Midgley; or, The Modern Epimetheus.

Today in Famous Toms, we have the chemist Thomas Midgely, Jr.

The inventor of both leaded gasoline and Freon, he is said to have “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history.”

Lead was well-known to be toxic by the end of the nineteenth century but

[i]n 1922, while plans for production of leaded gasoline were just getting underway, Thomas Midgley received a letter from Charles Klaus, a German scientist, stating of lead, “it’s a creeping and malicious poison” and warned that it had killed a fellow scientist. This didn’t seem to faze Midgley, who himself came down with lead poisoning during the planning phase.

(Source.)

Contracting polio at age 51 lead him to “devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from bed” — however, at 55 he became entangled in it and was strangled to death.

A brilliant man, yet one who lived and died unable to foresee the terrible consequences of his brilliant ideas.

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Update: it has been brought to my attention that around 1911 Midgley was in an explosion that left shards of metal in his eye. His response was to use an eyewash of liquid mercury, which cleared the problem up in just two weeks.

Hardcore.