AustLit

A series of short stories involving the irascible scientist Major Mendax, whom Erle Cox describes thusly:

Although the name of Major Mendax may not be well known in Australia outside a chosen few, scientists all over the world regard him with unbounded admiration, probably because they have only met him in writing, for he corresponds with half the learned societies in the world, and liberally insults the other half on paper. Some kind of mental kink has made hiin an all-embracing scientific genius, and has given him the right to a score or so of letters after his name, which he snorts at and never uses, When any problem has tangled the brains of the thinkers beyond all hope of unravelment Mendax is usually called on as the last court of appeal.

Source: The Great Mendax Transmitter.

Cox wrote Major Mendax stories until at least 1944, under both his own name and the pseudonym 'The Chiel'.