The record

Disappeared

Inventors and scientists whose deaths or disappearances are called suspicious, with what the official record says beside what people suspect. Some are genuinely unsolved. Some were solved, and the story online never caught up. Some turned up alive, or never vanished at all. Every fact links to its source.

Several worked on energy. See where their work sits among every other energy source, claim and builder on the Energy Map.

Cases
14
documented so far
Unsolved
6
no finding either way
Cause found
5
coroner, court or inquiry
Work seized or destroyed
2
by an authority, on record
Unsolved Official cause found Found alive Work seized or destroyed

  1. Louis Le Prince

    disappeared 1890Unsolved

    Motion pictures. Shot some of the earliest surviving moving pictures, in Leeds in 1888.

    What happened
    After visiting his brother in Dijon, he boarded a train for Paris on 16 September 1890, shortly before he was due to show his films in public. He never arrived. No body or luggage was found, despite searches by French police, Scotland Yard and his family.
    Official finding
    None. He was legally declared dead in 1897.
    What people suspect
    His widow came to believe Thomas Edison was behind it after seeing Edison's Kinetograph; other theories point to a family dispute over a will. Historians note there is no hard evidence tying Edison to the disappearance.

  2. Rudolf Diesel

    disappeared 1913Unsolved

    Engines. Invented the compression-ignition engine that carries his name.

    What happened
    On a night crossing from Antwerp to England aboard the steamer Dresden in September 1913, he went to his cabin around 10 pm and was not seen alive again. His folded overcoat was reportedly found by the rail. A body later found in the sea was identified from personal effects, but the body itself was not recovered.
    Official finding
    None beyond death at sea. No cause was established.
    What people suspect
    Theories include suicide (accounts cite financial and health trouble), an accident, and foul play by commercial or military rivals. None has been proven.
    Where sources disagree
    Accounts differ on where and when the body was found (about ten days to two weeks later; off the Dutch coast in most accounts, near Norway in one).

  3. Ettore Majorana

    disappeared 1938Found alive

    Theoretical physics. Predicted the particles now called Majorana fermions.

    What happened
    He vanished in March 1938 after buying a ferry ticket between Palermo and Naples. For decades it was one of physics' great mysteries.
    Official finding
    In February 2015 Rome prosecutors closed the case, concluding he was alive in Valencia, Venezuela, between 1955 and 1959 under the surname Bini, based on a 1955 photograph and other evidence. They found no evidence of a crime.
    What people suspect
    Prosecutors said the most likely explanation is that he chose to disappear. Earlier theories ranged from suicide to kidnapping.
    Where sources disagree
    Reports differ on the names of the witness and the man in the photograph.

  4. Leon Theremin

    disappeared 1938Found alive

    Electronic music and radio engineering. Invented the theremin, an electronic instrument played without being touched.

    What happened
    On 15 September 1938 he abruptly left New York, where he had lived and worked for about a decade, and sailed for the Soviet Union on the Stary Bolshevik, whose manifest listed him as the captain's assistant. His wife, the dancer Lavinia Williams, never saw him again. In the USSR he was convicted and sent to the Kolyma gold mines, then moved to a sharashka, a secret prison laboratory, where he built listening devices including The Thing, a bug hidden in a carved Great Seal given to the US ambassador in Moscow in 1945 and not discovered until 1952. In the West he was presumed dead for nearly thirty years.
    Official finding
    He survived. He was released in 1947 and worked for Soviet state security until 1966. On 26 April 1967 the New York Times published an interview with him in Moscow, which showed he was alive and working at the Moscow Conservatory. He visited the United States in 1991 at Stanford University's invitation and died in Moscow on 3 November 1993, aged 97.
    What people suspect
    Why he left in 1938 is still uncertain. Lavinia Williams maintained he was kidnapped. Other accounts point to tax and money trouble in the United States. Theremin himself later said he went home because of the coming war.
    Where sources disagree
    Sources differ on the charge and sentence: alleged treason with eight years in one account, anti-Soviet propaganda with no term given in another.

  5. Nikola Tesla

    died 1943Official cause found

    Electrical engineering. Alternating-current systems, the induction motor, wireless power experiments.

    What happened
    He died in his New York hotel room in January 1943, aged 86.
    Official finding
    Death from natural causes. His papers were examined within weeks by a team including MIT's John G. Trump, who reported finding nothing of significant value to the country.
    What people suspect
    The quick seizure of his papers, and items his family said were missing, fed long-running claims that a breakthrough was taken. The examining report, released by the FBI, says otherwise; what finally became of every item is not recorded in that file.
    Work seized or destroyed
    The U.S. Office of Alien Property took custody of his papers after his death.

  6. Milbank Johnson

    died 1944Unsolved

    Medicine. Pasadena-area physician who funded and oversaw tests of Royal Rife's "beam ray" machine in the 1930s.

    What happened
    In 1934 he funded a clinic near San Diego where he, the bacteriologist Arthur Kendall and Royal Rife treated 16 terminally ill cancer patients with Rife's radio-frequency device, and he set up a committee at the University of Southern California to supervise the work. He stayed involved for about a decade and died in 1944. Accounts sympathetic to Rife say 14 of the 16 patients recovered; no independent verification has been published, Rife never published his methods, and Cancer Research UK says there is no reliable evidence the Rife machine works as a cancer cure.
    Official finding
    None on record. No coroner's finding, inquest, autopsy or exhumation record could be found in any source a reader can open, and no published official cause of death, so the record neither confirms nor rules out poisoning.
    What people suspect
    The poisoning story traces to Barry Lynes's 1987 book The Cancer Cure That Worked, which says "the suspicion exists that he was silenced" and that two unnamed federal inspectors who later reviewed his hospital record thought poisoning likely. Later retellings add an exhumation and a press conference he never reached; those versions name no sources. The American Cancer Society described Lynes's book as written "in a style typical of conspiratorial theorists."
    Where sources disagree
    Retellings disagree on the cause (heart attack, food poisoning in hospital, poison found on exhumation) and some move the death to 1934. Lynes's own account describes a review of hospital records, not an exhumation.

  7. Hans Kammler

    disappeared 1945Unsolved

    Civil engineering, SS construction and rocket programmes (forced labour). SS engineer who directed construction of concentration camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau and the underground V-2 works at Mittelbau-Dora, built and run with prisoner slave labour.

    What happened
    A Nazi civil engineer and senior SS officer, he ran the SS construction office and ordered construction of the largest camp at Auschwitz in 1941. After the 1943 bombing of Peenemünde he oversaw the move of V-2 production into the Mittelwerk tunnels, dug and worked by concentration-camp prisoners; the US Holocaust Memorial Museum calls him the decisive personality throughout the history of Mittelbau, where thousands of prisoners died. In 1945 he was named head of all missile projects. He was never tried. After May 1945 he vanished, and no body was ever found.
    Official finding
    On 7 September 1948 a Berlin-Charlottenburg court declared him dead as of 9 May 1945. That is a legal declaration of death, not a finding of cause. No body, grave or autopsy has ever been produced.
    What people suspect
    Researchers Frank Doebert and Rainer Karlsch, writing for the Wilson Center in 2019, argue that US documents show American services held him for interrogation in 1945, and that his later fate is unknown because the files remain classified. The author Nick Cook suggested he traded a secret Nazi device, "Die Glocke", for his freedom; historians and skeptics treat that device as a myth. None of these claims has been proven.
    Where sources disagree
    Accounts of his end conflict: aides said he took cyanide around 7 to 10 May 1945; another account, traced to Walter Dornberger, says an aide shot him in Prague on 9 May. Sources also differ on where it happened.

  8. Frank Olson

    died 1953Unsolved

    Biological warfare research. U.S. Army civilian biochemist at Camp Detrick, Maryland, working on Cold War biological weapons research.

    What happened
    On 19 November 1953, CIA employees secretly put LSD in his drink at a retreat. Nine days later, around 2 a.m. on 28 November, he fell to his death from a window of a Manhattan hotel, where he had been sharing a room with a CIA officer.
    Official finding
    The death was first ruled a suicide. The covert dosing became public in the Rockefeller Commission's 1975 report. In 1976 Congress paid his widow and children $750,000 in all on condition they waive further claims, and President Ford's signing statement said the LSD "would appear to have been a proximate cause of his death." After a 1994 exhumation the Manhattan District Attorney's office opened a homicide investigation; it brought no charges, and The Baltimore Sun reports the office changed the cause of death from suicide to unknown.
    What people suspect
    A 1994 forensic team led by James Starrs of George Washington University found a head injury most of the team thought was caused before the fall, which Starrs called "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide." His family believes the CIA killed him to keep him from talking. Their 2012 lawsuit was dismissed in 2013 because of the 1976 settlement and the statute of limitations, without a ruling on the merits; the judge wrote that "the public record supports many of the allegations."
    Where sources disagree
    The official accounts do not agree: suicide at first, LSD as a proximate cause in the federal government's 1976 statement, and "unknown" in the District Attorney's later record as reported by The Baltimore Sun. No court or coroner has ruled it a homicide, and one member of the 1994 forensic team dissented.

  9. Wilhelm Reich

    died 1957Official cause found

    Psychiatry and "orgone" research. Psychoanalyst who later claimed to have found a life energy, "orgone", and built accumulators for it.

    What happened
    Convicted of contempt for violating the injunction, he was sentenced to two years and died in the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1957, shortly before he could apply for parole.
    Official finding
    Heart failure.
    What people suspect
    Supporters see the injunction, the book burning and his death in custody as persecution. His orgone claims were not supported by evidence; the burning of books by court order is a documented fact either way.
    Work seized or destroyed
    After an FDA injunction he refused to answer, a federal court ordered his books and devices destroyed; several tons of his publications were burned in 1956.
    Where sources disagree
    Sources give different dates for when the injunction was first obtained.

  10. Carl R. Disch

    disappeared 1965Unsolved

    Ionospheric physics. Studied radio noise and the ionosphere for the National Bureau of Standards at Byrd Station, Antarctica.

    What happened
    On the morning of 8 May 1965 Disch, a 26-year-old physicist from Monroe, Wisconsin, left the Radio Noise Laboratory at Byrd Station to walk about 2 km back to the main station and seems to have missed the hand line that led back. Searchers found his tracks, but blowing snow covered them. The station fired flares, added floodlights and searched in a human chain. The search ended on 14 May 1965. His body has never been recovered.
    Official finding
    No cause was ever established. He was presumed dead, by his laboratory's account from exposure, but no body was found to confirm it. The US Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names later named Disch Promontory after him.
    What people suspect
    The case is often retold in online discussions of unexplained disappearances, including the Missing 411 books, sometimes with claims of strange lights. A message said to have been sent to McMurdo Station in 1971 in his name is widely dismissed as a hoax. No official account records these claims; the documented explanation is a man who lost his way in polar darkness and drifting snow.
    Where sources disagree
    Accounts differ on the date (7 or 8 May), the distance (about 2 km, or footprints running some nine miles in one account) and the temperature.

  11. Stanley Meyer

    died 1998Official cause found

    Alternative fuel. Claimed a "water fuel cell" could run a car on water.

    What happened
    He collapsed at a restaurant in Grove City, Ohio, in March 1998; by his brother's account he said he had been poisoned.
    Official finding
    The Franklin County coroner found a ruptured cerebral artery aneurysm, and police found no evidence of foul play. Earlier, an Ohio court had found him liable for "gross and egregious fraud" toward investors, with expert testimony that his cell was conventional electrolysis.
    What people suspect
    Viral posts say he was poisoned or killed by the Pentagon. Fact-checkers found no evidence, and the Pentagon said it had no information on him.

  12. Don C. Wiley

    died 2001Official cause found

    Structural biology. Harvard scientist who mapped how the immune system recognises viruses.

    What happened
    Reported missing in Memphis in November 2001; his rental car was found on a bridge and his body was later recovered from the Mississippi River. His death was one of several in 2001 to 2002 that press reports grouped as a "cluster" of microbiologist deaths.
    Official finding
    Forensic experts concluded he most likely fell from the bridge after a dizzy spell; his family said he had a seizure disorder that could cause dizziness. No investigation found a homicide.
    What people suspect
    The timing, weeks after the 2001 anthrax letters, fed theories linking him and others on the "cluster" lists. Several deaths on those lists had ordinary, documented causes, and some were not microbiologists at all.

  13. Ning Li

    disappeared 2002Found alive

    Gravity physics. Claimed in the 1990s that spinning superconductors could produce a measurable gravity-like force, which she called AC gravity.

    What happened
    A research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, she published papers in the early 1990s arguing that a rotating superconductor could produce a gravity-like force, and NASA funded experiments with her; a 1997 test she co-authored found no effect from a superconductor that was levitated but not spinning. She left the university and founded AC Gravity LLC, which received a Defense Department grant in 2001 whose results were never made public. After that she stopped publishing, and online stories began to say she had vanished.
    Official finding
    She did not disappear. Her funeral home's obituary records that she died in Huntsville on 27 July 2021. Her son told the Huntsville Business Journal in 2023 that she kept doing classified defense work, which is why she stopped publishing, and that she never moved to China. By his account she was struck by a vehicle in 2014 and later developed Alzheimer's disease. No public source gives an official cause of death.
    What people suspect
    Online videos list her among scientists who went missing after anti-gravity work; some say she was taken into secret government work and others that she defected to China. Her son says those stories are false.
    Where sources disagree
    The 2014 accident and the later diagnosis rest on her son's account alone. Physicists never confirmed that spinning superconductors change gravity.

  14. Eugene Mallove

    died 2004Official cause found

    Cold fusion advocacy. MIT-trained science writer and editor who championed cold-fusion research.

    What happened
    Beaten to death in May 2004 at his family's rental house in Norwich, Connecticut, while clearing it out after evicting the tenants.
    Official finding
    A solved homicide: a jury convicted one man of murder; the tenants' son pleaded guilty to manslaughter; a third person was also charged. Police treated it as a dispute over the eviction and robbery. Two men first charged were exonerated after a clerical error came to light.
    What people suspect
    Because of his cold-fusion work, theories circulated that he was silenced. The court record ties the killing to the eviction dispute.

How this list works

  • A case goes on only with sources a reader can open. Where sources disagree, the page says so.
  • The official finding is shown as plainly as the suspicion. A theory is attributed to whoever holds it, never stated as fact, and nobody is named as responsible for a crime they were not convicted of.
  • “Unsolved” means no finding either way. It is not a claim that someone was killed.
  • Know a case that belongs here, or a correction? Send it with sources to sandon@hivejournal.com.

Sources last checked 24 October 2026.

Disappeared: inventors and scientists, and what the record shows | Graphene FM