Internet pioneer who created one of the world’s most popular websites has been found dead in his office just HOURS after 4am.

An entrepreneur who founded one of the most popular websites in the world was mysteriously found dead in his university office just hours after sending an email accusing school officials of trying to sabotage him.

Marshall Brian II, 63, an educator and founder of HowStuffWorks, was found dead in his office at North Carolina State University around 7 a.m. on Nov. 20 after his wife, Leigh Ann, called for a welfare check. according to the technician, the university’s student newspaper.

Authorities have not yet released a cause of death.

But just a few hours earlier, around 4:30 a.m., Brian sent an email to colleagues at the school saying that two department heads at the university had retaliated against him after he filed a number of ethics complaints.

“If you receive this email, you are a friend and colleague of mine,” he wrote: the News & Observer reports. “Today I would like to ask for a few minutes of your time so I can tell you a story.”

Brian further claimed that he actually had no plans to retire, as Stephen Markham, the executive director of NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, insinuated in a Nov. 6 internal email.

“I have just experienced one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating and unjust trials at the university,” the beloved professor wrote.

‘The fact is that I am not ‘retiring’. Instead, NC State fired me on October 29.”

Brian founded HowStuffWorks.com in the early 1990s, and it quickly became one of the 1,000 most visited websites in the world

He had previously written an email to colleagues at the school saying that two department heads at the university had retaliated against him after he filed a number of ethics complaints.

He wrote that after he filed ethics complaints about Veena Misra, the head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and raised his concerns directly with her, Misra retaliated against him.

Brian’s email contained allegations that Misra engaged in misconduct including lies, incompetence, concealment of information, bad faith and unethical conduct following an August disagreement over repurposing the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program meeting room to accommodate a ​​to accommodate the new addition, the technician reports.

“What came back was a sickening atomic bomb of retaliation, such a thing could not be believed,” the professor continued.

‘[Misra] excommunicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to her.”

He said that a few weeks after filing his ethics complaints, he received an email from Srinath Ekkad, the head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, saying that the department would no longer recommend students participate to its Engineering Entrepreneurs Program.

When he subsequently responded to Ekkad, Brian claimed that Markham informed him that he would be taking disciplinary action against him for “unacceptable behavior.”

Brian continued to say that he believed the university’s ethics complaint system framework was not being properly used to address his concerns.

His former student Brandon Kashani, one of the recipients of the email, noted that he had filed numerous complaints through the university’s EthicsPoint system, and claimed that tensions in the department arose because Brian “didn’t play the political game ‘.

Brian claimed that after he filed ethics complaints against Veena Misra, the head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Srinath Ekkad, the head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, said the department would no longer recommend students participate to its Engineering Entrepreneurs Program.

When Brian subsequently responded to Ekkad, Brian claimed that Stephen Markham, the executive director of NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, informed him that he would be taking disciplinary action against him for “unacceptable behavior” and later sent an internal email saying that Brian had retired.

“Marshall was caught in an unbalanced group of people with more power than him, and they didn’t like him calling them out,” Kashani told the student newspaper.

“…He held people accountable. He didn’t understand that political aspect and they just wanted to get rid of him.’

Kevin Barry, another alumnus of Brian’s program who now serves on the Advisory Board for NC State’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Leadership program, also said his former professor has played a vital role in the lives of many over the years students.

“Marshall was a cornerstone of entrepreneurship at NC State, and a very key figure who was completely committed and a true entrepreneur, and really dedicated to the students,” he said.

“And he had, through and through, down to his core, the love and desire to help students.

“So to see what’s going on with him is absolutely devastating and disgusting.”

Born in Santa Monica, California, Brian was deeply influenced as a child by his father’s work designing components for NASA’s lunar lander and his later development of Atlanta’s MARTA system. according to an online obituary.

Marshall Brian II, 63, an educator and founder of HowStuffWorks, was found dead in his office at North Carolina State University around 7 a.m. on November 20.

He received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and later a Master of Science in Computer Science from NC State, where he first met Leigh Ann.

The two would raise four children together: David, Irena, Jonny and Ian, and Brian went on to work as a computer science professor.

He worked in that position until 1992, when he founded a software company called Interface Technologies, after finding success in creating a website with his wife where he posted easy-to-understand scientific explanations of how basic gadgets functioned.

Early articles on HowStuffWorks.com included research on VCRs, airplanes and car engines, and it quickly became one of the 1,000 most visited websites in the world, the News & Observer reports.

It grew to 10,000 visitors per day in 1998, and then to 33,000 in early 2000.

“People come to the site and can finally understand the technology around them,” he told the newspaper in 1999.

“And they can realize that at its core it’s quite simple,” he said, adding that it’s “pretty reassuring and reassuring to know that they can understand it all.”

In the early 2000s, HowStuffWorks became a major brand with twenty employees and began publishing a free Stuff Works magazine that was sent to 10,000 schools.

Family members said Brian would do anything for them and will “live on in the hearts and minds of all who knew him.”

Brian eventually sold his company to the investment firm Convex Group in 2002, and five years later Discovery Communications bought it for $250 million.

In the years that followed, Brian continued to work in educational media, producing a series for The National Geographic Channel called Factory Floor, which showed the behind-the-scenes production of everyday objects, and appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006 to explain how television worked.

He also wrote more than a dozen books and contributed articles to the News & Observer on a range of topics including dividends and humidifiers.

But in 2012, Brian returned to NC State, where he helped students build startups.

“Every time I had a problem, he would sit with me for hours and write, write, write on his iPad,” Kashani said.

“Then he would go home and send me an email at night with a million suggestions and scenarios and different things when he had time to process it.”

Barry, who founded the startup FilterEasy as a student, also said many people thought his company was a “cool idea.”

“But Marshall is one of those people who dives in and asks you every question and problem and helps you work on solutions.”

In his personal life, the obituary said, Brian “would do anything for his family, including building a duck pond with a backhoe because his future wife said she wanted ducks, or jumping in the car and driving for hours to get a ​​to deliver the set of keys to his daughter, who had left them at home.’

He also dreamed of building his own helicopter one day and often talked about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

“Through his work, teaching and boundless curiosity, Marshall touched countless lives and inspired others to explore, learn and better understand the world around them,” the obituary said.

“He will be greatly missed, but will live on in the hearts and minds of all who knew him.”

DailyMail.com has contacted North Carolina State University for comment.