Archimedes Plutonium
Archimedes Plutonium (born
July 5,
1950) is primarily noted for his varied and
eccentric contributions to
Usenet. Plutonium repeatedly claimed to be the greatest living
scientist, and referred to himself at least once as "The King of
Science"[
1], although he is almost universally regarded as a
crank. One of Plutonium's earliest and most memorable posts in December, 1993 [
2] replies to
Andrew Wiles' report on the status of his proof of
Fermat's last theorem.
Since strong user
authentication is rarely used on Usenet, some Usenet posters had suggested that Plutonium might have been a hoax or a practical joke. However, the claim that Plutonium is a real person is corroborated by a photograph and article about him in the
Dartmouth College campus newspaper on
November 11,
1991 [
3]. Nevertheless, there is no assurance that all posts attributed to Plutonium on Usenet were actually his.
According to an autobiography he posted to Usenet in the 1990s, Plutonium was born with the name
Ludwig Poehlmann in
Arzberg,
Germany. His family came to the
United States of America in his youth, settling near
Cincinnati,
Ohio. Ludwig was adopted in his teens by a local real-estate investor named Willis Hansen, and his name was changed to
Ludwig Hansen. His autobiography stated that he received an undergraduate degree in
mathematics from the
University of Cincinnati and did some graduate work at a university in
Utah, but headed off to
Melbourne,
Australia, to serve as a mathematics tutor in the early 1970s. He returned to the United States later in the 1970s, and, according to his autobiography, inherited his adoptive father's real-estate holdings, which he claimed to have parlayed into a large fortune through
stock market investments in the 1980s. His autobiography also stated that he spent some time in the
United States Navy during the 1980s. At some point after his adoptive father's death, he changed his name to
Ludwig van Ludvig, under which he may have first posted to
Usenet at the start of the 1990s.
Plutonium was long observed on the campus of Dartmouth College, where he rode around on a
bicycle and wore an orange hunting
hat and a homemade
cape decorated with
atomic symbols in
Magic Marker. Students frequently saw him using the computer cluster in the basement of the Kiewit Computation Centre, and he regularly published full-page advertisements of his claims in the student newspaper,
The Dartmouth[
4]. Plutonium worked as a "potwasher" (he preferred this term over "dishwasher" because it had the same starting letter and number of letters as
plutonium) at the
Hanover Inn, which the college owns. When asked on Usenet how this observed job jibed with his claims of wealth, Plutonium explained that he only took the job in order to get Internet access. In 1999 Plutonium posted various complaints about the management of Dartmouth, calling for a strike by workers there and suggesting various conspiracy theories concerning college administrators [
5]. Plutonium lost his job at Dartmouth about August of 1999. After making what he termed "science odyssey tours" of the United States and Europe, Plutonium then moved to rural
Meckling, South Dakota, where he resumed his Usenet posting, saying he now lives on a "homestead" apparently consisting of a house, two
Airstream trailers, and a grove of various sorts of trees.
In late 1990, Plutonium claimed to have had the realization of his
Plutonium Atom Totality Theory, which he claimed to be one of the most important breakthroughs in scientific history. According to this theory, the
Universe is a giant
plutonium atom, and the part of the universe we are able to observe from Earth, including Earth itself, is somewhere in its outer electron shells. He then changed his name to
Ludwig Plutonium. In autumn of 1994 he claims to have realized that he was the
reincarnation of the great early Greek scientist
Archimedes, and so once again changed his name to
Archimedes Plutonium.
In his autobiography (entitled at one point
Ludwig Plutonium: the Chosen One, and claimed to be 2200 pages), Plutonium claims he started posting to Usenet on August 12 of 1993 under the name of Ludwig Plutonium. He posts and cross-posts to a wide variety of groups on Usenet, especially in the
sci. (science) hierarchy.
He is also known for posting about his favorite types of
fruit and
candy to unrelated science newsgroups [
6]. On other occasions he is believed to have rather ineptly attempted to forge posts under the names of those who contradicted his claims.
Plutonium sometimes claimed on Usenet to be independently wealthy from his investments, and on occasion he would post about his stock investment strategies.
Archimedes Plutonium is often nicknamed "Arky", "Archy", "Archie", "Archy Pu", or "Archie-Poo" by others on the internet. His exploits are followed religiously and commented on with a mixture of mockery and amazement on the newsgroup
alt.religion.kibology.
*
"Calm down, man, this is only the Internet, this isn't Vietnam, go play some par golf or tennis set" [
7]
*
"When an electron is collapsed, i.e., under observation then the electron transforms into a ball, a particle, and not the dots which go to making-up of the particle." Quote explaining
collapse of the wavefunction from Plutonium's treatise [
8].
*
Archimedes Plutonium website It is currently disabled.
Here is the
archive.org archive of it.
*
This site appears to be Plutonium's current website
