The Professor and the Madman (2019)

Synopsis

The true tale of madness, genius, and obsession about two remarkable men who created literary history with the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary. The compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857 by professor James Murray, who took on the challenge of creating the most comprehensive dictionary ever compiled. By “crowd sourcing” the work; that is, by enlisting definitions from people all over the world, the dictionary could be compiled in mere decades instead of a century. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. When the committee insisted on honoring him, a shocking truth came to light: Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was a convicted murderer and being held at an asylum for the criminally insane.

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