Before revision: Stigler himself named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of "Stigler's law" to show that it follows its own decree, though the phenomenon had previously been noted by others.For example Henry Dudeney noted in his 1917 Amusements in Mathematics solution 129 that Pell's equation was called that "apparently because Pell neither first propounded the question nor first solved it!"
After revision: Stigler named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of "Stigler's law" to show that it follows its own decree, though the phenomenon had been noted by others.For example Henry Dudeney noted in his 1917 Amusements in Mathematics solution 129 that Pell's equation was called that "apparently because Pell neither first propounded the question nor first solved it!"