Shiva Ayyadurai

V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai is an Indian-American engineer, politician, entrepreneur, and promoter of conspiracy theories and unfounded medical claims. He is notable for his widely disputed claim to be the "inventor of email", based on the electronic mail software called "EMAIL" he wrote as a New Jersey high school student in the late 1970s. Initial reports that repeated Ayyadurai's assertion—from organizations such as The Washington Post and the Smithsonian Institution—were followed by public retractions. These corrections were triggered by objections from historians and ARPANET pioneers who pointed out that email was already actively used in the early 1970s.