Draft:Lars Nielsen

Early life
Nielsen was born in Phoenix, Arizona, lived in Mesa, Arizona until he was 5, and spent the rest of his childhood in Modesto, California. He grew up in a large Mormon family. He is the second-eldest of 10 children, with one elder sister, a twin brother, and 7 younger siblings.

As the eldest son in the family, he was named after great-great-grandfather Lars Peter Christian Nielsen, who converted to Mormonism and immigrated from Denmark.

Nielsen served a Mormon mission in Sonora, Mexico.

He did a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Brigham Young University. He got his PhD (2007) and MBA (2009) in organic chemistry at Harvard University.

How The Book of Mormon Came to Pass
Nielsen's theory of the Book of Mormon authorship proposes that Dartmouth College professor of ancient languages John Smith composed the first draft on the Book of Mormon and included nods to earlier linguists as Easter eggs. Though inaccessible to most audiences, as a professor of ancient languages Smith found these allusions amusing. Fearing that publishing fiction under his own name would harm his professional reputation, Smith gave the transcript to his student Solomon Spalding, who then added upon it.

Some of these posited Easter eggs are "Kircherism", or details in the Book of Mormon which mirror the work of Athanasius Kircher:


 * 1) The name of Book of Mormon character Nephi echoes Kircher's fictional Jewish-Egyptian scholar Rabbi Barachias Nephi.
 * 2) The Book of Mormon's purported language Reformed Egyptian echoes Kircher's purported language Prodromus Coptus (a Latin term meaning "forerunner of Coptic")
 * 3) The Book of Mormon's Liahona closely resembles Kircher's dissertation on "spiritual electromagnetism"
 * 4) Kircher studied Aztec and Maya codices from New Spain at the Collegio Romano, and claimed they had Christian roots. This is similar to the religious history presented in the Book of Mormon.

Other Easter eggs are "Montmaurisms", references to Pierre de Montmaur:
 * The term "Mormon" is used in Le Parasite Mormon, Histoire Comique (Mormon the Parasite, A Comic History) by François de La Mothe Le Vayer, a burlesque of Montmaur's life, slightly editing the name from "Montmaur" to "Mormon".
 * The Book of Mormon uses chiasmus in its prose. Montmaur's work centered around such linguistic features.

Personal life
Nielsen married Rebecca Edwards in 2005. They have twin daughters born in 2007 and a third daughter born in 2009.

Nielsen resigned from the Mormon church in 2010. This caused conflict in his marriage. The couple had a stillborn son in 2011. Following the tragedy, the couple separated. They filed for divorce in 2012 and it was finalized in 2014.