Max Kleiber (1893–1976).

Credit: University of California, Davis.

Canada, the most remote and least populated place they could afford to get to. When he arrived, however, he found that he had over-estimated his disdain for society. “This experiment made me aware of the degree to which Homo sapiens is a social animal,” he wrote, and tutoring his neighbor’s daughter in mathematics turned out to be more rewarding than eking out a living from the land. However, Kleiber was reluctant to give up the agrarian ideal and had another go at farming