Petr Beckmann (1924-1993) was a physicist who defected from Czechoslovakia in 1963 and became a Professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado.

He was also a prolific scientific author who had published The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (Golem Press, 1976), a book promoting nuclear power during the height of the anti-nuclear movement. He also wrote the popular book A History of Pi , documenting the history of the calculation of pi. He also published his own magazine, Access to Energy , which was continued after his death by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine , a prominent campaigner against global warming treaties.

Beckmann was also a frequent and colorful participant in Usenet debates. (see Google Groups). In them, he claimed to have debunked Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in his book Einstein Plus 2, as well as in another self-published journal, Galilean Electrodynamics.