Since his arrival by bicycle in Hanover in 1988, the man now known as Archimedes Plutonium has become a fixture of the Dartmouth campus.
Plutonium, a pot washer at the Hanover Inn, is best known locally for his extravagant dress and his theories about physics and mathematics.
He also earned attention in 1994, when he became the subject of a free speech controversy.
His "Plutonium Atom Totality Theorem," which has been printed in The Dartmouth and on the Internet, holds that the universe is actually one gigantic plutonium atom.
Born Ludwig Poehlmann in 1950, Plutonium spent his earlier days as a mathematics teacher in Australia and a Naval officer.
In 1978 he applied for a court order to change his name to Ludwig Ludwig. Since the "court would not allow the same last name as first name," Plutonium said, he changed his name to Ludwig von Ludvig.
In the late 1980s, he was living in a cabin in Grand Tetons National Park.
In his words, because he "played the stock market, [he] didn't have to work."
At this point he decided he wanted to live on a university campus in order to "write a stock market book," Plutonium said.
In October of 1988 he spent a month and one week bicycling from Wyoming to Dartmouth, which he chose because of its rural, mountainous environment.
On November 7, 1990, Plutonium says, he finally came to the discovery that "the universe is one big atom."
His theory incorporates theories of superdeterminism, even elements of pantheism. Reincarnation plays a role in his theory as well, because "when you die, you dissolve into photons and neutrinos" which are "recombined in the nucleus."
After formulating his theory, he changed his name to Ludwig Plutonium.
Throughout the early 1990s he occasionally bought ads in The Dartmouth to present his theories to the world, before he "found the Internet to use to spread [his] ideas," he told The Dartmouth in an electronic-mail message.
After studying various biographies of the Greek philosopher Archimedes, specifically those by the Danish historian Ludvig Heiberg, Plutonium became convinced that he was, in fact, the reincarnation of the ancient Archimedes. He then changed his name to Archimedes Plutonium.
At present, Plutonium works three days a week as a pot washer in the Hanover Inn, so that he can get the privileges of free Internet access.
He spends much of his free time in Kiewit Computation Center.
Whenever a "renowned physicist" visits, Plutonium "makes it a point" to sit in on their discussions, and present his theory to them during post-lecture question and answer sessions. Their reactions to his controversial theorem are mixed.
When Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman visited in 1994, his response to Plutonium's theorem caused Plutonium to write an editorial to The Dartmouth calling the physicist arrogant and attacking modern science as "cluttered-up gobbledy-gook."
In 1994, Plutonium had his computing privileges revoked for 30 days after one of his Internet sites made a reference to The New York Times as "The Jew York Times." This sparked student protest of the College's actions, saying it violated Plutonium's free speech rights.
Plutonium says his reference was "not really antiracial." He says it was sparked because of his "frustration" that The Times' weekly science section often "throws [Albert] Einstein into stories not relating to Einstein."
