# Stigler's Law: Why Science Honors the Wrong Names

*Science & Technology · Priya Nair · 2026-08-04*

## TL;DR

Stigler's Law of Eponymy states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer; instead, credit goes to a later, more prominent scientist. Stephen Stigler proposed the law in 1980, noting that even his own eponymous law follows the pattern, as the idea had been suggested earlier by Robert Merton.

## Key facts

- Stephen Stigler formulated the law in 1980 while working as a statistics professor at the University of Chicago.
- The Pythagorean theorem was known to Babylonian mathematicians over a thousand years before Pythagoras, yet it bears his name.
- Avogadro's number was first calculated by Josef Loschmidt in 1865, but Amedeo Avogadro received the credit decades later.
- Euler's number e was discovered by Jacob Bernoulli in 1683, nearly fifty years before Leonhard Euler popularized it.
- The Gaussian distribution was actually introduced by Abraham de Moivre in 1733, not Carl Friedrich Gauss in the early 1800s.

## Why the Wrong People Get Credit (and Why That's Normal)

You would think the person who actually discovers something gets the honor. But history has a stubborn habit of handing the trophy to someone else. This quirk has a name: Stigler's Law of Eponymy, and it explains why so many scientific breakthroughs carry the wrong name.

Statistician Stephen Stigler published this law in 1980 in the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences. He gave it his own name as a joke, fully aware that the idea itself proved his point. Stigler credited sociologist Robert K. Merton, who had studied how scientific discoveries often get attached to whoever became famous later, not whoever did the work first.

Look at the Pythagorean theorem. It was known before Pythagoras, with Babylonian, Indian, and Egyptian sources predating him. The proofs we use today came after him. Yet his name is permanently welded to it.

Avogadro's number tells the same story. Amedeo Avogadro proposed in 1811 that equal volumes of gases contain the same number of molecules. But Josef Loschmidt calculated the approximate value of that number. The figure still bears Avogadro's name, not Loschmidt's.

The pattern repeats across mathematics. The constant e, which we call Euler's number, actually originated from Jacob Bernoulli's work on compound interest. Roger Cotes expressed what we now call the Euler formula about thirty years before Euler did. And the Gaussian distribution? Abraham de Moivre introduced it in 1738 in *The Doctrine of Chances*, long before Gauss was born.

Even geography gets tangled up in this. Christopher Columbus is credited with reaching the Americas in 1492, but Norse explorer Leif Erikson arrived about 500 years earlier. Columbus's voyages were widely recorded and had a massive impact on European exploration, so history remembers him instead.

Stigler's Law of Eponymy even predicts its own fate. The law itself, named after Stigler, was an idea he openly attributed to Merton. It demonstrates the phenomenon it describes, right down to the name on the label.

## The Law That Named Itself: Stephen Stigler's 1980 Joke

In 1980, statistician Stephen Stigler published a paper in the *Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences* that made a wry confession: he was naming a new scientific principle after himself, fully aware that the idea wasn't his. He called it **Stigler's Law of Eponymy**, and the joke was the point.

The law states that no scientific discovery is ever named after its original discoverer. Instead, credit tends to land on whoever came later and became more famous. Stigler, with a grin, credited the concept to sociologist Robert K. Merton, who had spent years studying how recognition flows through the scientific community. Merton had observed that discoveries are usually attributed to prominent figures rather than the unknown people who actually found them first.

Stigler's self-naming was a perfect demonstration of his own rule. By putting his name on a law he didn't originate, he proved the very phenomenon he described. The law itself became the example.

Consider the Pythagorean theorem. It was known long before Pythagoras walked the earth, with Babylonian and Indian mathematicians working with the relationship centuries earlier. Yet the Greek philosopher's name became permanently attached to it. The proofs we use today came after him, but the label stuck.

Avogadro's number tells a similar story. Amedeo Avogadro proposed in 1811 that equal volumes of gases contain the same number of molecules. But it was Josef Loschmidt who actually calculated the approximate value of that number years later. Despite Loschmidt doing the mathematical heavy lifting, the constant bears Avogadro's name, not his.

The mathematician Leonhard Euler gets credit for more concepts than almost anyone in history, and Stigler's law explains why. The constant *e*, known as Euler's number, actually traces back to Jacob Bernoulli's work on compound interest. The famous Euler formula? Roger Cotes expressed it in 1714, roughly thirty years before Euler did. Euler's brilliance was real, but so was his visibility, and that visibility won him the naming rights.

Gauss's distribution follows the same pattern. Carl Friedrich Gauss lends his name to the normal distribution, but Abraham de Moivre got there first. In the 1738 edition of *The Doctrine of Chances*, de Moivre developed an approximation to the binomial distribution that laid the groundwork for what we now call the normal curve. Gauss popularized it; de Moivre created it. History remembers Gauss.

Even the discovery of the Americas fits the pattern. Christopher Columbus is credited with reaching the New World in 1492, and his voyages were meticulously documented, echoing through European exploration for centuries. But the Norse explorer Leif Erikson had reached North America roughly 500 years earlier, around the year 1000, with the settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows serving as physical evidence. Columbus's voyages had greater impact and better documentation, so he got the credit.

Stigler's Law of Eponymy works because science rewards visibility, not just discovery. Publishing well, being connected, and gaining prominence matter as much as being first. The people who shout loudest, or whose work circulates widest, tend to get their names attached to ideas, whether or not they had the original insight.

### The Pythagorean Theorem Wasn't Pythagoras's Idea

Every geometry student learns the name, but Pythagoras never came up with the Pythagorean theorem. Babylonian, Indian, and Egyptian mathematicians all worked with this relationship long before the Greek philosopher was born, and the proofs used in classrooms today were developed after his lifetime. Yet his name remains permanently attached to it.

The theorem works so smoothly that it feels like one person must have discovered it whole. Instead, it emerged piece by piece across ancient civilizations, each one finding the same elegant truth about right triangles. The Babylonians recorded it on clay tablets around 1800 BCE, and Indian and Egyptian sources show they knew it too. Pythagoras lived centuries later, around 570 to 495 BCE, and his followers did important mathematical work. But the theorem itself was already old news by then.

What Pythagoras and his school did was organize and teach the idea, turning scattered knowledge into something systematic. The formal proofs students memorize today came even later, built by mathematicians who refined the concept over generations. None of that mattered for history's memory. The name stuck anyway, and now the theorem and Pythagoras are inseparable in textbooks worldwide.

This pattern is exactly what Stigler's Law of Eponymy describes. When statistician Stephen Stigler published the law in 1980, he pointed out that scientific discoveries rarely carry the names of their true originators. The person who gets credit is usually the one who published well, taught widely, or simply had better timing. Pythagoras fits that description perfectly, as do countless others throughout the history of science.

### Avogadro's Number: A Case of Mistaken Identity

Open any chemistry textbook and you will meet Avogadro's number, the staggering figure that counts the molecules in a single mole of gas. But the man whose name adorns this constant, Amedeo Avogadro, never actually calculated it. The number that bears his name was first approximated by someone else entirely, a physicist named Josef Loschmidt, and that curious mix-up is one of the cleanest examples of Stigler's Law of Eponymy in action.

In 1811, Avogadro, an Italian scientist, proposed a bold idea: equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules. It was a brilliant theoretical leap, but he never put a figure on that number. Decades later, around 1865, the Austrian physicist Josef Loschmidt took up the challenge. Working from the kinetic theory of gases, he estimated the actual diameter of air molecules and, from that, calculated how many molecules would fill a given volume. His result gave the world its first approximate value of what we now call Avogadro's number.

So why does Avogadro get the credit? The name stuck because his hypothesis framed the concept, even though Loschmidt did the measuring. In some parts of Europe, the figure is still known as Loschmidt's constant, a nod to the man who actually did the math. Yet in most classrooms around the world, it is Avogadro's number that students memorize, a perfect illustration of how scientific fame often goes to the person who framed an idea rather than the one who proved it.

### Euler and Gauss: The Giants Who Stole the Show

If you want to see Stigler's Law of Eponymy in action, you need look no further than the two most celebrated names in mathematics: Leonhard Euler and Carl Friedrich Gauss. Both men were genuine geniuses of the 18th and 19th centuries, but the concepts that bear their names often had earlier, quieter origins. The credit simply followed the fame.

Take the constant *e*, the base of natural logarithms that shows up everywhere from compound interest to calculus. We call it Euler's number, but its true origin lies with Jacob Bernoulli, who stumbled upon it while studying compound interest problems. Bernoulli's work on continuously compounded interest led him to the value that would eventually be written as *e*. Euler later popularized and standardized the notation, and so history handed him the naming rights.

The story repeats with Euler's formula, the elegant equation linking exponential functions to trigonometry. Roger Cotes had already expressed this relationship in a different form about thirty years before Euler did. Cotes derived his version in 1714, yet the formula is now universally known by Euler's name. Euler's prolific output and influence overshadowed Cotes's earlier contribution.

Gauss faced a similar situation with the normal distribution, the bell-shaped curve that underpins so much of statistics. We call it the Gaussian distribution, but its first traces belong to Abraham de Moivre. In 1738, de Moivre published *The Doctrine of Chances*, a work on probability where he developed an approximation to the binomial distribution. That approximation laid the groundwork for what became known as the normal distribution. Gauss later refined and applied the concept extensively, cementing his name to it.

These examples illustrate the core of Stigler's Law of Eponymy: the scientist who publicizes an idea well often gets the credit, while the true pioneer fades into the footnotes. Bernoulli did the math, Cotes wrote the formula, and de Moivre drew the curve. Yet schoolchildren learn about Euler and Gauss.

## It's Not Just Science: Columbus, Erikson, and the Matthew Effect

Leif Erikson, a Norse explorer, reached the Americas around the year 1000, roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492. Yet when most people picture the "discovery" of the New World, they picture Columbus. The difference comes down to something beyond the voyages themselves: visibility, record-keeping, and the strange way fame feeds on itself.

Erikson's journey was real. Norse sagas tell of his landing at a place called Vinland, and archaeological evidence at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland confirms a Norse settlement from around that time. The man simply got there first, by half a millennium.

But Columbus's voyages were documented with remarkable care. His logs, his letters to the Spanish crown, and the accounts of his crew painted a vivid picture that European courts, mapmakers, and chroniclers devoured. Those records spread across a continent already hungry for new trade routes and new territories. The impact was immediate and enormous. Erikson's achievement, however impressive, never got that kind of publicity machine behind it.

This is where the Matthew Effect enters the picture. The term, coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton, describes a simple pattern: those who are already famous tend to receive more credit, more resources, and more recognition than equally talented people who remain unknown. The rich get richer, and the famous get more famous. Columbus, already celebrated in his own time, became even more celebrated in the centuries that followed. Erikson, barely known outside Norse communities, stayed obscure.

This same dynamic runs through the history of science, and it is precisely what **Stigler's Law of Eponymy** captures. Statistician Stephen Stigler published the law in 1980, playfully giving it his own name while openly crediting Merton as the true originator of the idea. The law states, in essence, that no scientific discovery is ever named after its actual discoverer. The person who gets the credit is usually the one who published most effectively, promoted most aggressively, or simply happened to be most visible when the idea caught on.

Think about the Pythagorean theorem. Babylonian, Indian, and Egyptian mathematicians all worked with the relationship between the sides of a right triangle long before Pythagoras was born. Yet the theorem bears his name. The same pattern repeats with Avogadro's number. Amedeo Avogadro proposed in 1811 that equal volumes of gases contain the same number of molecules, but it was Josef Loschmidt who actually calculated the approximate value. The number is still called Avogadro's, not Loschmidt's.

Even the giants of mathematics built on work that predated them. The constant *e*, known as Euler's number, traces its origins to Jacob Bernoulli's studies of compound interest. Roger Cotes expressed the Euler formula in 1714, roughly thirty years before Euler himself. And the Gaussian distribution, so firmly associated with Carl Friedrich Gauss, was first developed by Abraham de Moivre in the 1738 edition of *The Doctrine of Chances*. Each of these men had predecessors who did the foundational work, yet history remembers the louder names.

Publication and visibility are not side notes to discovery. They are the very mechanisms by which credit gets assigned. A scientist can make a brilliant breakthrough, but if the work stays buried in an obscure journal, or arrives too late, someone else may publish the same idea and walk away with the legacy. The lesson is uncomfortable but clear: being right is not enough. Being seen is what matters.

## What Stigler's Law Teaches Us About Work and Humility

Stigler's Law of Eponymy is more than a clever observation about scientific naming; it is a practical guide for how to work, how to claim credit, and how to stay humble. The law, published by statistician Stephen Stigler in 1980, reminds us that someone else may well have had the same idea we are working on right now, possibly years earlier and possibly halfway around the world. That single thought changes how you approach your own projects.

Knowing that your brilliant concept might already exist somewhere should not paralyze you. Instead, it should push you toward discipline and persistence. If you assume someone else is quietly working on the same problem, you stop delaying and start doing. The law nudges you to finish the work, write it down, and put it out into the world before someone else does the same thing and gets remembered for it.

Visibility matters enormously here. The original discoverer often loses the naming rights simply because nobody knew what they had found. Making your own work visible is not vanity; it is survival. When you contribute to a project, say so clearly in meetings, in reports, and in written correspondence. Do not wait for people to notice on their own. Describe what you did, in plain terms, so your effort does not quietly dissolve into someone else's reputation. The historical record is full of people who did the work but never announced it, and their names faded while others collected the glory.

Yet Stigler's Law of Eponymy also cuts in the opposite direction, demanding genuine humility. Your successes, however hard-won, stand on the shoulders of everyone who came before you. The mathematician who cracks a problem today is building on centuries of failed attempts, partial insights, and patient refinement by people whose names nobody remembers. Every discovery is part of a long, shared human effort. Recognizing that does not diminish your achievement; it places it in its true context. You did the work, yes, but you did it inside a river of work that started long before you arrived and will continue long after you are gone.

That combination of discipline, visibility, and humility is the real lesson. Work hard because someone else might beat you to the idea. Claim your contributions because history will not do it for you. And stay humble because, in the end, even your greatest breakthrough is a small addition to a collective endeavor that spans generations.


## Frequently asked questions

**What is Stigler's Law of Eponymy?**

Stigler's Law of Eponymy is the observation that no scientific discovery is ever named after its original discoverer. Instead, credit tends to go to someone who came later, often a more famous figure. Statistician Stephen Stigler formally articulated this principle in a 1980 article published in the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences.

**Who discovered Stigler's Law of Eponymy?**

Stephen Stigler, an American statistics professor, coined the term and published it in 1980. In a playful twist that perfectly illustrates the law itself, he named it after himself while openly acknowledging that the underlying idea came from sociologist Robert K. Merton. Merton had studied how scientific discoveries often become associated with more prominent figures rather than their true pioneers.

**How did Josef Loschmidt contribute to Avogadro's number?**

Josef Loschmidt, an Austrian physicist and chemist, calculated the approximate value of what we now call Avogadro's number in 1865. Amedeo Avogadro had proposed in 1811 that equal volumes of gases contain the same number of molecules, but he never determined that quantity. Despite Loschmidt's crucial calculation, the number bears Avogadro's name rather than his.

**Who really discovered the normal distribution before Gauss?**

Abraham de Moivre, a French mathematician working in London, first developed the normal distribution in 1738. He introduced it in the second edition of his work The Doctrine of Chances as an approximation to the binomial distribution. Carl Friedrich Gauss later used the distribution extensively in astronomy and statistics, which is why it carries his name today.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/stiglers-law-why-science-honors-wrong/