nLab Stigler's law of eponymy

Introduction

Stigler’s law of eponymy is the principle that fundamental discoveries are named after the person who made them famous, not the person who made them first, and these are often not the same person.

It is also called the Matthew effect, after Matthew 25:29. It is a variant of Arnold’s law, which also applies to itself.

In certain parts of the mathematics community this is also called Baez's law, which states that

“Any effect, constant, theorem or equation named after Professor X was first discovered by Professor Y, for some value of Y not equal to X.”

Examples

Stigler himself named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of Stigler's law of eponymy, so that it is itself an example of Stigler's law of eponymy.

In mathematics

• Currying was first identified by Moses Schönfinkel, rather than by Haskell Curry.
• Kripke frames go back before Kripke to 1957; see nForum discussion.
• Conduché functors were introduced by Jean Giraud 8 years before F. Conduché.
• Russell's paradox was first proved by Ernst Zermelo rather than Bertrand Russell

There are several more already on the nLab; they just don’t link here yet.

In physics

• Hubble's law was first formulated by Georges Lemaître rather than Edwin Hubble

References

• Wikipedia, Stigler’s law of eponymy

• Wikipedia, List of examples of Stigler’s law

• This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 112), reply on sci.math