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  Reading Dr Brain’s Brain tribute and other material about Dr Head, one gets the strong impression that Head had a big head, and that it was stuffed full of knowledge, which Dr Head was not shy about sharing. Brain writes that ‘Some men ... feel impelled to impart information to others. Head was one of those.’

  Brain then quotes Professor H. M. Turnbull as saying: ‘I had the good fortune when first going to the hospital to meet daily in the mornings on the steam engine underground railway Dr Henry Head. He ... kindly taught me throughout our journeys about physical signs, much to the annoyance of our fellow travellers; indeed in his characteristic keenness he spoke so loudly that as we walked to the hospital from St. Mary’s station people on the other side of the wide Whitechapel Road would turn to look at us.’

  Brain says that Head ‘would illustrate his lectures by himself reproducing the involuntary movements or postures produced by nervous disease, and “Henry Head doing gaits” was a perennial attraction’.

  In 1904, at the age of forty-two, Head married a headmistress – Ruth Mayhew of Brighton High School for girls. Brain assures us that she was ‘a fit companion for him in intelligence’.

  Brain, though respectful of Head, suggests that his predecessor was over-brainy: ‘He had many ideas: he bubbled over with them, and perhaps he was sometimes too ready to convince himself of their truth.’

  Brain, Russell (1961). ‘Henry Head: The Man and His Ideas.’ Brain 84 (4): 561–66.

  –– (1963). ‘Some Reflections on Brain and Mind.’ Brain 86 (3): 381–402.

  Head, Henry (1893). ‘On Disturbances of Sensation with Especial Reference to the Pain of Visceral Disease.’ Brain 16 (1-2): 1–133.

  –– (1923). ‘Speech and Cerebral Localization.’ Brain 46 (4): 355–528.

  Rivers, W. H. R., and Henry Head (1908). ‘A Human Experiment in Nerve Division.’ Brain 31 (3): 323–450.

  Hair on Heads with Brains

  Henry Head is not the only outstanding head in science. The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists is, as the name implies, a club for scientists who have luxuriant flowing hair. LFHCfS, as it is known unpronounceably to its members and their admirers, was founded in early 2001. Anyone can join, provided only that she or he is a scientist and has luxuriant flowing hair. And is proud of it.

  The ‘proud’ part is important. The club is not for the morbidly shy, people-aversive scientist of stereotype and legend. Every LFHCfS member’s hair is on display on the club’s website, at:

  http://www.improbable.com/projects/hair/hair-club-top.html.

  LFHCfS was founded by admirers of the famously curly mane of psychologist Steven Pinker. Pinker, then a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and now head of the psychology department at Harvard, enlisted as the first member. He proudly lists the club on his academic web page.

  The membership ranks now include mathematicians, astronomers, linguists, organic chemists, computer researchers, immunologists, geneticists, physicists, neuroscientists, three sisters, a married couple, and other men and women of science, of both sexes and all hair colours and many hairstyles. There is even a real rock star, Italian chemist Piero Paravidino, a guitar player for the heavy metal band Mesmerize and co-author of the paper ‘Synthesis of Medium-Sized N-Heterocycles Through RCM of Fischer-Type Hydrazino Carbene Complexes’. Paravidino was named 2002 LFHCfS Man of the Year, beating out fellow LFHCfS member and fellow rock star, the astronomer Brian May of Queen.

  Call for Members

  Since the founding of the LFHCfS, scientists who once had long hair – but who no longer have hair – wrote asking if they could still be recognized, in some way. Thus was formed the LFHCfS’s two sibling clubs: the Luxuriant Former Hair Club for Scientists, and the Luxuriant Facial Hair Club for Scientists. The members of all three clubs share a quality of extremeness. Each member has extremely good hair, or extremely none.

  To propose yourself for membership, please send by email:

  A photograph that clearly provides evidence of (1) luxuriant, flowing head of hair; (2) luxuriant, flowing face of hair; or (3) luxuriant head of former hair.

  A current curriculum vitae outlining your credentials as a scientist.

  A pithy statement regarding your qualifications, both hirsute and scholarly.

  You may nominate someone other than yourself, provided that the person meets the relevant membership qualifications and that you have first obtained that person’s enthusiastic consent.

  Send to marca@improbable.com with the subject line:

  LUXURIANT HAIR CLUB

  Dr Alias, Hair Man

  If a hairy man becomes insatiably curious about what it means to have all that hair, he may well run across the work of Dr A. G. Alias. Yes, that is his name.

  Alias is an expert on certain aspects and implications of the hairiness of men. He has taken a special interest in hairy military leaders, hairy intelligentsia, low-ranked hairy boxers, and Marlon Brando. Alias has offered this shorthand version of his views: ‘I am fairly certain that the vast majority of hairy/hirsute men, compared to the respective “much less” hirsute men of the same race and ethnic group, are strikingly more intelligent and/or educated, but only from a statistical point of view.’

  Male hairiness enjoys a complex and often unclear relationship with intelligence and behaviour. Alias, who is based at the Chester Mental Health Center in Chester, Illinois, has tried to tease out a few of the many subtleties.

  Alias attracted attention in 1996 when he presented a research paper called ‘A Statistical Association Between Liberal Body Hair Growth and Intelligence’ at the Eighth Congress of the Association of European Psychiatrists, held in London. He reported that hairiness is common among successful male academics, engineers, and physicians – and also among the men who join Mensa, the social club for high-scoring intelligence-test takers.

  This was just a year after Alias had published a paper titled ‘Top Ranked Boxers Are Less Hirsute Than Lower Level Boxers’. In it, he discusses mesomorphs – big-boned, muscular men. Alias carefully analysed 380 drawings in William Sheldon’s book Atlas of Men. This was to gain a general understanding of whether big brutes have lots of body hair. Alias then carefully examined Harry Mullen’s tome, Great Book of Boxing, in which ‘body hair-revealing pictures are printed of 49 top-ranked, white heavyweight boxers, 15 of whom became world champions’. Alias concluded that, as a rule, champions were less hairy than non-champions. However, he cautions that the difference is not statistically significant.

  Alias did not limit his research to white pugilists in dusty books; he also looked at black boxers who appeared on television. He reports that ‘around 35% of the black boxers appear to be more hirsute than any of the 16 black boxers featured in [the book] All-Time Greats of Boxing: Johnson, Louis, Walcott, Patterson, Liston, Ali, Frazier, Holmes, Tyson, M. Spinks, Robinson, Hagler, Armstrong, Hearns, Leonard, and Saddler. Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Mike Weaver, Tony Tubbs, Iran Ian Barkley, and Lennox Lewis, who were conspicuously hirsute, heavyweight champions, were less than outstanding.’

  That same year, 1995, Alias also released a paper called ‘Non-Pathological Associational Loosening of Marlon Brando: A Sign of Hypoarousal?’ Biographers of the late actor can plumb it for unexpected insights.

  Alias, A. G. (1996) ‘A Statistical Association Between Liberal Body Hair Growth and Intelligence.’ Presented at the Eighth Congress of the Association of European Psychiatrists, London, UK, 12 July.

  –– (1995). ‘Top Ranked Boxers Are Less Hirsute Than Lower Level Boxers: An Example For the Importance of 5-Alpha-Reductase?’ Biological Psychiatry 37 (9): 612–13.

  –– (1995). ‘Non-Pathological Associational Loosening of Marlon Brando: A Sign of Hypoarousal?’ Biological Psychiatry 37 (9): 613.

  An Improbable Innovation

  ‘Method of Concealing Partial Baldness’

  a/k/a ‘the comb-over’ by Frank J. Smith and Donald J. Smith (US Patent no. 4,022,227, granted 1977 and honour
ed with the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in engineering)

  Selected steps from ‘Method of Concealing Partial Baldness’

  Baldly Accountable

  It’s your own fault if you go bald, or if you lose your memory, or both. That’s in theory. The theory is championed by Armando José Yáñez Soler, of Elda Alicante, Spain. The town of Elda Alicante, until now, has been best known as the home of the Museo del Calzado (the Museum of Footwear), but if Yáñez’s theory is correct, his fame could eventually surpass that of the museum.

  Yáñez published details of his research in the journal Medical Hypotheses. ‘The human being has evolved to become a naked monkey’, he writes, but ‘there is no apparent reason to continue the evolutionary process up to becoming a bald monkey.’ Common baldness ‘is a degenerative process derived from certain inadequate cultural practices, such as excessive hair cutting or certain types of haircuts’.

  The process is roughly akin, in his view, to the coming of Alzheimer’s disease. ‘It is generally accepted’, he notes, citing a small study that appeared in the journal Neurology in 2001, ‘that loss of memory in people over 60 years of age is mainly due to ... certain behaviours of the individual.’

  Yáñez is fascinated by sebum, the oily secretion produced by tiny glands in the regions of skin where hair is produced. The sebum flows around and through the hair. If this gunk builds up, says Yáñez, there ensues a cascade of physiological events that lead to baldness.

  Combing, brushing, touching, or massaging one’s hair helps keep the sebum flowing out of the scalp. Sleeping with one’s head on a good, absorbent pillow sops it up. Yáñez is almost lyrical in explaining the rise and meanderings of the sebum and the attraction of pillows.

  Pillows are just the half of it. Luxuriant, flowing hair is the other half. Yáñez explains that sebum can move out and along the lengthy surface of each hair and so eventually ooze its way to a pillow or a hairbrush or some other absorbent, sebum-sucking surface. Somehow, short hair doesn’t cut it.

  Yáñez says his theory explains why baldness is more common in men than in women. ‘Nature provides both sexes with the capacity to have long hair’, he points out. And people with thick or curly hair have especially good sebum-elimination. ‘This explains why certain ethnicities or cultures such as Native Americans, Rastafaris, Gypsies, etc. do not suffer from common baldness.’ Furthermore, ‘many people affected by common baldness have noted that they started to suffer from it during military service.... The difference in hair length is the key. Military people, skinheads and others wear their hair short and therefore they can induce problems with sebum flow.’

  Yáñez says he is ‘aware that this thought-provoking theory will give rise [to] a lot of skepticism’.

  Yáñez Soler, Armando José (2004). ‘Cultural Evolution as a Possible Triggering or Causative Factor of Common Baldness.’ Medical Hypotheses 62 (6): 980–85.

  Scarmeas, G. Levy, M.-X. Tang, J. Manly, and Y. Stern (2001). ‘Influence of leisure activity on the incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease.’ Neurology 57: 2236–42.

  A Hole in the Head

  Holes seem simple enough, until you examine them closely. Marco Bertamini, of the University of Liverpool, and Camilla Croucher, of the University of Cambridge, peered at one particular aspect. Their study, called ‘The Shape of Holes’, appeared in the journal Cognition. In it, they say: ‘We discuss the many interesting aspects of holes as a subject of study in different disciplines, and predict that much insight especially about shape will continue to come from holes.’

  ‘The Shape of Holes’ is a more specialized report than its title implies. Its central question deals with how we see and understand edges: do the contours of a hole belong to the hole, or to the surrounding object? Psychologists, philosophers, artists, and, recently, also computer scientists have wrestled with this and with each other for the better part of a century.

  Almost certainly you have played with the black-and-white drawing made famous by Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin. That’s the drawing in which you can choose to see either two faces or a vase – but not both at the same time. Look at that drawing again now, paying attention to the border between black and white, and you will see the nature of this hole question.

  Bertamini and Croucher had volunteers look at line drawings that include particular kinks and bends. The goal: to better understand how we use such details to perceive particular shapes. The result: Bertamini and Croucher say that, to human eyes, the edges of a hole are not themselves part of the hole.

  There is a rich, deep history of people looking into holes. Everyone, it appears, is aware of the oddity of the enterprise. In 1970, the Australasian Journal of Philosophy published an instant classic of hole scholarship. Written by Princeton University philosopher David Kellogg Lewis and his wife, Stephanie, it bears the simple title ‘Holes’. ‘Holes’ has been described as a ‘whimsical dialogue debating the ontological nature of holes’.

  Recently, Flip Phillips, J. Farley Norman, and Heather Ross explored holes by using twelve sweet potatoes. They conducted their experiment at Western Kentucky University.

  This project required careful preparation. The team cast silhouettes of the sweet potatoes on to a projection screen, photographed the silhouettes with a digital camera, transferred the digitized pictures to a Macintosh computer, and then fed the data to a laser printer. The result: sheets of paper imprinted with potato silhouettes. The scientists then recruited volunteers. They asked the volunteers to copy each potato silhouette to an adjacent blank area, paying special attention to the dents and protuberances of each potato-shape. The results confirm an old theory that dents and nubs play a big part in how we recognize shapes.

  In theory, this patches a gap in our understanding of holes and other shapes: at the edges, it’s the kinks – not the long smooth stretches – that matter most.

  Bertamini, Marco, and Camilla J. Croucher (2003). ‘The Shape of Holes.’ Cognition 87 (1): 33–54.

  Lewis, David Kellogg, and Stephanie R. Lewis (1970). ‘Holes.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 48: 206-12; reprinted in Lewis, D. K. (1983). Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 3–9.

  Norman, J. F., F. Phillips, and H. E. Ross (2001). ‘Information Concentration Along the Boundary Contours of Naturally Shaped Solid Objects.’ Perception 30: 1285–94.

  Colour Preference in the Insane

  In the summer of 1931, Siegfried E. Katz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital published a study in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology called ‘Color Preference in the Insane’. Assisted by a Dr Cheney, Katz tested 134 hospitalized mental patients, asking them about their favourite colours. For simplicity’s sake, he limited the testing to six colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. No black. No white. No shades of grey.

  ‘These colors’, he wrote, ‘rectangular in shape, one and one-half inches square, cut from Bradley colored papers were pasted in two rows on a gray cardboard. They were three inches apart. The colors were numbered haphazardly and the number of each color placed above it. The cardboard was presented to the patient and he was asked to place his finger on the number of the color he liked best. After he had made the choice he was asked in a similar manner for the next best color, and so on.’

  Some of the patients ‘cooperated well’, and made six choices. Others, Katz reported, ‘quickly lost interest and made only one, two or three’.

  Blue was the most popular colour. Men, in the aggregate, then favoured green, but women patients were divided on green, red, or violet as a second choice.

  Patients who had resided in the hospital for three or more years were slightly less emphatic about blue. Katz says that these long-term guests were ‘those with most marked mental deterioration’. Their preference, as a group, shifted somewhat towards green and yellow. Those of longest tenure, though few in number, had a slightly elevated liking for orange.

  The report is packed with titbits that beg, even now,
for further analysis:

  Blue was given ‘first preference’ by thirty-eight percent of schizophrenics and manic depressives, versus forty-two percent of other patients.

  Green was first choice among sixteen percent of schizophrenics, nine percent of manic depressives, and thirteen percent of other patients.

  Red was first choice for sixteen percent of manic depressives, twelve percent of schizophrenics, and fifteen percent of other patients; it was the second choice of twenty-two percent of manic depressives, eighteen percent of schizophrenics, and thirteen percent of other patients.

  Orange and yellow gained the highest ‘best liked’ rating among manic depressives; green among schizophrenics, and violet among other patients.

  Katz foresaw practical applications for his research. He suggested that ‘in the furnishings of living quarters the selection of colors pleasing to special groups of patients might be worth consideration’.

  Consciously or not, hospital staff seem to have followed Dr Katz’s insights in fashioning their own, personal, at-work appearance. The evocatively named Bragard Medical Uniforms, a New York firm founded in 1933, now publishes a list of the most popular uniform colours. The list currently is topped by, in order: royal blue; dark grey (which, alas, Katz excluded from his survey); dark green; and red.

  Katz, Siegfried E. (1931). ‘Color Preference in the Insane.’ Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 26 (2): 203–11.

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