yes it was meant to be a comedy. The Professor Heinrich von Hexenhammer character is a kind of loving homage to Mad Scientists in general. and to the most famous (or at least the most eccentric) physicists and mathematicians. Feynman meets Erdos meets Einstein meets Wolfram etc. except a little more fun and creative for entertainment value. :-P

I respect Wolfram's talents and accomplishments (esp Mathematica), but every time I come across artifacts of his personality quirks again, like in this Golomb post above, it does make me remember all the stereotypical anti-patterns of the Mad Scientist.