| Professor Doctor Challenger | |
|---|---|
| The Lost World character | |
 Professor Challenger (seated) as illustrated by Harry Rountree in Arthur Conan Doyle's novella The Poison Belt in The Strand Magazine | |
| Created by | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Portrayed by | |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Nationality | Scottish |
George Edward Challenger is a fictional character in a series of fantasy and science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike 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, two people: an explorer named Percy Fawcett, who was 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.[1][2]
George Edward Challenger, FRS, MD, DSc, is born in Largs, Ayrshire in 1863 and educated at Largs Academy before studying at the University of Edinburgh.[3] Dr Challenger is appointed to an assistant position at the British Museum in 1892 and is promoted within a year to assistant keeper in the Comparative Anthropology Department. He holds a professorship in Zoology and is elected President of the Zoological Institute in London. Several of his inventions are successfully applied in industry and bring him additional income.[4]
Edward Malone, the narrator of The Lost World, the 1912 novel in which Challenger first appears, describes his first meeting with the character:
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His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size, which took one's breath away – his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top hat, had I ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard, which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-grey under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.[5]
Challenger is 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 can be counted upon to solve any problem or get out of any unsavoury situation, and be sure to offend and insult many people in the process. He is also seen as extremely vain by his colleagues: Edward Malone says that "he is convinced, of course, that he is destined for Westminster Abbey" (i.e. famous enough to be buried there),[6] and later speculates that "in his fancy, may he see himself sometimes, gracing the vacant pedestal in Trafalgar Square".[7] Challenger is, in many ways, rude, crude, and without social conscience or inhibition. Yet he is a man capable of great loyalty and his love of his wife is all-encompassing.[citation needed]
Challenger marries Jessica—'Jessie'—and the couple settles at 14 Enmore Gardens, Enmore Park, Kensington, London.[8] After his adventures in South America Challenger and his wife purchase The Briars, in Rotherfield, Sussex, as a second home.[9] Later, following his wife's death from influenza, Challenger sells his London home and rents an apartment on the third floor in Victoria West Gardens, London.[10] Challenger's friend and biographer, the journalist Edward 'Ted' Dunn Malone, marries Enid Challenger, the Professor's daughter, in the summer of 1927. Malone was 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 is a freelance reporter at the same newspaper.[11]
In July 1908, Malone joins 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 claims to have observed creatures from the Jurassic Age two years previously. On reaching the mouth of the Amazon River in Pará state, the expedition hires local guides and servants Mojo, José, Fernando, Gomez, Manuel and Zambo.[12] From Manaus the expedition continues up-river to reach an unnamed tributary, which they follow by canoe until by late August the explorers arrive in the Guiana Highlands and the table-top mountain (tepui) that is the Lost World. The expedition camps at the foot of the basalt cliffs of the tepui, which they name Maple White Land in honour of the plateau’s discoverer some four years earlier.[13] The isolated plateau is 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 occupy the plateau, and the explorers aid them to subjugate the predatory 'ape-men'. The expedition returns to London, bringing with them diamonds worth £200,000. Professors Challenger and Summerlee present their findings to the Zoological Institute on 7 November 1908 at the Queen's Hall, Regent Street, London. They claim to have discovered over 150 new species, some dating from the Early Jurassic.[14]
Three years later, the friends re-assemble in Challenger’s Sussex home to witness The Poison Belt incident of 27 to 28 August 1911. Challenger interprets a shift in Fraunhofer's light diffraction lines to predict that the Earth is passing through a deadly interstellar cloud of ether. By breathing oxygen from cylinders brought to the house earlier, Challenger, his wife and friends avoid falling into catalepsy over the several hours the event lasted. It appears as though all animal life on the planet expired but within 28 hours all recovered.[15]
Challenger is able to pursue his scientific interests independently as a result of a bequest by the rubber millionaire Betterton. He purchases an estate on Hengist Down near to his Sussex home and engages construction firm Morden & Company to begin sinking a vertical shaft to a depth of eight miles. In the spring of 1921, American specialist in artesian wells Mr Peerless Jones is engaged to plunge his drilling rod a further hundred feet into the apparently-living protoplasmic substance that was revealed at the bottom of the shaft. Challenger hopes through this experiment to prove that the Earth is a living organism that sustains its vitality from the ether of outer space. Preparations are ready by Tuesday 21 June 1921, and the drill breaches the tissue, producing a loud scream and unleashing a geyser of a protective tar-like secretion, accompanied by global volcanic activity. It is the day "When the World Screamed".[16]
Some months later, Challenger and Malone are the last people to meet the Latvian inventor Theodore Nemor, who claimed to have discovered the physics of disintegrating and then reassembling matter. Nemor apparently seeks competing bids from the British and Soviet governments to buy "The Disintegration Machine" at the time of his unexplained disappearance from London.[17]
The death of Jessica Challenger affects her husband profoundly. Professor Challenger undertakes an investigation into psychic phenomena after Ted Malone and Enid Challenger's reports on spiritualism appear in the Daily Gazette in October 1926. Lord John Roxton, Malone, and the Reverend Charles Mason, a former Church of England exorcist who took up Spiritualism, visits a haunted house at Dryfont in Derbyshire. An apparition at the house convince the two friends of the reality of the spirit world and they set out to explore The Land of Mist further. Challenger joins the investigation ostensibly to demonstrate the fallacies of psychic research but becomes convinced of the reality of intercourse with the spirits of the dead and announces his conversion in a polemic carried by The Spectator magazine.[18]
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 World's 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.[25]
Since then, the following actors have played the role:
