Victor Frankenstein is the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The son of Alphonse Frankenstein and Caroline Beaufort-Frankenstein, his mother died in a lightning storm after complications related to his birth. He had two younger brothers, William, who was killed by his creation, and Edward, who left to join the foreign service. He fell in love with his adoptive sister, a blonde among gypsies his mother doted upon, Elizabeth Lavenza.

Frankenstein is a young Swiss scientist (and baron in some movies, doctor in most) who becomes obsessed with the idea of creating life in inanimate matter through artificial means. Assembling a humanoid creature by stitching together pieces of human corpses, Frankenstein successfully brings it to life, only to be repulsed and terrified by its monstrous ugliness. He abandons and flees his creation, who disappears and soon begins a course of vengeance that results in the deaths of several of his family and friends. Frankenstein pursues the "Fiend" (as he calls his creation) to the Arctic with the intent of destroying it; he ultimately fails in his mission, however, and after relating his tale to the captain of a ship that has picked him up, he dies of sickness brought on by stress, grief, and exposure to the elements. His creature, upon discovering the death of its maker, is overcome by sorrow and remorse and ends the novel by vowing to commit suicide.

While many subsequent film adaptations have portrayed Frankenstein as insane (the prototypical "mad scientist"), Shelley's original novel depicts him more as a man tragically driven by ambition and scientific curiosity, unable to deal with the consequences of his actions in "playing God." Some have even interpreted the character as a metaphor for God himself, with his monstrous creature representing humankind. He as also been interpreted, particularly by feminist scholars and many modern readers, as simply a bad parent. Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a chemistry student at the University of Ingolstadt who dropped out after two years, after discovering alchemy. He never achieved the status of "Doctor", or anywhere close to it in the novel.

Fictional mad scientists | Characters in written fiction