10 Times Well-Loved Scientists Were Total Jerks

Surely one of the most enlightened people on history couldn't possibly be a jerk? Described as "the first genuine scientist in history" and one of the founders of the idea that people should be generally nice to one another, you'd think that Aristotle would escape the trappings of jerkishness. Nope.

Unfortunately, Aristotle had a few pretty strong opinions about women. In his work "A History of Animals" he goes into great detail about women, describing them as "more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike ... more prone to despondency and less hopeful ... more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more deceptive". 

That's not the end of it either, it goes on and on, detailing every way in which women were weaker than men, eventually asserting that women and girls should only be given half the amount of food as men.

Perhaps he was just a product of his time though. Hmm, maybe not. Whilst it's true that the Ancient Greeks weren't generally up on the whole feminism thing, Aristotle was definitely kicking around at the same time as the Spartans, who famously had far more enlightened (although by no means perfect) ideas about women than pretty much anyone else at the time, including their physical prowess. 

If Aristotle thought that women were weak and insipid, then he'd clearly never met a Spartan, who were, by all accounts, tough as old boots.