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Hot answers tagged naming-conventions

10

I believe it’s because this function was used, and denoted “psi”, much before it got a name. Indeed, it looks like $(\log\circ\,\Pi)'$ and $(\log\circ\,\Gamma)'$ first occur in Euler (1755, pp. 797-801; 1769, p. 17), resp. Legendre (1810, p. 502), with no special name or notation. Surveys like Brunel (1886, p. 58; 1899, p. 162) or Jensen (1916, p. 140) agree ...

10

The "we" in the scientific papers does not mean the "royal we". This "we" means "you and I", that is "the author and the reader". For example, in proving something they say "let us consider"... and then "we conclude". A teacher addressing the class says: "we write", "we draw", inviting her students to do the same. Some people write instead "I consider..." "...

8

As you noticed, separate equations have other names as well. Maxwell's adding the displacement term made the system complete, with all important consequences, in particular, existing of electromagnetic waves. So the name of the whole system after Maxwell is completely justified.

8

It seems that this attempt made an impression, when one needs to make the point Indiana Pi itself is typically invoked. NMSR Reports modeled their 1998 April Fool's story on it: "NASA engineers and mathematicians in this high-tech city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legislature narrowly passed a law yesterday [March 30, 1998] ...

7

What was called "natural philosophy" is not what is now called "science". The latter, with its specific institutions and standards, only started forming in 17th century and was not fully formed until mid 19th. While Newton still called his opus magnum Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687, after much professionalization and institutional ...

7

I suppose that all these notions and terminology come from the early astronomy. It so happened that in the ancient times astronomy was mostly practiced in the Northern hemisphere. If you observe from Northern hemisphere, the sky rotates about you clockwise (East to West). Sun in particular. This determines the clockwise direction, as the time was always ...

7

There are a number of reasons: The thing that differentiates fermions and bosons from the Higgs boson specifically is that they are general classes of particles (based on spin), while the Higgs boson is a specific particle (or particle type, if you will). The names "fermions" and "bosons" were coined by Paul Dirac, who was no longer in prominence when the ...

7

Usually not, though there are exceptions. Names in honor of X are usually given by others than X herself. And it cannot be otherwise: the name of an object must be accepted by the research community. It is considered immodest to suggest your own name yourself. Many various naming patterns, with examples, are analysed in my answer and other answers to this ...

6

This is a question about etymology. It all started with the genuine Greek words anion “going up” and kation “going down”, both neuter participles of the verb “to go” with different preverbs: an(a)- and kat(a)-. Then we got “ion” on its own as a term encompassing both, and then, by analogy, “proton”, “electron”, “neutron”, and ultimately also “positron” (...

6

Oliver Heaviside invented what is called "symbolic calculus" which was a mathematically non-rigorous (at that time) but very effective way of solving differential equations that occur in physics and engineering. Later it was justified using Laplace transform and distributions theory. Heaviside function plays an important role in his formalism, analogous to ...

6

This isn't really a physical law, nor is it exactly what you're asking for, but the statistical concept usually known as the "Akaike Information Criterion" (AIC) was indeed called AIC by Akaike, but with the name "an information criterion." I don't know historically whether that was intentional or not, but when Sumio Watanabe called his extension the "...

6

I quote from Ask the Historian "The Universal Gas Constant" by William B. Jensen, Department of Chemistry, University of Cincinnati, published in J. Chem. Educ., 2003, 80, 731-732 Question Why is the universal gas constant in $PV = nRT$ represented by the letter $R$? Answer This is best answered by tracing the origins of the ideal gas law itself. ...

5

I am not sure what the editors of Wikipedia had in mind when arranging the names (if anything). Linear algebra textbook authors have them arranged every which way for both the formula and the identity, see e.g. Shafarevich-Remizov (p.69), Dym (p.103) and Lancaster (p.39). The formula was discovered independently but almost simultaneously in 1812 by both ...

5

The color code was developed in the 1920's by the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA) as a three band code for resistor values. The three bands were more compact than the number value because the third band represented the number of zeroes. For example, 250 000 Ω was reduced to three bands. In addition, color bands remained visible in whatever position a ...

5

Ampère never wrote down what is confusingly called "Ampère's circuital law," not even the form without the displacement current term, as Ampère never dealt with the field concept.* Maxwell derived $$\nabla \times \mathbf{B} = \mu_0\mathbf{J}$$ in his 1855 paper On Faraday's Lines of Force, based on analogies to hydrodynamics, which he corrected to be \...

4

In 2013, Harminder Dua announced the discovery of the eponymous Dua's layer in the eye. Wikipedia writes: While some scientists welcomed the announcement, other scientists cautioned that time was needed for other researchers to confirm the discovery and its significance. Others have met the claim "with incredulity". The choice of the name Dua's Layer has ...

3

Here is an interesting twist. The Black-Scholes model for option pricing first appeared in: Black, Fischer; Scholes, Myron (1973). "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities". Journal of Political Economy 81 (3): 637–654. where they derived and solved the governing partial differential equation, now referred to as the Black-Scholes equation. Robert ...

3

Elements were standardized before we were even talking about chemistry: The alchemical elements were all well-known to those dabbling in that "science". This should put the answer to your question around 1670 according to the Proposal for Alchemical Symbols in Unicode As for modern chemical symbols, the first notation approximation of modern elements I ...

3

The asteroid 20 Massalia was the first asteroid to not be assigned its own astrological symbol, and was also the first object in the solar system to be given a non-mythological name. It's named after Marseilles, the hometown of the discoverers. It appears that the first person to have an asteroid named after them was Empress Eugenia di Montijo, the wife of ...

3

Much of the personal naming occured in 1860-70s for CGS and 1870-1880s for SI, see History of the Metric System. Most of the units named referred to deceased people: newtons, volts, ohms, amperes, pascals, coulombs, watts, etc. Some passed away a while ago, like Pascal and Newton, some relatively recently, like Ampere and Ohm. Farads, joules and webers ...

3

The question probably cannot be precisely answered as stated, but there is an early example close to what you expect to see, at least in terms of time frame and the importance of the mathematician involved. It has to do with printed matter, though, not with talks, and refers to a notion, not a theorem. The notion is that of a Banach space. According to Jeff ...

3

Likely relevant resources are Konrad Zuse, "Der Computer ― Mein Lebenswerk" (Springer, Berlin 1984) and Raúl Rojas (ed.), "Die Rechenmachinen Konrad Zuses" (Springer, Berlin 1998). F.L. Bauer, H. Wössner, The "Plankalkül" of Konrad Zuse: A Forerunner of Today’s Programming Languages. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 15, No. 7, July 1972, pp. 678-685 ...

2

This Wikipedia thread is hilarious, but it is not hard to figure out where "tauon" came from after muon, pion, kaon, etc. When the same type of abbreviation is used enough times people start treating it as a generating rule, it's the same with other types of linguistic formation. It's a wonder we don't have rhoons, omegaons as well, maybe they just don't ...

2

HERE is a listing of the SI derived units. As far as I know, none of these were someone naming it for himself. If your name is Henry Gray then you are a double unit.

2

"X's Theorem" is just a convenient label, not an indication of priority. And many researchers, including myself, will agree that "Pythagoras Theorem" is a more convenient label than the "Right-angled Triangle Theorem". The name that you proposed also does not reflect the matter because there are several theorems about right-angled triangle. Anyway, ...

2

Why not? Science and mathematics are communal efforts, every discovery typically has multiple precursors ("standing on the shoulders of giants"), and "the discoverer" is often not the one from whom subsequent scholars and/or the public learn about it because they did not explain or publicize it well enough. "Stigler's law" is an example of the latter. ...

2

Because the various "calendar modifications" in Western Europe during the ages were driven by political and religious "interests" and not by scientific ones. European calendar is basically due to Ancient Rome; see Roman calendar : The Roman calendar changed its form several times between the founding of Rome and the fall of the Roman ...

2

Two scientists got a unit named after them while alive: Joule and Weber. 1) Joule: the second International Electrical Congress in 1889 adopted the joule as the practical unit of electrical work. But time flies, and Joule died a few weeks after the event.(Jayson) 2) Weber. Around 1871, Latimer Clark introduced the weber as a name for the practical unit of ...

2

It is a gradual process. All sciences were born from "philosophy". Philosophy is just a verbal speculation about the thing we do not know exactly. When speculation on a subject reaches some degree of maturity, some truth can be discovered and proved. Then a science is born. Ancients started to speculate about nature. Then gradually, mathematics and ...

1

According to the French wikipedia page Fonction digamma, it was James Stirling (1730) who first introduced and studied the digamma function, denoting it with the Greek letter digamma (upper case) $\digamma$. However, this claim is marked as requiring a citation. After noting its subsequent study by Legendre, Poisson and Gauss around 1810, the article then ...

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