Professor Challenger
George Edward Challenger is a fictional character in a series of fantasy and science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike Conan Doyle's self-controlled, analytical character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, hot-tempered, dominating figure. Like Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger was based on a real person—in this case, an explorer named Percy Fawcett, who was Conan Doyle's friend, and a professor of physiology named William Rutherford, who had lectured at the University of Edinburgh while Conan Doyle studied medicine there. Fictional character biography. George Edward Challenger, FRS, MD, DSc, was born  in Largs, Ayrshire in 1863 and educated at Largs Academy before studying at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Challenger was appointed to an assistant position at the British Museum in 1892 and was promoted within a year to assistant keeper in the Comparative Anthropology Department. He held a professorship in Zoology and was elected President of the Zoological Institute in London. Several of his inventions were successfully applied in industry and brought him additional income. Edward Malone, the narrator of "The Lost World", the 1912 novel in which Challenger first appeared, described his first meeting with the character: Challenger was  also a pretentious and self-righteous scientific jack-of-all-trades. Although considered by Malone's editor, Mr McArdle, to be "just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science", his ingenuity could be counted upon to solve any problem or get out of any unsavoury situation, and be sure to offend and insult several other people in the process. He was also seen as extremely vain by his colleagues: Edward Malone says that ""he is convinced, of course, that he is destined for Westminster Abbey"", and later speculates that ""in his fancy, may he see himself sometimes, gracing the  vacant pedestal in Trafalgar Square"". Challenger was, in many ways, rude, crude, and without social conscience or inhibition. Yet he was a man capable of great loyalty and his love of his wife was all-encompassing. Challenger married Jessica - ‘Jessie’ - and the couple settled at 14 Enmore Gardens, Enmore Park, Kensington, London. After his adventures in South America Challenger and his wife purchased The Briars, in Rotherfield, Sussex, as a second home. Later, following his wife’s death from influenza, Challenger sold his London home and rented an apartment on the third floor in Victoria West Gardens, London. Challenger’s  friend and biographer, the journalist Edward ‘Ted’ Dunn Malone married Enid Challenger, the Professor’s daughter, in the summer of 1927. Malone had been born in Ireland and achieved some fame in rugby football at international level for Ireland before a career in journalism at the Daily Gazette. Enid Challenger was a freelance reporter at the same newspaper. In July 1908 Malone joined Challenger, the 66 year-old Mr Summerlee (c.1842-1925), Professor of Comparative Anatomy, and the explorer and mountaineer Lord John Roxton, third son of the Duke of Pomfret and then in his mid-forties, on an expedition  to the Amazon Basin, where Challenger claimed to have observed creatures from the Jurassic Age two years previously. On reaching the mouth of the Amazon River in Pará state the expedition hired local guides and servants Mojo, José, Fernando, Gomez, Manuel and Zambo. From Manaus the expedition continued up-river to reach an unnamed tributary, which they followed by canoe until by late August the explorers arrived in the Guiana Highlands and the great table-top mountain (tepui) that was The Lost World. The expedition camped at the foot of the basalt cliffs of the tepui, which they named Maple  White Land in honour of the plateau’s discoverer some four years earlier. The isolated plateau was home to numerous prehistoric animals, previously known only from the fossil record, including pterodactyls, allosaurids, iguanodon and an early species of hominid. A group of indigenous people also occupied the plateau and the explorers aided them to subjugate the predatory ‘ape-men’. The expedition returned to London, bringing with them diamonds worth £200,000. Professors Challenger and Summerlee presented their findings to the Zoological Institute on 7 November 1908 at the Queen’s Hall, Regent Street, London. They claimed to have discovered over  150 new species, some dating from the Early Jurassic. Three years later the friends re-assembled in Challenger’s Sussex home to witness The Poison Belt incident of 27 to 28 August 1911. Challenger interpreted a shift in Fraunhofer’s light diffraction lines to predict that the Earth was passing through a deadly interstellar cloud of ether. By breathing oxygen from cylinders brought to the house earlier Challenger, his wife and friends avoided falling into catalepsy over the several hours the event lasted. It appeared as though all animal life on the planet had expired but within 28 hours all  had recovered. Challenger was able to pursue his scientific interests independently as a result of a bequest by the rubber millionaire Betterton. He purchased an estate on Hengist Down near to his Sussex home, and engaged construction firm Morden & Company to begin sinking a vertical shaft to a depth of eight miles. In the spring of 1921 an American specialist in artesian wells Mr Peerless Jones was engaged to plunge his drilling rod a further hundred feet into the apparently-living protoplasmic substance that had been revealed at the bottom of the shaft. Challenger hoped through this experiment to prove  that the Earth was a living organism that sustained its vitality from the ether of outer space. Preparations were ready by Tuesday 21 June 1921 and the drill breached the tissue, producing a loud scream and unleashing a geyser of a protective tar-like secretion, accompanied by global volcanic activity. It was the day When the World Screamed. Some months later, Challenger and Malone were the last people to meet the Latvian inventor Theodore Nemor, who had claimed to have discovered the physics of disintegrating and then reassembling matter. Nemor was apparently seeking competing bids from the British and Soviet  governments to buy The Disintegration Machine at the time of his unexplained disappearance from London. The death of Jessica Challenger affected her husband profoundly. Professor Challenger undertook an investigation into psychic phenomena after Ted Malone and Enid Challenger’s reports on spiritualism appeared in the Daily Gazette in October 1926. Lord John Roxton, Malone, and the Reverend Charles Mason, a former Church of England exorcist who had taken up Spiritualism, visited a haunted house at Dryfont in Derbyshire. An apparition at the house convinced the two friends of the reality of the spirit world and they set out to explore  The Land of Mist further. Challenger joined the investigation ostensibly to demonstrate the fallacies of psychic research but became convinced of the reality of intercourse with the spirits of the dead and announced his conversion in a polemic carried by The Spectator magazine. Portrayals. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the first person to portray Professor Challenger, dressing and making up as the professor for a photograph he wanted included in "The Lost Worlds initial serialized publication in the "Strand Magazine". The editor refused, feeling that such hoaxes were potentially damaging. Hodder & Stoughton had no such qualms and featured the image  in the first book edition. Since then, the following actors have played the role: