The origin of the Mad Thinker is unknown. He led an extraordinarily successful criminal career without the police ever learning he was a criminal, thanks to the brilliance of his strategies. Aided by his advanced computers, the Thinker could predict the probably course of events virtually down to the smallest detail, and used this knowledge in planning his crimes. (He calls himself the Thinker; however, once he became publicly known as a criminal, his superhuman opponents and the news media labeled him "the Mad Thinker," much to his continued exasperation.) Eventually the Thinker met with many of the country's leading crime bosses to tell them of his plan to seize control of New York City and turn it into an independent nation with himself as its ruler. The crime bosses would serve to enforce his rule. To rid himself of the probable opposition of the Fantastic Four, who were then the only New York City based team of superhuman crimefighters, the Thinker arranged for each of the team members to be offered a highly attractive job.

The four teammates accepted the offers, but while they were gone from their Baxter Building headquarters, the Thinker and his allies took it over. The Thinker thus gained access to the knowledge and equipment of the Fantastic Four's leader Reed Richards, a scientific genius. Using this information the Thinker constructed the first of his superhuman androids. When the Fantastic Four returned, the Thinker used the android and Richards' own weaponry to battle them. But Richards defeated the Thinker by arranging to have a circuit breaker activated that rendered all of Richards' electronic equipment and weaponry useless. Thus the Thinker was sent to prison apparently for the first time.

Since then the Thinker has clashed unsuccessfully many times with the Fantastic Four and other superhuman adventurers, including the Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Sub-Mariner, and the X-Men. He once attempted to conquer the world in league with his occasional partner the Puppet Master and the criminal scientist Egghead. However, usually the Thinker directs his crimes towards three other goals: the accumulation of further knowledge (as in his continued attempts to steal Reed Richards' scientific secrets), the amassing of great wealth, and vengeance on the Fantastic Four. The Thinker once found and revived the original android Human Torch to use him as a weapon against the Fantastic Four. After the original Torch was apparently destroyed, the Thinker turned him over to the robotic Ultron. The Thinker also brainwashed the original Torch's partner, Toro, into serving him, although Toro later broke free of his control.

The Mad Thinker has great intellectual and cognitive abilities, as well as vast mechanical genius. His brain is so naturally adept at higher mathematics that he can perform unaided mental calculations such as finding large, complex, and imaginary square roots, solving algebraic equations including vectors, Boolean logic, probability and statistics, differential and integral calculus, and computing analytic functions. He has an eidetic memory, and is able to recall 99.99% of everything he sees, hears, or reads. The Mad Thinker's brain is like an organic computer. By "programming" it with all the relevant data possible, he is able to mentally calculate event probabilities to two decimal places. The only thing that ever works against his probability forecasts is what he calls the x-factor, certain variables of which he is unaware and thus is unable to use in his computations. The Mad Thinker is not an intuitive genius like Reed Richards, capable of creating and inventing: he can only synthesize for his own use what has already been created or invented by others. Although the Thinker has mastered many areas of science, his specialties are computer design, in which he has no known equals, and robotics. However, he has apparently contributed no original discoveries to any of these areas.

The Mad Thinker uses many computers to gather and store information for him. These computers constantly augment his base of knowledge about the world around him and recheck his mental calculations to eliminate as much error as possible.

He generally does not confront his opponents directly so he does not carry many weapons on his person. His only frequently used personal weapon is a monocle-sized hypno-lens, capable of mesmerizing anyone who looks at it. To perform his fieldwork, the Thinker employs a variety of androids. The Thinker stole the basic design for constructing androids from Reed Richards. However, drawing upon other sources of information, the Thinker has created androids that are much more powerful than any that Richards is known to have constructed. His first and most frequently employed artificial automaton is the "Awesome" Android, a 15foot tall malleable humanoid capable of mimicking other torms and powers. He has also created the Quasi-Motivational Destruct Organ ("Quasimodo"), android duplicates of the Fantastic Four, simulacra of various great thinkers from human history, super-powerful android assassins, and numerous medium-power servant androids to tend to his personal comforts and professional needs.

At present, the Thinker has a surgically implanted, biochemically powered, high-frequency, pulse-code modulated radio link to his laboratories, permitting him to be in mental contact with the full range of his private facilities while serving his sentence in prison. This link also enables him to project his consciousness from his body into an android simalcrum of himself. Hence he can still conduct criminal activities even while his body remains in its prison cell.

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