Shiva Ayyadurai
| V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai | |
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| 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) |
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Website vashiva |
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V. A. 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.
Initial reports repeating Ayyadurai's claim—by 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 email already existed in the early 1970s.
Ayyadurai 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 grant recipient.
Ayyadurai was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India. At the age of seven, he left with his family to live in the United States.
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. There he created an email system to emulate the paper-based interoffice mail system then in use at the medical school. In 1982, he registered the copyright for his software, called "EMAIL", as well as for the program's user documentation.
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. In 2008, he was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant to study the integration of Siddha, a system of traditional medicine developed in South India, with modern systems biology.
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