In the Nobel Archives, with Crackpots

Harry Karlinsky likes a good mystery. In his first book, The Evolution of Inanimate Objects: The Life and Collected Works of Thomas Darwin (1857–1879), he wrote about the youngest son of Charles, who was unknown to history until Karlinsky, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, discovered both his existence and the reason for his being hidden: severe mental delusions that caused him to apply his father’s theory of evolution to cutlery. So convinced was Thomas that cutlery was subject to natural selection that he submitted papers about his theories to the science journal Nature. He ended his days in an asylum.

Now in his new book, The Stonehenge Letters, Karlinsky has uncovered another puzzle. In Sweden to research why Sigmund Freud never won the Nobel Prize despite multiple nominations, he soon learns that someone else has already...