James Moriarty

Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character created by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1893 as the enemy of Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty is a criminal genius whom Holmes describes as "the Napoleon of crime." Doyle took the phrase of a Scotland Yard inspector referring to Adam Worth, one of the real inspirations for Moriarty's character. The character was introduced primarily as a plot device to allow Conan Doyle to kill Sherlock Holmes and put an end to the detective's adventures, and he only appears in two Holmes stories. However, in many adaptations he has been given a much larger role to the point of making him Holmes's arch-enemy.

Biography

The Professor's terrifying power may be due to the fact that he is the mirror image of Holmes: he is the man the detective could have become if he had chosen the sinister path. Moriarty is the chilling version of Holmes himself. Both have high foreheads and penetrating eyes, although in the case of Moriarty everything is more exaggerated. Tall and lean, with deep-set eyes and a prominent chin, his head swings "slowly from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion." Moriarty comes from a privileged family and received an excellent education. Naturally gifted in mathematics, at the age of 21 he wrote a treatise on algebra that garnered praise throughout Europe. He was also praised for his brilliant volume on asteroid dynamics, which, as Holmes points out, is so advanced that "there was no one in the scientific press capable of criticizing it." Supported by these works, Moriarty became a professor of mathematics at an English university. It was then that rumors began to circulate about him and this is why he travels to London, where he becomes a military trainer. It is later revealed that Sebastian Moran was Moriarty's main accomplice. Moriarty became the mastermind of the underworld, using his prodigious intellect to control a vast criminal network, the largest ever seen, remaining invisible at its core, completely unsuspected, as Professor Moriarty, the famous mathematician. "Like a spider," she pulled his strings, she was "the organizing mind of half the depraved facts known and almost all that go unnoticed in London." # 3. 4;. The genius of Moriarty's plans means that no one is able to find out the source of his criminal proceeds, whether it be robbery, extortion or counterfeiting. Holmes compares him to Jonathan Wild, who, in the 18th century century, was a criminal mastermind.

Holmes describes Moriarty like this:

He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical skill. At the age of 21 he wrote a treaty on the theorem of the binomial that has been successful in Europe. By virtue of this, he won the Chair in mathematics at one of our smaller universities and had all aspects of a brighter career in front of him. But man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical class. A criminal strain ran into his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and made him infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumors gathered around him in the university city, and finally he was forced to give up his chair and come to London.

Sebastian Morán

Sebastian Moran is Professor Moriarty's right-hand man in his criminal network. He is introduced in the Empty House adventure, where he was a personal friend of Moriarty and feared throughout virtually all of Africa, a hunter of all known creatures and an exceptional shot. He also had access to all sorts of advanced weapons, such as pressurized air rifles and weapons concealed in everyday gadgets, and he was the one who supplied them to the Professor. He is described by Watson as an elderly man with a bald pate and a large, tall, thin white mustache.

He is the one who would apparently run the network of evil after Moriarty's death, but, aware of Holmes, he attempts to assassinate him in Baker Street. However he fails, he is captured by him and Watson and handed over to Scotland Yard, relinquishing the position as England's most wanted criminal.

Jobs

The works that propelled Professor James Moriarty to fame are inspired by those of famous mathematicians such as Carl Friedrich Gauss, who described the dynamics of an asteroid, and Srinivasa Ramanujan for his work on binomials.

Adam Worth

German-born American criminal Adam Worth (1848-1902) was nicknamed "the Napoleon of Crime" by Scotland Yard agent Robert Anderson for his ability to run a vast criminal network from his London home. Like Moriarty, Worth was an expert manipulator who always kept his distance from his crimes; Unlike his, however, he rejected the use of violence and treated his men as family. In fact, the only reason he served time was because he was caught when he was coming to the aid of one of them. Worth began his criminal life in the US as a bank robber and subsequently moved to London to establish himself as an art collector and head of a crime syndicate involved in counterfeiting and robbery. For a few years he outsmarted police around the world by carrying out crimes without violence and without leaving a single incriminating clue.