Picture the black-and-white Disney movie starring Fred MacMurray: The old absent-minded professor, beloved inventor of Flubber, wearing a shabby cardigan and dreaming up endless new, amusing contraptions in his garage out behind the house.
Or, picture the old MGM movie of your choice, featuring the classic professoralso beloved, he’s easy to spot, with his horn-rimmed glasses and tweed jacket with the leather patches at the elbows. He’s rather fussy, graying at the temples, and his favorite thing to do is hang out in his book-lined study (in coat and tie, of course), absorbed in The Origin of Species or some other light reading, as the grandfather clock slowly ticks the evening away.
Now get out the big magnet and erase this videotape. Today’s professors defy typecasting. They may wear tweed jackets or spandex biking shorts. Their personalities may run the gamut from austere (“should have joined the family mortuary business”) to fried (“the sixties were so cool”) to wacky (“star of the karaoke lounge at the Ramada Inn on highway 50”). They may have Ollie North military buzz cuts, Richard Simmons perms, Shirley...