Burkhard Heim, German physicist and academic (d. 2001)
Burkhard Heim (German: [haɪm]; 9 February 1925 – 14 January 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. He devoted a large portion of his life to the pursuit of his unified field theory, Heim theory. One of his childhood ambitions was to develop a method of space travel, which contributed to his motivation to find such a theory.During World War II, Heim was conscripted into the air force. However, a previous essay about explosives led to his working briefly in a chemical laboratory as an explosives technician, instead. An explosion in the laboratory caused by the mishandling of unstable compounds left him with debilitating handicaps. The accident left him without hands and mostly deaf and blind when he was 19, forcing him to use Krukenberg hands. Illobrand von Ludwiger claims this to be a terrorist assassination attempt, for which Heim saved the assassins life by "forgiving him". Neither name nor motivation of the claimed assassin nor details of the "forgiving" and how this saved his life are given.

His behavior subsequently became progressively eccentric and reclusive. Eventually, he retreated into almost total seclusion, concentrating on developing and refining his theory of everything.