People always seem surprised to discover that institutions of higher learning tend to be raging battlegrounds of clashing egos on an epic scale.

The common stereotype of the professor is of a vague, mild-mannered oldster in an incorrectly buttoned sweater, blinking vaguely as he searches for the glasses that sit perched atop his forehead. In fact, scholars tend to be people who have all their lives been the smartest people in the room, suddenly thrust together into a single institution with a bunch of other people who’ve also always been the smartest people in the room, and resenting it. Add to this the fact that really smart people tend to grow up too busy with their interior worlds to bother with mundane exercises of basic interpersonal skills, and you’ve got the ingredients of gunpowder.

Finding Atlantis: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World tells the story of a man of extraordinary intellect and achievement who grew so enamored of his revolutionary theories that he failed in humility, university politics, and the judgment of posterity.

Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702) was a Swede, the son of Gustavus Adolphus’ personal chaplain. As a young medical student he dissected a calf, in order to discover the source of a milky substance he saw in the carcass. The result was the discovery of the lymphatic system (although there is controversy as to who identified it first), and Rudbeck became a scientific celebrity. Appointed to the University of Uppsala, he oversaw the construction of a large dissection theater and a botanical garden (botany was another of his specialties). He was also much admired as a musician and singer.

But it was when he turned his attention to archaeology that he found his true passion—or obsession. Archaeology didn’t exist as a scientific discipline in his day, and he in fact helped to invent it. He carefully studied the ruins of Old Uppsala, the ancient center of the Swedish kingdom, using measuring instruments of his own devising, and came to the conclusion that Sweden had ancient roots that predated the civilization of the Greeks.

Swedish nationalists, of course, applauded this theory. In Rudbeck’s view, the Swedes could be identified with the ancient Hyperboreans, a mysterious people who lived “beyond the north wind,” occasionally referred to in ancient Greek literature. Rudbeck employed archaeological study, experimental archaeology and language studies to bolster his theories. And the more he studied, the more important these Hyperboreans appeared to him to be. It was to Hyperborea that Jason and the Argonauts had voyaged, he decided. The Roman gods and goddesses were in fact ancient kings who had ruled in Hyperborea. And finally—and this became the center point of his theory—Rudbeck announced that Sweden was in fact Atlantis, the original cradle of civilization.

Uncritical imagination was not Rudbeck’s only personality flaw. As a professor and university administrator he appears to have been an utter failure. He was one of those other-worldly types who believe that things should be built, or acquired, because they would be good to have, without any regard to how they’d be paid for. He was not a greedy man—indeed he donated much of his own time and money to his projects without remuneration—but he committed the university to expenses it could not carry, neglected his regular duties, and made bitter enemies on the faculty, enemies who eventually gained the ear of the king and nearly destroyed his career.

Today Rudbeck’s Sweden/Atlantis theory is considered one of history’s most laughable. But it in fact had superb scientific credentials by the standards of its time, and Rudbeck was hailed all over Europe as a kind of intellectual Columbus. The British Royal Society was much impressed, and considered him for membership.

I may have painted Rudbeck as a more unpleasant man than he was. The impression from this book, indeed, was that he was a rather genial, generous man (probably too generous). I know well from my own experience how one can grow fascinated with antiquities, looking for connections which can’t be proved but only inferred, then building on the connections to create dazzling theories. I did something of the same myself—on a smaller scale—when I first started immersing myself in Viking mythology, comparing multiple sources.

It’s not infrequent, even today, to come across a book on some historical mystery (I’ve noticed it particularly in books about King Arthur) where the author starts with a series of theories, piles the theories on top of one another, transitions to talking about the theories as if they were demonstrated facts, and finally concludes that he has “proved” his hypothesis. It’s the same thing Rudbeck did, but he had the better excuse of living in the infancy of modern science and scholarship, in an environment where he was generally left to play without supervision.

I found the book fascinating and cautionary, and I recommend it. Thanks to Robert Treskillard for suggesting it to me.