Shiva Ayyadurai

V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai (born Vellayappa Ayyadurai Shiva on December 2, 1963) is an Indian-American engineer, entrepreneur, and anti-vaccine activist. He has become known for promoting conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and unfounded medical claims. Ayyadurai holds four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including a PhD in biological engineering, and is a Fulbright grant recipient.

In a 2011 article published by ''Time'', Ayyadurai claimed to have invented email, as a teenager; in August 1982, he registered the copyright on an email application he had written, asserting in his copyright filing, "I, personnally, feel EMAIL is as sophisticated as any electronic mail system on the market today." Historians strongly dispute this account because email was already in use in the early 1970s. Ayyadurai sued Gawker Media and Techdirt for defamation for disputing his account of inventing email; both lawsuits were settled out of court. Ayyadurai and Techdirt agreed to Techdirt's articles remaining online with a link to Ayyadurai's rebuttal on his own website.

Ayyadurai also attracted attention for two reports: the first questioning the working conditions of India's largest scientific agency; the second questioning the safety of genetically modified food, such as soybeans. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ayyadurai became known for a social media COVID-19 disinformation campaign, spreading conspiracy theories about the cause of COVID-19, promoting unfounded COVID-19 treatments, and campaigning to fire Anthony Fauci for allegedly being a deep state actor.

Ayyadurai garnered 3.39% of the vote as an independent candidate in the 2018 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, and ran for the Republican Party nomination in the 2020 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts but lost to Kevin O'Connor in the primary. After the election, he promoted false claims of election fraud.

In 2024, Ayyadurai launched a campaign for president of the United States. However, because he is not a natural-born American citizen, he is ineligible to serve as president. Provided by Wikipedia