Stigler's law concerns the supposed tendency of eponymous expressions for scientific discoveries to honor people other than their respective originators.
Examples include:
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. Ampère's circuital law was inspired by the experimental results of André-Marie Ampère, and named in his honor. However, it was James Clerk Maxwell who combined those results into a single mathematical law. Arabic numerals, first developed in India around 7th century. Archimedes' screw is known to predate Archimedes by at least three centuries in ancient Babylon.Stephanie Dalley, The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: an elusive World Wonder traced, (2013), OUP Argand diagram by Caspar Wessel in 1797, predating Jean-Robert Argand by nine years. 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. Auger effect. First discovered by Lise Meitner in 1922 and then, independently, in 1923 by Pierre Victor Auger.
B Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula was discovered by Simon Plouffe, who has since expressed regret at having to share credit for his discovery. 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. The Bethe–Salpeter equation (named after Hans Bethe and Edwin Salpeter), which describes the bound states of a two-body system in quantum field theory. The equation was first published by Yoichiro Nambu, but without derivation. 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 Bhatia–Davis inequality, which provides an upper bound on the variance of a distribution, is named after Rajendra Bhatia and Chandler Davis who formulated the inequality in 2000. However, it had already been found by Jacob Muilwijk in 1966. 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, and refined further in work with Merton in 1969. 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.Bonferroni, C. E., Teoria statistica delle classi e calcolo delle probabilità, Pubblicazioni del R Istituto Superiore di Scienze Economiche e Commerciali di Firenze 1936 However, its development is often credited to Olive Jean Dunn, who described the procedure's application to confidence intervals. 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.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 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.Date, C.J. Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners. O'Reilly (2005), p. 142. 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. Braess's paradox, that adding one or more roads to a road network can cause overall traffic flow through it to slow down, was first discovered by Arthur Pigou in 1920. 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 Cantor–Bernstein–Schröder theorem (also known by other variations, such as Schröder-Bernstein theorem) first proved by Richard Dedekind Cantor set, discovered in 1874 by Henry John Stephen Smith and introduced by German mathematician Georg Cantor 1883. Carmichael number: 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. Cartan matrices, first investigated by Wilhelm Killing. Cardano's formula, the solution to general cubic equations. Cardano stated that it was discovered by Scipione del Ferro, who passed the knowledge to his student Antonio Maria Fior. Around 1535 Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia learned of this from Fior and re-derived the formula for the cubic, which he later shared with Cardano.J. Stillwell, Mathematics and Its History, 3rd Ed, Springer,2010 Cassegrain reflector, named after a design published in 1672 which has been attributed to Laurent Cassegrain,André Baranne and Françoise Launay, Cassegrain: a famous unknown of instrumental astronomy, Journal of Optics, 1997, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 158-172(15) but was already known to Bonaventura Cavalieri in 1632Stargazer, the Life and Times of the Telescope, by Fred Watson, p. 134 and Marin Mersenne in 1636.Stargazer, p. 115. Cartesian duality: 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. Cavendish balance for measuring the universal gravitational constant, first devised and constructed by John Michell. The Cayley–Hamilton theorem was proven for the general case by Ferdinand Frobenius. 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. 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. Coriolis force which was previously recognized by others but was first mathematically described in an 1835 paper by Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis 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. Currying, a technique for transforming an n-arity function to a chain of functions. Named after Haskell Curry who had attributed its earlier discovery to Moses Schönfinkel, though the principle can be traced back to work in 1893 by Gottlob Frege.
D Deming cycle of continuous improvement. Deming himself always referred to it as the "Shewhart cycle". De Morgan's laws of logic, transformation rules of propositional logic. Named after 19th-century British mathematician Augustus De Morgan, but already known to medieval philosophers such as Jean Buridan. Dunning-Kruger Effect was early warned by Bertrand Russell when he stated that "the fundamental problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt". Dyson spheres are named after Freeman Dyson, but Dyson himself credited the original idea to Olaf Stapledon.
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 Fadeev–Popov ghosts, and their role in quantizing gauge theories, were first discovered by Richard Feynman. The second known work to make use of them was by Bryce DeWitt. Two weeks later, Ludwig Faddeev and Victor Popov published their work on the path integral treatment of these ghosts, leading Gerard 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman to choose their now standard name. Farey sequence. Cauchy published the proof to a conjecture put forth by Farey. Unknown to both men, similar results had been published earlier by Charles Haros. Fermi's golden rule, a quantum mechanical calculation, was discovered by Paul Dirac. The Fermi paradox, stated (in an unpublished work) by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1933, long before Fermi. Tsiolkovsky, in turn, stated that others had already considered this question. The Floyd–Warshall algorithm for finding shortest paths in a weighted graph is named after Robert Floyd and Stephen Warshall who independently published papers about it in 1962. However, Bernard Roy had previously published an equivalent algorithm in 1959. The Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum were first noted by William Hyde Wollaston twelve years before they were rediscovered and studied systematically by Joseph von Fraunhofer.