It was proposed separately in three papers. The first by James Wells in June 2003 in a more modest form that mildly relaxed the assumption about naturalness in the Higgs potential. In May 2004 Nima Arkani-Hamed and Savas Dimopoulos argued that naturalness in the Higgs sector may not be an accurate guide to propose new physics beyond the Standard Model and argued that supersymmetry may be realized in a different fashion that preserved gauge coupling unification and has a dark matter candidate. In June 2004 Gian Giudice and Andrea Romanino argued from a general point of view that if one wants gauge coupling unification and a dark matter candidate, that split supersymmetry is one amongst a few theories that exists.