List of examples of Stigler's law

Stigler's law concerns the supposed tendency of eponymous expressions for scientific discoveries to honor people other than their respective originators.

Examples include:

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

A

• Aharonov-Bohm effect. Werner Ehrenberg and Raymond E. Siday first predicted the effect in 1949, and similar effects were later rediscovered by Yakir Aharonov and David Bohm in 1959.
• Alzheimer's disease, though named after Alois Alzheimer, had been previously described by at least half a dozen others before Alzheimer's 1906 report which is often (wrongly) regarded as the first description of the disorder.
• America, one continent named after Americo Vespucci (the name was given by German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann), although Vespucci was not the first european to find either North or South America. He participated only to expeditions on the eastern coast of South America, and was not even in command of all of those expeditions. Many other explorers found different parts of the continent before and after him. Those include, for example, Christopher Columbus, who predated Vespucci and is considered to be the discoverer of the Americas, yet he was supposedly also predated by the Norse vikings, supposedly led by Leif Ericson, who are supposed to have found Newfoundland.
• Arabic numerals, which were invented in India.
• Arrhenius equation. The equation was first proposed by the Dutch chemist J. H. van 't Hoff in 1884; five years later in 1889, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius provided a physical justification and interpretation for it.

B

• Benford's law, named after physicist Frank Benford, who stated it in 1938, although it had been previously stated by Simon Newcomb in 1881.
• 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.
• Bode's Law of 1772 states that the distances of the planets from the sun follow a simple arithmetical rule. But it was first stated by Johann Titius in 1766, not J E Bode.

C

• Cartan matrices: first investigated by Wilhelm Killing.
• Cardano's formula: The solution to the cubic function, it was discovered by Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia.
• Cobb–Douglas: A production function named after Paul H. Douglas, and Charles W Cobb, developed earlier by Philip Wicksteed.
• Curie point: a critical temperature of phase change in ferromagnetism. Named after Pierre Curie, who reported it in his thesis in 1895, but the phenomenon was found by Claude Pouillet before 1832 (see the footnote on page 6 of ).

D

• Dyson spheres are named after Freeman Dyson, but Dyson himself has credited the original idea to Olaf Stapledon.
• "Darwinian evolution" is an often-used name for evolution by natural selection. Yet Charles Darwin mentioned, in an annex to "The Origin of Species", eighteen people who had previously expounded the idea, including Lamarck, Saint-Hilaire, Herbert, Grant, Matthew, Haldeman and of course Wallace.

E

• Euler's number: the "discovery" of the constant itself is credited to Jacob Bernoulli, but it is named after Leonhard Euler.
• Euler's formula: an equivalent formula was proved by Roger Cotes 30 years before Euler published his proof.

F

• Fermi's golden rule, a quantum mechanical calculation, was discovered by Paul Dirac.

G

• Gauss's Theorem: first proved by Ostrogradsky in 1831.
• Gaussian distribution: the normal distribution was introduced by Abraham de Moivre in 1733, but named after Carl Friedrich Gauss who began using it in 1794.
• Gaussian elimination: was already in well-known textbooks such as Thomas Simpson's when Gauss in 1809 remarked that he used "common elimination."
• Gresham's law was described by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1519, the year of Thomas Gresham's birth.
• Gröbner basis: the theory was developed by Bruno Buchberger, who named them after his advisor, Wolfgang Gröbner

HIJ

• Halley's comet was observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, but named after Edmond Halley who computed its orbit and accurately predicted its return.
• Hubble's law was derived by Georges Lemaître two years before Edwin Hubble.
• Joukowski transformation was first derived by Otto Blumenthal in 1913.

K

• Killing form: invented by Élie Cartan
• Kuiper belt: theoretically described by a number of astronomers before Gerard Kuiper; Kuiper theorized that such a belt no longer existed.

L

• Leibniz formula for π: The formula was first discovered by 15th-century Indian mathematician Madhava of Sangamagrama, but it is named after Gottfried Leibniz after the latter discovered it independently 300 years later.
• Linus's law: named after Linus Torvalds, but actually described by Eric S. Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

M

• Matthew effect, named by Robert K. Merton after the writer of the Gospel of Matthew.
• 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.

NO

• Newton's first and second laws of mechanics were known and proposed in separate ways by Galileo, Hooke and Huygens before Newton did in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton only owns the discovery of the third one.

PQR

• Pascal's triangle:named after and discovered by Pascal, but identified several times before him independently.
• 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.
• Playfair cipher, invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1854, but named after Lord Playfair who promoted its use.
• Poisson spot: predicted by Fresnel's theory of diffraction, named after Poisson, who ridiculed the theory, especially its prediction of the existence of this spot
• Pythagorean theorem, named after the mathematician Pythagoras, although it was known before him to Babylonian mathematicians (although it is not known if the Babylonians possesed a proof of the result; yet it is not known either, whether Pythagoras proved the result).

S

• Salmonella, named after Daniel Elmer Salmon, but discovered by Theobald Smith.
• Simpson's paradox, a term introduced by Colin R. Blyth in 1972; but Edward Simpson did not actually discover this statistical paradox.
• Snell's law of refraction, named after Willebrord Snellius, a dutch scientist, also known as Descartes law of refraction (after Rene Descartes) was discovered by Ibn Sahl.
• Stoke's theorem discovered by Lord Kelvin
• Stigler's Law, attributed by Stigler himself to Robert K. Merton.

TU

• The Tetralogy of Fallot was described in 1672 by Niels Stensen, but named after Étienne-Louis Arthur Fallot who also described it in 1888.

V

• Vigenère cipher was originally described by Giovan Battista Bellaso in his 1553 book La cifra del. Sig. Giovan Battista Bellaso, but later mis-attributed to Blaise de Vigenère in the 19th century.

WX

• Wang tiles were hypothesized by Hao Wang not to exist, but an example was constructed by his student Robert Berger.
• Wheatstone bridge, an electrical measuring instrument invented by Samuel Hunter Christie in 1833, but named after Sir Charles Wheatstone who improved and popularized it in 1843.
• Wike's law of low odd primes, a principle of design of experiments, was stated by Sir Ronald A. Fisher in 1935 but named by Edwin Wike in 1973.

YZ

• Yagi-Uda antenna, a successful and popular beam antenna, whose primary inventor was Shintaro Uda, but which was popularized by, and formerly popularly named for, his collaborator Hidetsugu Yagi.

Similar cases

• Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula was discovered by Simon Plouffe, who has since expressed regret at having to share credit for his discovery.

See also

• List of misnamed theorems
• List of multiple discoveries
• List of scientific priority disputes

References

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.