HOME Thumbnail Biography: Professor Southclaw

As a youngster, blessed with unusual intellectual abilities, Professor Southclaw began to attend university when he was just past his fifteenth year. However, he had not studied long before he began to realise that the world of professional boxing was more rewarding financially than academe, so he left the university and took up training.  Within a year, he had become the world featherweight champion and was financially secure. Over the next six years, during which time he became known as Einstein Southpaw for his witty press conferences, he prospered, until one night, underestimating his opponent, he dropped his guard momentarily and was knocked out cold, out of the ring, out of his title and out of his boxing career by a vicious right hook.  During his recovery he revaluated his life and decided that, perhaps, the lot of a scientist was safer, after all. A scientist does not - usually - get punched in the face. He went back to university and emerged with degrees in everything. Unable to decide which branch of science he should specialise in, he decided to specalise in all of them.  He is now highly respected, if feared, in scientific circles, although attaining little in the way of recognition because of what some have termed his "crackpot ideas", which include his Ordinary Theory Of Unrelativity (Nothing is related to anything. It's all in the mind) and Murphy's Amended Law (Things always go wrong. When they appear to go right, it's only an illusion).  It was during this period, with his mind perhaps on his personal problems, that his left hand got caught in a mincer one day as he was preparing his dinner. During the subsequent operation, his left arm was replaced by a cybernetic claw of his own design. Amongst many other features, the claw incoporates a knife and fork set (to enable the professor to read while he eats his dinner), a screwdriver, hacksaw and hammer, a 22 caliber rifle, and a laser gun.  Incidentally, Professor Southclaw's real christian name has remained a well-kept secret all his life, known only to a few close friends, all of whom have died tragically during the past few years.  During the past year, in association with Dr Smallbrain (of the department of Impossible Ideas) and Ali Kazam (Magician and Alchemist), the professor has been working on a system of propulsion, by which man will be able to talk his way into space. The project is due to be tested in the very near future.