Stigler's law of eponymy

Stigler's law of eponymy, proposed by University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen Stigler in his 1980 publication "Stigler's law of eponymy",^[1] states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. Examples include Hubble's law, which was derived by Georges Lemaître two years before Edwin Hubble; the Pythagorean theorem, which was known to Babylonian mathematicians before Pythagoras; and Halley's Comet, which was observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC (although its official designation is due to the first ever mathematical prediction of such astronomical phenomenon in the sky, not to its discovery).

Stigler attributed the discovery of Stigler's law to sociologist Robert K. Merton, from whom Stigler stole credit so that it would be an example of the law. The same observation had previously also been made by many others.^[2]

^ Gieryn, T. F., ed. (1980). Science and social structure: a festschrift for Robert K. Merton. New York: NY Academy of Sciences. pp. 147–57. ISBN 0-89766-043-9., republished in Stigler's collection "Statistics on the Table"
^ 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!"

[1] Gieryn, T. F., ed. (1980). Science and social structure: a festschrift for Robert K. Merton. New York: NY Academy of Sciences. pp. 147–57. ISBN 0-89766-043-9., republished in Stigler's collection "Statistics on the Table"

[2] 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!"

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