged war with everyone. Possibly hydrophobic, he refused to bathe unless his doctors forced him to and took two, possibly three, baths his entire life. He preferred to be dusted with scented powder and washed his face with a rag soaked in alcohol. Louis refused surgery on a gangrenous foot, leading to his death, and would lose chunks of it around Versailles.

5. Frederick II of Prussia

Frederick transformed Prussia from a European backwater to a world powerhouse, and then spent the rest of his life shuffling around Sanssouci with a pack of Italian greyhounds, berating anyone that cleaned up the ankle-deep dog shit. Possibly insane, he started refusing to bathe and stopped changing his clothes for years. When he died, in 1786, the shirt on his back was so rotten with sweat that his valet used one of his own to bury the king.

6. Charles Howard

A staunch opponent of George III, the 11th Duke of Norfolk rebuilt and refurbished Arundel Castle. In a time when bathing was starting to gain acceptance, he never took a voluntary bath his entire life and became known as the “Dirty Duke” as a result. His valets would trick him into it by getting him drunk and then scrubbing him down. He once complained to Dudley North that he had tried everything to cure his rheumatism. North quipped, “Pray, my lord, did you ever try a clean shirt?”

7. Ludwig van Beethoven

Influenced by the Enlightenment, a deaf Beethoven pushed Romantic music to the forefront in the 18th century. His refusal to bathe stemmed from the constant pain of lead poisoning. It also made him extremely crabby at concerts, he commonly threw things at people talking during his concerts. A speech impediment made it hard to understand Beethoven and often resulted in violent tirades if he was asked to repeat himself. The few friends he had would sneak away his clothes to wash while he slept.

8. Karl Marx

As the mind behind Communism, Marx wanted the working class to rise up but instead helped totalitarian regimes justify their existence. He suffered from pus leaking carbuncles and boils that were worsened by chain smoking, heavy drinking, and belief that cleanliness was a bourgeoisie excess. Marx took pride in pages of the original manuscript of Das Kapital that were splattered with blood from his lanced boils, claiming that it proved he understood the plight of the proletariat.

9. Henrietta Green

With an estimated net worth of $3.8 billion, Green became one of the richest women in history through her extreme frugality. She avoided surgery on a hernia because it cost $150, ignored her son’s broken leg until it had to be amputated, and tried to swindle a dying aunt out of money. The few times she bathed, she did so without hot water and soap, and she spent her entire life in a series of black dresses that she wore until they wore out. In her later years she became extremely paranoid and died while arguing about skim milk.

10. Diego Rivera

A famous Mexican muralist, Rivera helped bring art to the common Mexican by kick-starting the Mexican Mural Renaissance. He was also briefly married to Frida Kahlo and became famous for his constant cheating. Incredibly obese, often ballooning beyond 300 pounds, and avoided bathing (possibly because he didn’t see the point of if he could meet women without it). When one of his wives, Lupe Marin, met him for the first time she asked, “Is this the great Diego Rivera? He looks horrible to me.”

11. Chairman Mao Zedong

Mao’s harsh socio-political programs killed millions of his countrymen but helped turn China into a world power. He never brushed his teeth or bathed his entire reign. Instead, concubines were forced to scrub his body with damp towels while be chewed tea leaves to clean his teeth. When offered a toothbrush by one of his physicians, Mao refused on the grounds that tigers didn’t brush their teeth either. You can’t argue with that logic.

12. Geoffrey Pyke

A British spy during WWII and an innovator, Pyke is best known for developing pykrete, a type of ice that is extremely slow to melt. He wanted to use this material to build a fleet of ships that were impervious to U-Boat attacks. A typical boffin, he abhorred wearing socks and usually presented himself in a rarely washed suit. Pyke also hated bathing, rarely shaved, and avoided cutting his hair. Conversations with Pyke were just as wild as his appearance, as he often launching into extremely technical diatribes when questioned.

13. Howard Hughes

Hughes transformed from a polished, handsome aviator and movie producer to a 90 pound skeleton that only trusted Mormons. It started in 1957, when he locked himself in a studio with milk, chocolate, and Kleenex to watch movies completely naked. Upon emerging, he refused to bathe and trimmed his hair and nails only once a year. He became a recluse, living in Las Vegas and the Bahamas, and was so unidentifiable when he died that police had to use his fingerprints to make sure it was actually Hughes.

14. Ernesto Guevara

The Argentine revolutionary, Che Guevara helped Fidel Castro bring Communism to Cuba. He loved rugby, cigars, and Rolexes, but hated bathing his entire life. As a child he was called “Chancho”, pig, by friends and took pride in wearing the same shirt for a whole week. He kept this trend going through most of his life, rarely bothering to bathe or change out of his olive green fatigues. He became one of the most famous t-shirts in history after he died.

15. Marilyn Monroe

Considered an example of the feminine ideal, Monroe went through a long string of lovers that included Joe DiMaggio and John F. Kennedy. But according to a Clark Gable biography, Gable described her as extremely dirty, and not in the sexual sense. According to Gable she suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, rarely bathed, and ate exclusively in bed – shoving what was left under her bed.

You might also like the following:

• 5 Geniuses Who Were Massive Assholes
• 10 Famously Ugly People
• 10 Epic Mustaches and the Men Behind Them
• 6 Historic Figures That Were Celibate
• 10 Whacked-Out Despots

Unlike most, some people chose a life of celibacy. They avoid marriage and having sex so they can focus on more important things – there is a famous Seinfeld episode about it. This is a look at 6 historic figures that became celibate at some point in their life. They either avoided marriage like the plague or completely cut sex out of their life as if it would give them leprosy.

6 ) Sir Isaac Newton

The English writer that came up with The Three Laws of Motion was also puritanical, rarely smiled, and was a lifelong bachelor. All those years of not chasing women made him one crabby bastard, he was famous for his violent anger towards those he felt had spited him. He spent years hounding Gottfried Leibniz over the discovery of calculus. He kept a list of all the sins he had committed in his life and it included such horrible things like: “Making pies on Sunday night”, “squirting water”, and “peevishness.”

5 ) Søren Kierkegaard

The Danish philosopher that basically created Existentialism was also a hunchback. The original emo kid, Kierkegaard was famously depressed and considered it to be his “most faithful mistress.” Which is good, because he considered sex to be an abomination. It may have had to do with a girlfriend he once had: he was briefly engaged until he broke it off but never got over her. He spent the rest of his years trying to win her back through indirect communication and his writings. Titles like Fear and Trembling made sure she never talked to him.

4 ) J.M. Barrie

The Scottish novelist that came up with the idea for Peter Pan after his grieving mother enjoyed watching him dress up as his dead brother and wished he would never grow up or get older. Her wishes came true, seeing as how Barrie never grew taller than 5 feet tall. He blamed his height for his inability to meet women but somehow managed to land a gorgeous actress as a wife. But it became clear he wasn’t interested in sleeping with her on their wedding night and he never bothered to consummate the marriage.

3 ) George Frederic Handel

The German composer that wrote some of the most famous operas and inspired Beethoven and Mozart. Aside from having some of the most awe inspiring hair ever, he also got into a fist fight with Johann Mattheson over who should play the harpsichord. When King George II asked why he wasn’t married, he simply responded with: “I have no time for anything but music.”

2 ) Mohandas Gandhi

The Indian nationalist that pushed for independence from the British through non-violence and is best known for being skinny. Gandhi was married and had children but decided to put the kibosh on that in his 30s so he could control his “vital fluids.” He would have panic attacks after waking up from nocturnal emissions and would often test his celibacy in the most Hugh Hefner of ways: he’d get young women to massage him and spend the night with him in the nude.

1 ) Nikola Tesla

The Serbian inventor that is most famous for winning the War of Currents also loved pigeons. He spent years inventing things he never got credit for, like the light bulb and radio, and even believed he could control the weather. He also felt that sex was a drain on creativity and completely pushed aside any woman that was interested in him. Sarah Bernhardt, a famous actress, tried her hardest to woo him but he considered her to be little more than a distraction from inventing a death ray. When asked about marriage, he replied: “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”

Credit where credit is due: the inspiration to write this came from this Kate Beaton comic:

You might also like the following:

• 5 Geniuses Who Were Massive Assholes
• 15 Famously Filthy People From the Pages of History
• 8 Historic Figures That Were Pederasts
• 5 More Famous Authors That Were Perverts
• 5 Famous Authors and Why They Were Perverts