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 claimby organizations such as The Washington Post and the Smithsonian Institutionwere followed by public retractions.[1][3] These corrections were triggered by objections from historians and ARPANET pioneers who pointed out that email was already actively used in the early 1970s.[4]