In Rudolf Balandin's book, the reader will find fascinating stories about the oddities in the lives of famous intellectuals from the Middle Ages to the present. The heroes of the book are people to whom we owe outstanding discoveries and technical inventions. Their brilliant thoughts became the engine of human civilization for centuries. But geniuses, like ordinary people, have not only advantages, but also disadvantages. The author offers an answer to the question: did deviation from the norm, even towards pathology, contribute to the emergence of non-trivial thoughts and solutions to scientific and technical problems?