List of examples of Stigler's law explained
Stigler's law concerns the supposed tendency of eponymous expressions for scientific discoveries to honor people other than their respective originators.
Examples include:
A
B
- Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula was discovered by Simon Plouffe, who has since expressed regret at having to share credit for his discovery.
- Bechdel test, a gender bias test for films popularised by and named after Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, despite her repeated insistence that the test was devised by her friend Liz Wallace.
- Bell numbers have been studied since the 19th century and even medieval Japan, but are named after Eric Temple Bell who wrote about them in the 1930s.
- Bellman–Ford algorithm for computing the shortest-length path, proposed by Alfonso Shimbel, who presented the algorithm in 1954, but named after Richard Bellman and Lester Ford Jr., who published equivalent forms in 1956 and 1958.
- Benford's law, named after physicist Frank Benford, who stated it in 1938, although it had been previously stated by Simon Newcomb in 1881.
- Bertrand's ballot theorem proved using André's reflection method, which states the probability that the winning candidate in an election stays in the lead throughout the count. It was first published by W. A. Whitworth in 1878, nine years before Joseph Louis François Bertrand; Désiré André's proof did not use reflection, though reflection is now the method commonly taught.
- The Bessemer process was discovered by William Kelly in 1851. Henry Bessemer was the first to obtain a patent in 1855.[1] [2]
- The Bethe–Salpeter equation (named after Hans Bethe and Edwin Salpeter),[3] which describes the bound states of a two-body system in quantum field theoretical. The equation was first published by Yoichiro Nambu, but without derivation.[4]
- Betteridge's law of headlines, stating that when a headline asks a (yes-no) question, the answer is no. Considered "an old truism among journalists", it was well known before Betteridge wrote about it in 2009.
- Betz' law, which shows the maximum attainable energy efficiency of a wind turbine, was discovered first by Frederick W. Lanchester. It was subsequently independently rediscovered by Albert Betz and also Nikolai Zhukovsky.
- The Bilinski dodecahedron appears in a 1752 book by John Lodge Cowley but is named after Stanko Bilinski, who rediscovered it in 1960.
- The Black–Scholes model postulating a geometric Brownian motion as a model for stock market returns, credited to the 1973 academic papers of Fischer Black, Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, was first proposed by Paul Samuelson in 1965.
- Blount's disease was described independently by C. Mau (1923) and Harald Nilsonne (1929), both writing in German, before it was described in English by Walter Putnam Blount (1937).
- Bode's law of 1772, stating that the distances of the planets from the sun follow a simple arithmetical rule, was first stated by Johann Titius in 1766, not Johann Elert Bode.
- The Bonferroni correction is named after Italian mathematician Carlo Emilio Bonferroni for its use of Bonferroni inequalities.[5] However, its development is often credited to Olive Jean Dunn, who described the procedure's application to confidence intervals.[6] [7]
- Boyce–Codd normal form, a normal form used in database normalization. The definition of what we now know as BCNF appeared in a paper by Ian Heath in 1971.[8] Date writes:
Since that definition predated Boyce and Codd's own definition by some three years, it seems to me that BCNF ought by rights to be called Heath normal form. But it isn't.[9]
- Boyle's law, which stipulates the reciprocal relation between the pressure and the volume of a gas, was first noted by Richard Towneley and Henry Power. In France, the law is known as Mariotte's law, after Edme Mariotte, who published his results later than Boyle, but crucially added that the relation holds only when temperature is kept constant.
- Bradley–Terry model, one of the most popular models for Pairwise comparison, first described by Ernst Zermelo in 1929.
- Brayton Cycle, as quoted from Wikipedia itself: The engine cycle is named after George Brayton (1830–1892), the American engineer who developed it originally for use in piston engines, although it was originally proposed and patented by Englishman John Barber in 1791.
- Brus equation named after Louis E. Brus. Proposed a few years earlier by Alexander Efros.
- Burnside's lemma, a counting technique in group theory, was discovered by Augustin Louis Cauchy, or possibly others. William Burnside originally attributed it to Ferdinand Georg Frobenius. Ironically, Burnside made many original contributions to group theory, and Burnside's Lemma is sometimes jokingly referred to as "the lemma that is not Burnside's".
- Buridan's ass originates from the Persian philosopher Al-Ghazali. The version popularised by Jean Buridan also does not include the eponymous donkey.
C
Václav Šimerka listed the first seven Carmichael numbers in 1885; they are named after Robert Daniel Carmichael who subsequently discovered the first one in 1910.[10]
Named for René Descartes, but Teresa of Avila and her contemporaries wrote about similar methods of philosophical exploration eight to ten years before Descartes was born.[16]
- Cavendish balance for measuring the universal gravitational constant, first devised and constructed by John Michell.
- Chandrasekhar limit, the mass upper limit of a white dwarf, was first derived by Wilhelm Anderson and E. C. Stoner, and later improved by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
- Chebyshev's inequality guarantees that, for a wide class of probability distributions, no more than a certain fraction of values can be more than a certain distance from the mean. It was first formulated by his friend and colleague Irénée-Jules Bienaymé in 1853 and proved by Chebyshev in 1867.
- Chernoff bound, a bound on the tail distribution of sums of independent random variables, named for Herman Chernoff but due to Herman Rubin.[17]
- Cobb–Douglas, a production function named after Paul H. Douglas and Charles W Cobb, developed earlier by Philip Wicksteed.
- Cooley–Tukey algorithm, named after J. W. Cooley and John Tukey, but invented 160 years earlier in 1805 by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
- Curie point, a critical temperature of phase change in ferromagnetism, named for Pierre Curie, who reported it in his thesis in 1895, but the phenomenon was found by Claude Pouillet before 1832.[18]
- Currying, a technique for transforming an n-arity function to a chain of functions. Named after Haskell Curry; first discovered by Moses Schönfinkel.
D
E
the "discovery" of the constant itself is credited to Jacob Bernoulli, but it is named after Leonhard Euler.
an equivalent formula was proved by Roger Cotes 30 years before Euler published his proof.
F
G
the property of infinite sets was known to Duns Scotus.
first described by Joseph Louis Lagrange in 1773, over half a century before Gauss.[19] [20]
first proved by Ostrogradsky in 1831.
the normal distribution was introduced by Abraham de Moivre in 1733, but named after Carl Friedrich Gauss who began using it in 1794.
was already in well-known textbooks such as Thomas Simpson's when Gauss in 1809 remarked that he used "common elimination."
named for Josiah Willard Gibbs who published in 1901. First discovered by Henry Wilbraham in 1851.
- Goodhart's law, with several earlier variations, like Campbell's law.
- The Graetz circuit, also known as the diode bridge, was invented and patented in 1896 by Karol Pollak a year before it was published by Leo Graetz.
- The Graham escapement is often erroneously credited to English clockmaker George Graham but it was actually invented by astronomer Richard Towneley.
- The Gregorian telescope is named after James Gregory, who published it in 1663, but was already known to Bonaventura Cavalieri in 1632[21] and Marin Mersenne in 1636.[22]
- Gresham's law was described by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1519, the year of Thomas Gresham's birth.
- Grimm's law, the first systemic sound change to be described, was first noted by Friedrich von Schlegel in 1806 and expanded by Rasmus Rask in 1818 before being extended by, and named after, Jacob Grimm in 1822.
- Gröbner basis
the theory was developed by Bruno Buchberger, who named them after his advisor, Wolfgang Gröbner.
H
I
J
K
invented by Charles Babbage who recorded it in his diary but didn't otherwise publish it.
invented by Élie Cartan
theoretically described by a number of astronomers before Gerard Kuiper; Kuiper theorized that such a belt no longer existed.
Johann Georg Zehfuss already in 1858 described the matrix operation we now know as the Kronecker product
L
named for Linus Torvalds, but actually described by Eric S. Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
M
- Maxwell's equations. The modern form of the equations in their most common formulation is credited to Oliver Heaviside, based on James Clerk Maxwell's original work.
- Madelung rule, describing the order in which electron orbitals are filled, named after Erwin Madelung but first discovered by Charles Janet.
- Matthew effect, named by Robert K. Merton after the writer of the Gospel of Matthew quoting the words of Jesus.
- Meadow's law, the formulation that one cot death in a family is tragic, two suspicious, and three murder, originally described by D.J. and V.J.M. Di Maio.
- Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. The algorithm was named after Nicholas Metropolis, who was the director of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory at the time of writing the paper Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines. However, Metropolis did not contribute to that study in any way, as confirmed by various sources. The research problem was proposed by Augusta H. Teller and solved by Marshall N. Rosenbluth and Arianna W. Rosenbluth. Furthermore, according to Roy Glauber and Emilio Segrè, the original algorithm was invented by Enrico Fermi and reinvented by Stan Ulam.
- Moore's Law
N
O
P
named after and developed by Henri Padé around 1890, but was first introduced by Ferdinand Georg Frobenius.
studied by and named for Blaise Pascal, but constructed several times before him independently.
was originally derived by Auguste Bravais and published in 1846.[29] [30]
- Pell's equation, studied in ancient India but mistakenly attributed to John Pell by Leonhard Euler. Apparently Euler confused Lord Brouncker (first European mathematician to find a general solution of the equation) with Pell.
- Penrose triangle, an impossible object first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. The mathematician Roger Penrose independently devised and popularised it in the 1950s.
- Petersen graph as an example in graph theory, put forward by Julius Petersen in 1898, though it previously appeared in a paper by .
- Pfizer vaccine, a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine developed by BioNTech. Due to its small size, BioNTech partnered with the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Fosun for support with clinical trials, logistics and manufacturing. The vaccine's clinical name is BNT162b2 and it is currently marketed under the name Comirnaty.
- Platonic solids were described earlier by Theaetetus, and some of them even earlier, by the Pythagoreans.
- Playfair's axiom, an alternative to Euclid's fifth postulate on parallel lines, first stated by Proclus in the 5th century AD but named after John Playfair after he included it in his 1795 book Elements of Geometry and credited it to William Ludlam.
- Playfair cipher, invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1854, but named after Lord Playfair who promoted its use.
- Poe's law, formally stated by Nathan Poe in 2005, but following Internet norms going back as far as Jerry Schwarz in 1983.
- The Poincaré disk model and the Poincaré half-plane model of hyperbolic geometry are named after Henri Poincaré who studied them in 1882. However, Eugenio Beltrami published a paper on these models previously in 1868.
- Poisson distribution
described by Siméon Denis Poisson in 1837, though the result had already been given in 1711-21 by Abraham de Moivre.
predicted by Fresnel's theory of diffraction, named after Poisson, who ridiculed the theory, especially its prediction of the existence of this spot.[31] It is also called the Arago spot as François Arago observed it or the Fresnel bright spot after Augustin-Jean Fresnel's theory, though it had already been observed by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle and Giacomo F. Maraldi a century earlier.
- Prim's algorithm, developed in 1930 by the Czech mathematician Vojtěch Jarník and independently rediscovered by Prim in 1957.
- Prinzmetal angina, also known as variant angina, referring to angina (chest pain) caused by vasospasm of the coronary arteries. Described twice in the 1930s before being published by Prinzmetal in 1959.[32] [33] [34]
- Pythagorean theorem, named after the mathematician Pythagoras, although it was known before him to Babylonian mathematicians (although it is not known if the Babylonians possessed a proof of the result; yet it is not known either whether Pythagoras proved the result).
R
- The Reynolds number in fluid mechanics was introduced by George Stokes, but is named after Osborne Reynolds, who popularized its use.
- Richards equation is attributed to Richards in his 1931 publication, but was earlier introduced by Richardson in 1922 in his book "Weather prediction by numerical process." (Cambridge University press. p. 262) as pointed out by John Knight and Peter Raats in "The contributions of Lewis Fry Richardson to drainage theory, soil physics, and the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum" EGU General Assembly 2016.
- Russell's paradox is a paradox in set theory that Bertrand Russell discovered and published in 1901. However, Ernst Zermelo had independently discovered the paradox in 1899.
S
- The Sankey diagram was invented by Charles Joseph Minard
- The Schottky diode was neither discovered by Schottky nor its operation correctly explained by him. The actual nature of the metal–semiconductor junction was noted by Hans Bethe.
- The Schröder–Bernstein theorem in set theory was first stated without proof by Georg Cantor and first proved by Richard Dedekind
- Shuey's equation from 1985, which is an approximation of the Zoeprittz Equation first published in 1919.
- Simpson's paradox, a term introduced by Colin R. Blyth in 1972; but Edward Simpson did not actually discover this statistical paradox.
- The Simson line in geometry is named for Robert Simson, but cannot be found in Simson's works. Instead, it was first discovered by William Wallace in 1797.
- The Smith chart in radio frequency engineering is named after Phillip Hagar Smith, who published about it in 1939. However, it was independently invented by Tosaku Mizuhashi in 1937 and Amiel R. Volpert in 1939.
- Snell's law of refraction, named after Willebrord Snellius, a Dutch scientist, also known as Descartes law of refraction (after René Descartes) was discovered by Ibn Sahl.
- the Snellius–Pothenot problem was solved by Willebrord Snellius only, and restated by Laurent Pothenot 75 years later
- Steiner triple systems named for Jakob Steiner's work in 1754 were first found by Thomas Kirkman in 1746–1750.
- Stigler's law, attributed by Stephen Stigler himself to Robert K. Merton, though the phenomenon had previously been noted by others.[35]
- Stirling's approximation, which was presaged in published work by Abraham de Moivre.
- Stokes's theorem discovered by Lord Kelvin
- Student's t-distribution, previously derived by Helmert and Lüroth.
T
V
W
Y
Z
- Zipf's law states that given some corpus of natural language utterances, the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. The law is named after George Kingsley Zipf, an early twentieth century American linguist. Zipf popularized Zipf's law and sought to explain it, though he did not claim to have originated it.[37]
See also
Notes and References
- Encyclopedia: Bessemer process . 2 . 168 . Encyclopædia Britannica . 2005.
- Encyclopedia: Kelly, William . 6 . 791 . Encyclopædia Britannica . 2005.
- H. Bethe, E. Salpeter . 1951 . A Relativistic Equation for Bound-State Problems . . 84 . 6 . 1232 . 10.1103/PhysRev.84.1232 . 1951PhRv...84.1232S .
- Y. Nambu . 1950 . Force Potentials in Quantum Field Theory . . 5 . 4 . 614 . 10.1143/PTP.5.614 . free .
- Bonferroni, C. E., Teoria statistica delle classi e calcolo delle probabilità, Pubblicazioni del R Istituto Superiore di Scienze Economiche e Commerciali di Firenze 1936
- Olive Jean . Dunn . Estimation of the Means for Dependent Variables . . 29 . 4 . 1095–1111 . 1958 . 2237135 . 10.1214/aoms/1177706374. free .
- Olive Jean . Dunn . Multiple Comparisons Among Means . . 56 . 293 . 52–64 . 1961 . 10.1080/01621459.1961.10482090 . 10.1.1.309.1277 .
- Heath, I. "Unacceptable File Operations in a Relational Database." Proc. 1971 ACM SIGFIDET Workshop on Data Description, Access, and Control, San Diego, California (November 11–12, 1971).
- Date, C.J. Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners. O'Reilly (2005), p. 142.
- Lemmermeyer . F. . Václav Šimerka: quadratic forms and factorization . LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics . 2013 . 16 . 118–129 . 10.1112/S1461157013000065 . free.
- Web site: Scipione Ferro | Italian mathematician. 22 April 2024.
- J. Stillwell, Mathematics and Its History, 3rd Ed, Springer,2010
- http://www.ingenta.com/isis/searching/Expand/ingenta?pub=infobike://iop/jopt/1997/00000028/00000004/art00004 André Baranne and Françoise Launay, Cassegrain: a famous unknown of instrumental astronomy
- Stargazer, the Life and Times of the Telescope, by Fred Watson, p. 134
- Stargazer, p. 115.
- News: Opinion | Descartes is Not Our Father. The New York Times. 25 September 2017. Mercer. Christia.
- Book: Past, Present, and Future of Statistics . A career in statistics . 35 . CRC Press . Chernoff . Herman . Xihong . Lin . Christian . Genest . David L. . Banks . Geert . Molenberghs . David W. . Scott . Jane-Ling . Wang . Jane-Ling Wang . 2014 . 9781482204964 . http://nisla05.niss.org/copss/past-present-future-copss.pdf.
- Book: Grimmett, Geoffrey . https://books.google.com/books?id=UfvxyLIMalgC&pg=PA6 . The Random-Cluster Model . The Random‑Cluster Model . 333 . 2006 . 6 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160213172004/http://statslab.cam.ac.uk/~grg/books/rcm1-1.pdf . 2016-02-13 . live . Random-Cluster Measures . Geoffrey Grimmett . Springer . Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften . 10.1007/978-3-540-32891-9_1 . 978-3-540-32891-9 . 0072-7830 . 2006925087 . 262691034 . 4105561W . There is a critical temperature for this phenomenon, often called the Curie point after Pierre Curie, who reported this discovery in his 1895 thesis ... In an example of Stigler’s Law ... the existence of such a temperature was discovered before 1832 by Pouillet.... .
- Joseph-Louis Lagrange. Joseph-Louis. Lagrange. Sur l'attraction des sphéroïdes elliptiques. fr. Mémoires de l'Académie de Berlin. 125. 1773.
- Book: Duhem, Pierre. Pierre Duhem. Leçons sur l'électricité et le magnétisme. 1891. Paris Gauthier-Villars . vol. 1, ch. 4, p. 22–23. fr. shows that Lagrange has priority over Gauss. Others after Gauss discovered "Gauss's Law", too.
- Stargazer, the Life and Times of the Telescope, by Fred Watson, p. 134
- Stargazer, p. 115.
- Book: Heath . Thomas . A History of Greek Mathematics Volume II From Aristarchus to Dipohantus . 1921 . Dover Books . 0-486-24074-6 . 323.
- Hodrick, Robert, and Edward C. Prescott (1997), "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 29 (1), 1–16.
- Whittaker, E. T. (1923): On a new method of graduation, Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Association, 78, 81–89 – as quoted in Philips 2010
- E.B.Saff and A.D. Snider, Fundamentals of Complex Analysis, 3rd Ed. Prentice Hall, 2003
- Cf. Clifford A. Pickover, De Arquímides a Hawking,p. 137
- PhD-Design Discussion List, 7 January 2013, https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind1301&L=phd-design&D=0&P=11022
- Analyse Mathématique. Sur Les Probabilités des Erreurs de Situation d'un Point Mem. Acad. Roy. Sei. Inst. France, Sci. Math, et Phys., t. 9, p. 255-332. 1846
- Wright, S., 1921. Correlation and causation. Journal of agricultural research, 20(7), pp.557-585
- Physics, Robert Resnick, David Halliday, Kenneth S. Krane. volume 4, 4th edition, chapter 46
- Parkinson, J, Bedford, DE. Electrocardiographic changes during brief attacks of angina pectoris. Lancet 1931; 1:15.
- Brow, GR, Holman, DV. Electrocardiographic study during a paroxysm of angina pectoris. Am Heart J 1933; 9:259.
- Prinzmetal, M, Kennamer, R, Merliss, R, et al. A variant form of angina pectoris. Preliminary report. Am Heart J 1959; 27:375.
- For example Henry Dudeney noted in his 1917 Amusements in Mathematics solution 129 that Pell's equation was called that "apparently because Pell neither first propounded the question nor first solved it!"
- Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (1997): The Rainbow of Mathematics, pp. 563–564. New York, W. W. Norton.
- Powers . David M W . Applications and explanations of Zipf's law . 1998 . Joint conference on new methods in language processing and computational natural language learning . 151–160 . Association for Computational Linguistics.