Shiva Ayyadurai

VA Shiva Ayyadurai
Born Bombay, India
Residence United States
Citizenship United States
Fields Systems biology, computer science, scientific visualization, traditional medicines
Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor C. Forbes Dewey, Jr.
Other academic advisors Robert S. Langer
Spouse Fran Drescher (m. 2014; separated 2016)
Website
vashiva.com

VA Shiva Ayyadurai is an Indian-born American scientist and entrepreneur. Ayyadurai is notable for his controversial claim to be the "inventor of email". His claim is based on the electronic mail software he wrote as a New Jersey high school student in the late 1970s, which he called EMAIL.[1][2]

Initial reports repeating Ayyadurai's claim—by organizations such as The Washington Post and the Smithsonian Institution—were followed by public retractions.[3][1] These corrections were triggered by objections from historians and ARPANET pioneers, who pointed out email already existed in the early 1970s. However, Ayyadurai continues to repeat his controversial claim. He is also known for two controversial reports: the first questioning the working conditions of India's largest scientific agency; the second questioning the safety of genetically modified soybeans.

Ayyadurai holds four degrees from MIT, including a Ph.D. in biological engineering, and is a Fulbright Scholar.[4]

Early life and education

Ayyadurai was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India.[5][6] At the age of seven, he left with his family to live in the United States.[7]

In the late 1970s, as a 14-year-old high school student, he attended a summer program at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University (NYU) to study computer programming; and then while a student at Livingston High School in New Jersey, Ayyadurai volunteered at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) where his mother worked.[8] There he created an email system to emulate the paper-based interoffice mail system then in use at the medical school.[8][9][10] In 1982, he registered the copyright for his software, called "EMAIL", as well as for the program's user documentation.[1]

His undergraduate degree from MIT was in electrical engineering and computer science; he took a master's degree in visual studies from the MIT Media Laboratory on scientific visualization; concurrently, he completed another master's degree in mechanical engineering, also from MIT; and in 2007, he obtained a Ph.D. in biological engineering from MIT in systems biology, with his thesis focusing on modeling the whole cell by integrating molecular pathway models.[11][12][13] In 2008, he was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant to study the integration of Siddha, India's oldest system of traditional medicine, with modern systems biology in India.[11]

Career

CSIR India

In 2009, Ayyadurai was hired by India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India's largest science agency, by its director general, Samir K. Brahmachari. CSIR was mandated to create a new company, CSIR Tech, that would establish businesses using the research conducted by country's many publicly owned laboratories. Ayyadurai reported that he had spent months trying to create a business plan for CSIR Tech, but received no response from Brahmachari. Ayyadurai then distributed a draft plan, which was not authorized by CSIR, to the agency's scientists that requested feedback and criticized management. His job offer was subsequently withdrawn five months after the position was offered."[7][14]

Brahmachari said that "the offer was withdrawn as [Ayyadurai] did not accept the terms and conditions and demanded unreasonable compensation." In its report, The New York Times said that "going public with such accusations is highly unusual. Mr. Ayyadurai circulated his paper not just to the agency’s scientists but to journalists, and wrote about his situation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh." In that letter, Ayyadurai said his report was intended to explore institutional barriers to CSIR's entrepreneurial mandate. He said that CSIR scientists reported that "they work in a medieval, feudal environment" that required a "major overhaul". The letter was co-authored by a colleague, Deepak Sardana. Pushpa Bhargava, founder director of the CSIR's Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, endorsed the letter, calling the sacking the worst of many cases he had seen of "vindictiveness in the CSIR" and accused CSIR administration of being "impervious to healthy and fair criticism." The incident was seen as an example of the difficulty some Indian expatriate professionals may encounter returning home after growing accustomed to the more direct management style of the United States. It was unclear at the time whether the controversy would discourage others.[7][14]

Electronic messaging

Millennium Cybernetics

In 1994 Ayyadurai founded a company called Millennium Cybernetics, which produces email management software originally called Xiva and now called EchoMail.[15] Ayyadurai did not invent the software's name; FidoNet's Echomail, a distributed forum popular during the BBS era, had already existed since 1985 or 1986.[16] The software analyzes incoming email message to organizations before either replying automatically or forwarding it to the most relevant department. By 2001, customers included Kmart, American Express, and Calvin Klein, as well as more than 30 U.S. senators to help handle constituent email. EchoMail competed with more established customer relationship management software that had an email component.[17][15] Also while an MIT student, Ayyadurai designed an encryption system used by the Bill Clinton White House.[18]

"EMAIL" invention controversy

Ayyadurai is notable for his controversial claim to be the "inventor of email". His claim is based on the software he wrote as a 14-year-old student at Livingston High School (New Jersey). In 1979—some sources say 1978—he wrote an implementation of an interoffice email system, which he called EMAIL.[1][2]

A November 2011 Time Techland interview by Doug Aamoth entitled "The Man Who Invented Email" argued that the EMAIL program Ayyadurai had written as a 14-year old represented the birth of email "as we currently know it". In that interview, Ayyadurai recalled that Les Michelson, the former particle scientist at Brookhaven National Labs who assigned Ayyadurai the project, had the idea of creating an electronic mail system that uses the header conventions of a hardcopy memorandum. Ayyadurai recalled Michelson as saying: "Your job is to convert that into an electronic format. Nobody's done that before."[19]

In February 2012, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History announced that Ayyadurai had donated "a trove of documents and code" related to EMAIL. The museum initially—inaccurately—cited the program as one of the first to include the now common "subject and body fields, inboxes, outboxes, cc, bcc, attachments, and others. He based these elements directly off of the interoffice mail memos the doctors had been using for years, in hopes of convincing people to actually use the newfangled technology."[20] Ayyadurai's claims drew editorial clarifications and corrections, as well as criticism from industry observers. In a followup to its acquisition announcement, the Smithsonian stated that it was not claiming that Ayyadurai had invented email, but rather that the materials were historically notable for other reasons related to trends in computer education and the role of computers in medicine.[1] The Smithsonian statement distinguished Ayyadurai's achievement by noting that historians in the field, "have largely focused on the use of large networked computers, especially those linked to the ARPANET in the early 1970s." The statement pointed out that Ayyadurai's approach instead "focused on communications between linked computer terminals in an ordinary office situation."[1] The Washington Post also followed up with a correction of errors in its earlier report on the Smithsonian acquisition stating that: it incorrectly referred to Ayyadurai as the inventor of electronic messaging; the 'bcc,' 'cc,' 'to' and 'from' fields existed previously; Ayyadurai had not been honored as the "inventor of email."[3]

Writing for Gizmodo, Sam Biddle argued that email was developed a decade before EMAIL, beginning with Ray Tomlinson's sending the first text letter between two ARPANET-connected computers in 1971.[21] Biddle quoted Tomlinson: "[We] had most of the headers needed to deliver the message (to:, cc:, etc.) as well as identifying the sender (from:) and when the message was sent (date:) and what the message was about." Biddle allowed for the possibility that Ayyadurai may have coined the term "EMAIL" and used the header terms without being aware of earlier work, but maintained that the historical record isn't definitive on either point. Biddle wrote that "laying claim to the name of a product that's the generic term for a universal technology gives you acres of weasel room. But creating a type of airplane named AIRPLANE doesn't make you Wilbur Wright."[22]

Thomas Haigh, a historian of information technology at the University of Wisconsin, wrote that "Ayyadurai is, to the best of my knowledge, the only person to have claimed for him or herself the title 'inventor of email'." Haigh argued that while EMAIL was impressive for a teenager's work, it contained no features that were not present on previous electronic mail systems and had no obvious influence on later systems. "The most striking thing about Ayyadurai's claim to have invented electronic mail is how late it comes. Somehow it took him thirty years to alert the world to [his] greatest achievement".[23] Haigh wrote that by 1980, "electronic mail had been in use at MIT for 15 years, Xerox had built a modern, mouse-driven graphical email system for office communication, Compuserve was selling email access to the public, and email had for many years been the most popular application on what was soon to become the Internet." [24]

David Crocker, a member of the ARPANET research community, writing in the Washington Post said "The reports incorrectly credited [EMAIL's] author, a 14-year old in the late 1970s, as the 'inventor' of email, long after it had become an established service on the ARPANET."[25] Another computer historian, Marc Weber, a curator at the Computer History Museum, said that by 1978, "nearly all the features we're familiar with today had appeared on one system or another over the previous dozen years", including emoticons, mailing lists, flame wars, and spam.[26]

After the controversy unfolded, MIT disassociated itself from Ayyadurai's EMAIL Lab and funding was dropped. MIT also revoked Ayyadurai's contract to lecture at the bioengineering department.[26]

Ayyadurai characterized the earlier work of Tomlinson, Tom Van Vleck and others as text messaging, rather than an electronic version of an interoffice mail system.[19][26] Responding to his critics on his personal website,[22][26] Ayyadurai described his program EMAIL as "the first of its kind -- a fully integrated, database-driven, electronic translation of the interoffice paper mail system derived from the ordinary office situation." Ayyadurai maintained that EMAIL was the first electronic mail system to integrate an easy-to-use user interface, a word processor, a relational database, and a modular inter-communications protocol "integrated together in one single and holistic platform to ensure high-reliability and user-friendliness network-wide."[27]

Ayyadurai presented a press release on his webpage asserting that his undergraduate professor Noam Chomsky of MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy also supported his claims.[2][9]

In March 2016, Ayyadurai alleged that the overlooking of his achievements was a result of racism and a conspiracy between mainstream media and the military-industrial complex, particularly Raytheon where Tomlinson worked on ARPANET. After Tomlinson's death, Ayyadurai told The Hindu that he believed that news outlets retracted their stories about him because "Raytheon advertises in publications like the Huffington Post and CNN and that if he were "a white guy and had a copyright for email, I would have my photo on every stamp in the world."[28] The day after Tomlinson's death, Ayyadurai tweeted: "I'm the low-caste, dark-skinned, Indian, who DID invent #email. Not Raytheon, who profits for war & death.Their mascot Tomlinson dies a liar"[29]

Gawker lawsuit

In May 2016, Ayyadurai filed suit against Gawker Media for $35 million, alleging that Gawker published "false and defamatory statements", causing "substantial damage to Dr. Ayyadurai's personal and professional reputation and career." The filing also named writer Sam Biddle, executive editor John Cook, and Gawker founder/CEO Nick Denton. Gawker responded that: "These claims to have invented email have been repeatedly debunked by the Smithsonian Institute [sic], Gizmodo, the Washington Post and others."[30][31]

In November 2016, the by-then-bankrupt Gawker Media settled the lawsuit with Ayyadurai for $750,000 as part of a broader settlement with wrestler Hulk Hogan and journalist Ashley Terrill, all of whom were represented by attorney Charles Harder.[32] In a statement, Ayyadurai said that "history will reflect that this settlement is a victory for truth",[33] but Biddle denounced the settlement and said he fully stood by his reporting.[34][35] Denton wrote that "we expected to prevail" in the Ayyadurai and Terrill lawsuits, "but all-out legal war with" billionaire Peter Thiel, who financially backed Harder, was untenable in terms of cost, time and human toll.[36]

Katie Hafner, the author of several book on Internet history—including one on the development of ARPANET email—said, "This situation is both bizarre and appalling in that here we are simply trying to get the record straight, and [Ayyadurai has] managed to make money off claims that appear to be misleading."[37]

Genetically modified food

In 2015, Ayyadurai published a paper that applied systems biology, which uses mathematical modeling, to predict the chemical composition of genetically modified (GM) soybeans and whether or not they were substantially equivalent to unmodified soybeans.[38] The paper claimed that GM soybeans have lower levels of the antioxidant glutathione and higher levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde, making the modified soybean substantially different, contrary to previous safety assessments.[39] The publication led to sensational headlines from opponents of GM foods. Shortly after publication, he embarked on a speaking tour of the US. At the National Press Club, he said that genetic modification had "fundamentally modified the metabolic system of the soy” disrupting the “beautiful way of detoxifying [formaldehyde]” present in non-GM soy.[40]

The European Food Safety Agency evaluated the paper and determined that "the author’s conclusions are not supported" due to the lack of information on the input into the model, the fact that the model was not validated and because no measurements of soybeans were made to establish whether GM soy actually contained elevated levels of formaldehyde.[41] Plant scientist Kevin Folta noted that there was "no evidence ever published ... that shows a difference in formaldehyde between GM and non-GM varieties".[42][43] Ayyadurai later cited the study as evidence of a lack of safety standards for GM foods and bet Monsanto a $10m building if they could prove that they were safe. Monsanto did not take up the challenge but stated that GM food did indeed undergo safety assessments that "are more rigorous and thorough than assessments of any other food crop in history".[44] In 2016, Ayyadurai promised to donate $10m to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign if she could disprove his research.[45]

Personal life

Beginning in 2014, Ayyadurai was romantically connected with the actress Fran Drescher. On September 7, 2014, Ayyadurai and Drescher participated in a ceremony at Drescher's beach house. Both tweeted that they had gotten married, and the event was widely reported as such.[46][47][48] Ayyadurai later said it was not "a formal wedding or marriage", but a celebration of their "friendship in a spiritual ceremony with close friends and her family."[49][50] The couple split up in September 2016.[51]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Statement from the National Museum of American History: Collection of Materials from V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai" (Press release). National Museum of American History. 23 February 2012. Retrieved 19 February 2013. Exchanging messages through computer systems, what most people call 'email,' predates the work of Ayyadurai.
  2. 1 2 3 Jackson, Joab. "Noam Chomsky disputes email history". Computerworld/IDGNS.
  3. 1 2 Kolawole, Emi (17 February 2012). "Smithsonian acquires documents from inventor of 'EMAIL' program". Washington Post. Retrieved 11 June 2012. incorrectly referred to V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai as the inventor of electronic messaging
  4. ↑ Trafton, Anne (September 17, 2007). "East Meets West: Armed with 4 MIT Degrees, Shiva Ayyadurai Embarks on New Adventure". MIT Tech Talk. MIT. Retrieved November 10, 2016. In the 26 years since he first arrived at MIT as a freshman, V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai has earned four MIT degrees and started two multimillion dollar companies. This fall, he will use his most recent degree, a Ph.D. in computational systems biology, and a Fulbright Scholarship to explore one of his lifelong interests: the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine.
  5. ↑ "Yes, A "Darkie" Invented Email. Get Over It. - V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor of Email". Retrieved 2016-08-13.
  6. ↑ Saigal, Ranjani (3 November 2007). "Lokvani Talks to Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai". lokvani.com. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 Timmons, Heather (27 November 2009). "Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again". New York Times. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
  8. 1 2 Laxminarayan, Swamy (1 January 2011). Future Visions on Biomedicine and Bioinformatics 1. Springer. ISBN 9783642150517.
  9. 1 2 Garlin, Caleb. Who Invented Email? Just Ask … Noam Chomsky Wired, 06.16.12.
  10. ↑ General Knowledge Today, 'Email' invented by Indian-American V A Shiva Ayyadurai turns 32. August 30, 2014.
  11. 1 2 Trafton, Anne (17 September 2007). "East meets West". MIT News. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 9 June 2012.
  12. ↑ Ayyadurai, Shiva (2007). "DSpace@MIT: Scalable computational architecture for integrating biological pathway models". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 9 June 2012.
  13. ↑ Ayyadurai, VA Shiva; Dewey, C. Forbes (March 2011). "CytoSolve: A Scalable Computational Method for Dynamic Integration of Multiple Molecular Pathway Models". Cell Mol Bioeng. Springer. 4 (1): 28–45. doi:10.1007/s12195-010-0143-x. PMC 3032229Freely accessible. PMID 21423324.
  14. 1 2 "Report row ousts top Indian scientist". Nature. 9 November 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
  15. 1 2 Shapley, Deborah (2000-01-01). "Dr. Email Will See You Now". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2016-08-11.
  16. ↑ Frank Robbins (26 November 2001). "FidoNet History Timeline". FidoNet Showcase Project. Archived from the original on 2003-12-26. Retrieved 2016-11-08. The FidoNet History Timeline - An authoritative history of the major technical and personal milestones in the development of Fido and Fidonet from their grassroots to their present day incarnation.
  17. ↑ William Bulkeley (2011-11-15). "Echomail provides an answer for the avalanche of e-mail"Paid subscription required. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  18. ↑ Conover, Kirsten A. (December 3, 1996). "Cheering on the Ingenuity of Today's and Tomorrow's Innovators". Christian Science Monitor. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved 2016-11-08.
  19. 1 2 Aamoth, Doug (15 November 2011). "The Man Who Invented Email". Time Magazine: Techland. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
  20. ↑ Stromberg, Joseph (22 February 2012). "A Piece of Email History Comes to the American History Museum". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
  21. ↑ i.e. the first network email using the "@" syntax; email between users on the same mainframe was already common.
  22. 1 2 Biddle, Sam (5 March 2012). "Corruption, Lies, and Death Threats: The Crazy Story of the Man Who Pretended to Invent Email". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 2012-03-06. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  23. ↑ Haigh, Thomas (17 April 2012). "Did V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai Invent Email?". SIGCIS: Special Interest Group Computers, Information and Society. Retrieved 9 June 2012.
  24. ↑ Haigh, Thomas (September 2012). "Seven Lessons from Bad History" (PDF). Communications of the ACM. 55 (9): 26. doi:10.1145/2330667.2330676. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
  25. ↑ Crocker, David (20 March 2012). "A history of e-mail: Collaboration, innovation and the birth of a system". Washington Post. Retrieved 10 June 2012.
  26. 1 2 3 4 Nanos, Janelle (June 2012). "Return to Sender". Boston Magazine. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
  27. ↑ Ayyadurai, VA Shiva. "EMAIL (UMDNJ, 1978)". The Inventor of Email: innovation any time, any place, by anybody. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
  28. ↑ "Not everybody loves Raymond". The Hindu. 2016-03-07.
  29. ↑ Ayyadurai, VA Shiva. "Tweet from @va_shiva, March 6, 2016".
  30. ↑ Harris, David L. (May 10, 2016). "Cambridge man who claims he invented email sues Gawker for $35M - Boston Business Journal". Boston Business Journal. Retrieved 2016-05-16.
  31. ↑ Shiva Ayyadurai v. Gawker Media, et. al., Complaint (D. Mass, filed May 10, 2016)
  32. ↑ Mario Aguilar. "Internet Pioneers Slam $750,000 Settlement for the 'Man Who Invented Email'".
  33. ↑ Ember, Sydney (2016-11-02). "Gawker and Hulk Hogan Reach $31 Million Settlement". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
  34. ↑ J.K. Trotter (2016-11-02). "Gawker Media Will Settle With Hulk Hogan and Other Litigants for $32 Million". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2016-11-03.
  35. ↑ Mac, Ryan (November 2, 1916). "Gawker Reaches Settlement With Hulk Hogan For $31 Million". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-11-03.
  36. ↑ Denton, Nick (2016-11-02). "A hard peace". nickdenton.com: Being myself. Retrieved 2016-11-07.
  37. ↑ Aguilar, Mario. "Internet Pioneers Slam $750,000 Settlement for the 'Man Who Invented Email'". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2016-11-10.
  38. ↑ Oliver Tickell (2015-07-16). "GMO and glyphosate wars rage". The Ecologist. Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  39. ↑ Vishwanath Kulkarni (2015-09-21). "'Safety assessments of GMOs are non-existent'". The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  40. ↑ Henry Miller and (2015-09-09). "A New, Bizarre Activist Scam: Formaldehyde In GMO Soybeans". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  41. ↑ European Food Safety Authority (2015-11-03). "EFSA scientific advice to EC on new scientific information in relation to the risk assessment of genetically modified organisms". Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  42. ↑ Steven Novella (2015-07-31). "GMOs and Making Up Your Own Science". NeuroLogica Blog. Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  43. ↑ Kevin Folta (2015-07-21). "Kevin Folta debunks pay for play paper finding formaldehyde in GMOs". Genetic Literacy Project. Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  44. ↑ Tanya Lewis (2015-11-12). "Scientist bets millions that GMOs unsafe". Business Insider. Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  45. ↑ "NJ Scientist Gives Hillary Clinton a $10 Million GMO Challenge". Patch. 2016-02-01. Retrieved 2016-11-09.
  46. ↑ Saad, Nardine (September 8, 2014). "Fran Drescher of 'The Nanny' marries Shiva Ayyadurai". Los Angeles Times.
  47. ↑ Gabrielle, Olya (September 9, 2014). "Fran Drescher Marries Shiva Ayyadurai". People.
  48. ↑ Vulpo, Mike (September 7, 2014). "Fran Drescher Marries Boyfriend Shiva Ayyadurai, aka the Inventor of Email?!". E!. Retrieved 2015-07-08.
  49. ↑ Kumar, Vipin (November 25, 2014). "Interview with Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, The Inventor of Email and Systems Scientist". Tamil Nadu.
  50. ↑ "About Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai - V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor of Email". VA Shiva. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai. Retrieved July 9, 2015.
  51. ↑ "Actress Fran Drescher splits from husband". Komonews.com. World Entertainment News Network. September 4, 2016.
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