Days after Elon Musk speculated about his possible resignation as Twitter chief, a number of "applicants" have tried catching the billionaire's attention.
However, one of them definitely stands out: Indian-American Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scholar Shiva Ayyadurai, a self-proclaimed "Inventor of Email."
59-year-old Ayyadurai has applied via a tweet, in which he tagged the Tesla founder, noting that he has four degrees from MIT, including a Ph.D. in biological engineering, and is behind the creation of seven high-tech software companies.
Indian-American MIT scholar Shiva Ayyadurai showing his interest to appointed as Twitter CEO
© Photo : Twitter
Did Ayyadurai Really Invent Email?
The MIT scholar of Indian origin is best known for claiming he invented the "EMAIL" at the age of 16. Indeed, 29 years ago he registered a copyright on an email application, which replicated all the functions of the interoffice mail system: Inbox, Outbox, Folders, Memo, Attachments, Address Book, etc., in 1978. These features are now familiar parts of every email system.
The controversy here is that computer engineer Ray Tomlinson is widely credited with inventing the email years earlier - in 1971.
What Else is Known About Ayyadurai?
In recent years, the 59-year-old techie came into the news when he ran a campaign for the US Senate in Massachusetts in 2018, coming in third with 3.4 percent of the vote. In total, he ran for the Senate twice – as a candidate from the Republican Party.
Ayyadurai also seems to follow some conspiracy theories: in 2015, he published n extensive paper questioning the safety of genetically modified food, such as soybeans, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, he opposed vaccines against the virus and promoted unfounded COVID-19 treatments.
Ayyadurai was romantically linked to actress Fran Drescher.
He was featured in Time Magazine in 2011 (where he claimed to have created the email).
Who Else Wants to Replace Musk as Twitter CEO?
Not only Ayyadurai, but YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, has also applied for the post. Rapper Snoop Dog has also shown interest in the job.
Several media outlets, in unconfirmed reports, have said that Sheryl Sandberg (former COO of Facebook), Mike Schroepfer (former Facebook CTO), artificial intelligence researcher Lex Fridman, Sriram Krishnan (partner at Andreessen Horowitz, former team lead at Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Snap), investors David Sacks, and Jason Calacanis are the forerunners.
After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk became the CEO of the platform. Earlier in December, in a poll conducted by Musk, it was revealed that 57.5 percent of people wanted him to quit as the CEO of the micro-blogging platform.
Following this, the billionaire said he would resign as Twitter's chief executive officer when he finds someone "foolish enough to take the job."