Today’s Eponymy in August is, self-referentially, Stigler’s Law of Eponymy. Concisely stated,
“No scientific discovery is named for its discoverer.”
Stephen Stigler is a statistics professor at the University of Chicago and first published the law in 1980. He credits the late sociologist Robert K. Merton as having first discovered it, making the law self-describing as well.
I wanted to get this one out early since it’s an eponymous law of eponymy, and will be relevant to future posts on the topic.