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The absent-minded professor is a stock character of popular fiction, usually portrayed as a talented academic whose academic brilliance is accompanied by below-par functioning in other areas, leading to forgetfulness and mistakes. One explanation of this is that highly talented individuals often have unevenly distributed capabilities, being brilliant in their field of choice but below average on other measures of ability. Alternatively, they are considered to be so engrossed in their field of study that they forget their surroundings. The phrase is also commonly used in English to describe people who are so engrossed in their own world that they fail to keep track of their surroundings. It is a common stereotype that professors get so obsessed with their research that they pay little attention to anything else.
The archetype is sometimes mixed with that of the mad scientist, often for comic effect, as in the Jerry Lewis film The Nutty Professor or the Profesor Bacterio in the Mortadelo y Filemón comics and movies. However, a distinction is usually made that absent-minded professors are forgetful and careless rather than maliciously causing harm.