The Absent-Minded Professor Olson, Reid, and Kirk reprising their roles. Hewitt also returns (now as District Attorney), as well as the two Wynns (Keenan reprising his Alonzo Hawk role). "The Absent-Minded Professor" has been remade twice, once as a 1988 television version with Harry Anderson and Mary Page Keller as the renamed characters Prof. Henry Crawford and Ellen Whitley; and once more as a 1997 theatrical film titled, "Flubber," with Robin Williams as the renamed Prof. "Philip" Brainard, with Marcia Gay Harden as his love interest, Dr. Sara Jean Reynolds (Nancy Olson appears in a cameo). Neither remake was as successful or is
William Brainard William Brainard William C. "Bill" Brainard (born 1935) is an American economist. He is the Arthur Okun Professor Emeritus of Economics at Yale University, and he served as the provost of the university from 1981 to 1986. Brainard is the namesake of the William C. Brainard chair, which current Yale provost Ben Polak holds. Brainard earned both his economics M.A. (1959) and Ph.D. (1963) at Yale. He has been teaching at Yale since 1962. Along with his frequent collaborator James Tobin, Brainard developed the theory of Tobin's q. The concept first appeared in Brainard and Tobin's 1968 article "Pitfalls in