Jacques Futrelle and his wonderful Prof Van Dusen

I just discovered a wonderful author of about a hundred years ago. His name is Jacques Futrelle and I came across him via another very interesting resource - Scienceblogs.

One of his most famous stories - The problem of Cell 13 - can be found here. Just as Arthur Conan Doyle had his Sherlock Holmes, Jacques Futrelle had his Van Dusen. Professor Augustus S F X Van Dusen is quite an interesting and intriguing character. Seems to rank up there with Holmes - but I will reserve judgement for now as I have just read one story. But an amazing story, nonetheless.

Interestingly but unfortunately, Jacques Futrelle was one of those who died on the Titanic. His wife, however, survived.

Thanks to Jason Rosenhouse of EvolutionBlog (or is it the other way around?) for pointing me towards a set of great stories.

And by the way, all of Jacques Futrelle's stories can be found online.

Though we take the Internet and the WWW for granted now, I can't but feel grateful for the wealth of information and knowledge I have, literally, at my fingertips. Though Newton made the now famous "Standing on the shoulders of giants" comment to belittle poor Robert Hooke, all of us now can say gratefully that whatever little we see, we do so by standing on the shoulders of giants.