Reyga
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
Doctor Reyga was a young Ferengi scientist and the inventor of metaphasic shielding. He had to overcome a number of cultural prejudices to convince other scientists to listen to his ideas, eventually presenting his theory at the Altine Conference in 2369. Dr. Beverly Crusher saw much promise in his concept, and invited Reyga along with many other scientists in the field of subspace morphology to the USS Enterprise-D to see a demonstration of the shielding in action. Only four scientists accepted Crusher's invitation: the Vulcan Dr. T'Pan, the Human Dr. Christopher, the Klingon Dr. Kurak, and the Takaran Dr. Jo'Bril.
Reyga installed his shielding aboard the shuttlecraft Justman, and Dr. Jo'Bril piloted the craft into the corona of the star Veytan. Although the shield worked, Jo'Bril sabotaged the test and faked his own death in order to discredit Reyga and steal the technology for use as a weapon. This apparent turn of events cast much doubt on Reyga's technology, and Dr. Crusher was forced to cancel all further testing aboard the Enterprise. Reyga was adamant that the shielding was flawless, and set out to find the cause of the problem.
Shortly thereafter, Reyga was found dead in an Enterprise science lab, the victim of a plasma surge. Jo'Bril had killed Reyga in order to make it appear that Reyga could not accept the failure of his shielding and further discourage others from pursuing the technology. Dr. Crusher performed an autopsy on Reyga's body despite his family's forbidding it in accordance with Ferengi death rituals. The autopsy did not prove helpful in solving the case of Reyga's murder. However, Crusher discovered Jo'Bril's involvement shortly thereafter. (TNG: "Suspicions")
- Reyga was portrayed by Peter Slutsker. Some have pointed out that Beverly was cleared of the charges rather easily. One can only assume Reyga's familiy no longer cared about the death ritual once they realized his technology was viable and exploitable for profit. Others note, however, that if his technology was valuable, he would be famous and his remains would consequently be worth far more.
