Do you want your share of scientific immortality? You can devote
your life to mastering your field, examining the mysteries of
the universe, and then finally arriving at one great
discovery...but according to Stigler's Law, you won't get the
credit. Stigler's Law of eponymy holds that scientific laws and
discoveries are never given the names of their actual
discoverers. We can find it everywhere throughout the history of
science, in physics, medicine, chemistry, mathematics, you name
it - and even someone as legendary as Nicolaus Copernicus wasn't
immune. But this isn't just (or even mostly) about credit-
stealing. This is about the difference between how we tend to
think science works and how it actually works. What is Stigler's
Law? In its strongest, simplest form, Stigler's Law tells us "No
scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer."
The term was coined by University of Chicago statistics
professor Stephen Stigler (left) in a 1980 paper. Stigler was
building on a number of earlier ideas, i