Joan Nagle

Swiss scientist Fritz Zwicky is famous for coining the term “dark matter,” which is impressive enough. But he also reportedly coined the insult “spherical bastard” for someone who remains a bastard from every possible angle—and that contribution to language deserves a little more recognition. Swiss-American astronomer Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974) proposed the existence of unseen matter in galaxy clusters in 1933. While studying the Coma Cluster, he used the German term dunkle Materie, or “dark matter,” to describe the invisible mass that could explain the unusually rapid motions of its galaxies. Zwicky was also famous for his sharp tongue and combative personality. He reportedly referred to certain colleagues as “spherical bastards”—his colorful way of describing someone who was a bastard no matter which direction you looked at them from. Other insults attributed to him were equally blunt. His personality sometimes attracted nearly as much attention as his science, but Zwicky made major contributions to astronomy. Beyond his early work on dark matter, he helped advance ideas involving supernovae and neutron stars and recognized the potential of gravitational lensing decades before it became an important astronomical tool.