Law of Stigler

The law of Stigler , in its most abrupt form, affirms:

a scientific discovery never bears the name of its author

It was stated under this name, therefore éponyme, by Stigler in 1980 at the time of a festschrift in the honor of the American sociologist Robert K. Merton, which, according to Stigler is the discoverer of this law. This law, taken again by Stigler in its charming book “Statistics one the table: The history off statistical concepts and methods” of 1999, tends to becoming as famous as the Loi of Murphy.

There are many examples where the law is checked in mathematics, with more or less of clearness. For example the Triangle of Pascal has a remote origin, the Règle of the Hospital is due to Jean Bernoulli, the Formule of the binomial theorem for the entireties has an old story, the Théorème of Poker date of the XIXe century, the theorem of Alembert was shown by Gauss, etc, while the determinant of Vandermonde does not appear nowhere in the work of Vandermonde, pioneer of the theory of the determinants.

Does the law of Stigler escape the rule?

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