The Absent-Minded Professor is a 1961 American science fiction comedy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney Productions.

The title character was based in part on Hubert Alyea, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Princeton University, who was known as "Dr. Boom" for his explosive demonstrations.

The film stars Fred MacMurray as Professor Ned Brainard, alongside Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Elliott Reid, and Edward Andrews.

Subplots include Shelby Ashton, another professor, wooing the disappointed Betsy, Biff Hawk, Medfield's best basketball player, is ineligible to play in the game against archrival Rutland due to failing Professor Brainard's class, Biff's father, businessman Alonzo P. Hawk's schemes to gain wealth by means of Flubber, the school's financial difficulties and debt to Alonzo, and Ned's attempts to interest the government and military in uses for Flubber.

After Medfield trails Rutland at the half by a large margin, Ned puts Flubber on the soles of the Medfield team's shoes, giving them tremendous jumping ability which causes them to make a furious comeback, winning by a buzzer beater; he also uses the substance on his own shoe soles to augment his skills during a school dance.

Alonzo becomes aware of Ned's flying car and, at Biff's suggestion, switches it for a fake Model T with squirrels and pigeons under the hood.

Ned gives Hawk a pair of Flubber shoes to cause Alonzo to bounce endlessly and become blackmailed into revealing where he hid the real car.

The two fly away from a cheering crowd in Ned's Model T. The aforementioned Prof. Hubert Alyea (1903–1996), professor of chemistry at Princeton University, earned the nickname "Dr. Boom" from Russian observers of his demonstrations at the International Science Pavilion of the Brussels World's Fair in the 1950s, which had Walt Disney in attendance.

[3] The special effects were created by Robert A. Mattey and Eustace Lycett, who were nominated for an Academy Award, and included the sodium screen matte process, as well as miniatures and wire-supported mockups.

At this stage of his life, Ed Wynn's memory was fading and he couldn't remember his lines, but he retained his innate wit and invention, so he improvised much of his dialogue, while director Stephenson instructed his crew to "just let him go on and on.

[4] Medfield College of Technology was used again as the setting for the sequel, Son of Flubber, as well as a later trilogy of films based around the character Dexter Riley — The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972), and The Strongest Man in the World (1975), each starring Kurt Russell and Cesar Romero.

[10] Edith Oliver of The New Yorker called it "a funny and unpretentious piece of slapstick that cannot fail to please children and all the rest of us who are fans of the Keystone Cops".

[12] Despite the number of positive reviews, some critics disparaged the film on its release, causing considerable pain to Walt Disney, who couldn't understand why anyone would dislike such a light-hearted picture, leading composer Richard Sherman to comment: "Don't let anybody ever tell you Walt was immune to a bad review.

Ed Barnes, the garbage collector of Prairie Center, comes into Crawford's office during a scrap drive to tell him that Rhoades had taken out the engine of his Model T with the apparent intention to donate it.

[15][16] MacMurray, Olson, Reid, and Kirk reprised their roles in Son of Flubber, a sequel released less than two years later in 1963.

As the name is slightly changed, it is unclear whether the two series are meant to share a precise universe, but the Alonzo Hawk character is still a comic villain with the same modus operandi.

The film takes place again at Medfield College, where Professor Brainard is now deceased and his work has been lost to the ages.

In 1989, The Absent-Minded Professor: Trading Places, was made where Henry has now married Ellen, and was offered a job by his college friend (played by Ed Begley Jr.), at a defense firm.

It is also shown that Henry did further experiments on flubber: should it be baked in a kiln for 24 hours, it would solidify and become impervious to liquids, and christens this upgrade "flass" (flying glass).

The Absent-Minded Professor has been remade as a 1997 theatrical film titled Flubber, with Robin Williams as the renamed Prof. Philip Brainard, with Marcia Gay Harden as his love interest, Dr. Sara Jean Reynolds (Nancy Olson appears in a cameo).

Though neither the Anderson film nor the 1997 remake were as highly regarded as the original, the Robin Williams version was still a considerable success.