Roger Bacon

An English philosopher, scientist, and educational reformer (ca. 1220-ca. 1292) who strove to win a proper place for the sciences in university curricula.

According to Detective Comics No. 220, where he is described as the "greatest medieval scientist," Bacon had mastered, by the year 1255, a secret "hypnotic time-science" by which man could traverse time and had prevailed upon two of his most devoted pupils, Marcus and Guy Tiller, to travel through time to the twentieth century to discover the answers to the fol­lowing questions: "Will the future world be worth working for? Will it be a good world?"

And so, after being dispatched through the time barrier by Roger Bacon to Gotham City in the year 1955, Marcus Tiller and his brother Guy make the acquaintance of Batman and Robin, help them ap­prehend a notorious gang of criminals known as the Speedboat Bandits, and ultimately depart for their home in the thirteenth century, having concluded that "though it [i.e., the modern world] still has a few wicked men in it, it is a good world worthy of [Bacon's] hopes!"