Today, Henry Cavendish is recognized as one of the most brilliant scientists of his day, but his contemporaries knew him to be an extremely unusual person. Throughout his life, Cavendish avoided women entirely; he even went so far as to order his female servants to stay out of his way, or they would be fired. He was so shy he almost never left his house, except to attend the weekly dinners and meetings of the scientific Royal Society. Sometimes, he would hang around outside the meeting room, waiting to slip in when no one would notice him. If a stranger came near him, he quickly walked away. The only picture we now have of Cavendish is a watercolor sketch that was painted without his knowledge. He never changed his style of dress; he wore old-fashioned clothes, which he replaced with an identical outfit according to a regular schedule...