The stylish and sleek geek

Miranda Cashin

Miranda Cashin discovers the man behind the most colourful and eye catching shirts, Australia’s favourite scientst, Dr. Karl.
As far as science brains go, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki is the pin-up boy. He is the Jennifer Hawkins of Aussie science. The Zac Efron of knowledge.
The inner workings of his mind are simply extraordinary. Within a few minutes of talking, his conversation touches on Richard Nixon, his production of bellybutton fluff and his anger at people believing that vaccinating kids is harmful.
When Dr Karl was 16 he came across the book ‘Plato’s Republic’ and one phrase stuck in his mind, that would shape the rest of his life. ‘The unexplored life is not worth living’. Since then Dr Karl says he has always tried to live life to the fullest. And that he certainly has. It’s hard to find anyone who has packed as much into 60 years as he has.
With three degrees tucked under his belt, 26 popular science books, numerous radio and TV shows, Dr Karl has also worked as a cab driver, medical doctor in the Royal Childrens Hospital, labourer, Hospital Scientific Officer, roadie for rock ‘n roll bands (including Bo Didley and Chuck Berry), biomedical engineer, and film-maker. He has even appeared on Neighbours, which he recalls as the highlight of his career!
Born in Hålsingborg, Sweden, Dr Karl moved to Australia with his family at a young age. With a name like Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Mathew Kruszelnicki, it was tough growing up in the ‘50s in Wollongong.
Bullied for being a wog, for his name and for not being Irish greatly affected Dr Karl who bears the scars even more than 40 years later.
“Even though I didn’t actually get beaten up at school, it still affected me, that sort of intolerance has affected me all my life,” he says.
“It has given me the chance to walk in the other person’s shoes and appreciate what it’s like to be bullied.”
But the bullying left more than emotional scars. Dr Karl suffers from prosopagnosia, commonly called face-blindness, which is a neurological condition that renders a person incapable of recognising faces.
“I think it probably happened as a result of an unhappy childhood as a wog growing up in Wollongong, being bullied at school and not developing that part of my brain that recognised friends and faces. As a result faces are like bricks in a wall to me,” he says.
It was Kruszelnicki’s devotion to discovering the secrets of the universe which led him to be awarded his proudest professional achievement; The Ig Nobel prize for his ground breaking research into why bellybutton fluff it is nearly always blue. Why bellybutton fluff?
“Somebody rang me up on my Triple J radio show and said ‘Where do you get bellybutton fluff from?’ and I said ‘I don’t know but I’ll go looking,’” Dr Karl says. “So I went looking and all I could find in the literature was one article where people had made a few guesses but that was about it, just a few guesses.” D Karl later received an email from a man named Doug who had a hairy abdomen and lots of bellybutton fluff. Doug did an experiment where he shaved a ten centimetre circle around his bellybutton and suddenly he got no more bellybutton fluff and as the hair grew back the bellybutton fluff production increased.
“This inspired us to do our groundbreaking research into bellybutton fluff and why it is almost always blue,” says Dr Karl.
So does Dr Karl himself produce much bellybutton fluff? “No…not a lot,” he says with a laugh. “The average generator of belly button fluff is the slightly overweight middle aged male with a hairy abdomen. But skinny females can get it as well, depending if they’re wearing tight t-shirts.”
Dr Karl admits that he can’t resist wandering in a fabric store whenever he comes across one, to source material for his famous wardrobe. His bold shirts are almost more famous than the scientist himself; all are which are made lovingly by his wife Mary.
“My wife is very kind to make shirts for me so I’m very lucky,” he says. “It was a bit difficult to find shirts that are nice and comfortable simply because the cost is so high. So you find a shirt and it’s a nice pattern and the right size…but blow me down its $400! Whereas you just buy the material and spend three hours and you get a much better thing out of it, a much better deal.”
Dr Karl is also able to tailor his shirts perfectly to the job he’s doing. Whether its clocks for the micosleep campaign or frogs when talking to people about the environment, or pills when talking to those in pharmacy, he’s always well coordinated. When asked his favourite Kruszelnicki is torn, diplomatically stating, “They’re all beautiful,” he says.
Just when you thought that there was nothing left for Dr Karl to achieve, last year he decided to run for parliament.
“I got annoyed at politicians telling lies. I got sick of yelling at the TV set and I thought I’ve just got to do something about it…I’m going to run for parliament. And I lost; I got fewer votes then the barking mad shooters party but slightly more than the barking mad fishers party!”
So what’s next for our favourite science geek? “I’ve always wanted to go into space!…I’m hanging out for the aliens to come down and kidnap me and take me with them. Give me a bottle of Geritol so I don’t get older and take me up around the galaxy for a couple of thousand years. Hanging out for it mate! Unfortunately they seem only to appear to people that drink a lot of beer and live in a caravan van!”