13/03/2019

'No scientific law is named after its discoverer'

Pitágoras escrevendo em livro / Fonte: Wikimedia Commons

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

Some time ago I wrote that the theorem bearing Pythagoras' name is not actually his. This caused discomfort, and readers accused me of "historical revisionism" and "reputation destruction." Exaggerations aside, I think it's great that mathematics arouses passions normally reserved for football refereeing or soap operas.

However, I only mentioned a "new" fact known to historians for over a century, based on archaeological findings in Babylon, and which in no way diminishes the role of the Pythagoreans in the development of Western thought.

Furthermore, many scientific advances are wrongly attributed to others. I will cite some cases where the error is accidental and not the result of bad faith or bias.

I've already given another example here: Stokes' theorem in vector calculus—discovered by the physicist Lord Kelvin and presented to his colleague George Stokes. Years later, Stokes included the question in an exam at Cambridge University and ended up gaining the fame, giving his name to the theorem. There is no record that Kelvin, elevated to the great nobility of the kingdom, felt wronged.

Another example, less scientific. After a failed test with equipment of his own design, aerospace engineer Edward Murphy blamed his assistant. "If there's a way to make something go wrong, this guy can do it." The unpleasant phrase was converted into the absurdity "anything that can go wrong will go wrong," the famous "Murphy's Law" that he himself detested. But we don't need to feel sorry for him: would the original phrase have made him so famous?

There's even a "theory" about it. In 1997, the Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold, a great joker, proclaimed: "Arnold's Principle: if a concept is named after someone, that person is not the discoverer." Of course, according to Arnold, this principle was discovered by someone else, in this case the physicist Michael Berry. Therefore: "Berry's Principle: Arnold's principle can be applied to itself."

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