斯蒂格勒定律例子列表

斯蒂格勒定律（Stigler's law），又称名字命名法则。是芝加哥大学一位很有幽默感的统计学家史蒂芬·史蒂格勒提出的一定律，最简单的说法是“没有科学的发现是因其原有发现者的名字而命名”，即科学定律最后的命名大多归功于后来更有名望的科学家。斯蒂格勒自己认为斯蒂格勒定律其实是罗伯特·金·莫顿最先发现，因此“斯蒂格勒定律”本身的命名也符合斯蒂格勒定律。

著名示例包括：

- 高斯分布：最早是由棣莫弗在1718年著作中提出。
- 本福特定律：最早是由西蒙·纽康在1881年提出。
- 三次方程的卡尔达诺公式：解法的思路来自塔塔利亚。
- 欧拉数e：雅各布·伯努利第一个注意到此常数。
- RSA加密算法：RSA是1977年由罗纳德·李维斯特（Ron Rivest）、阿迪·萨莫尔（Adi Shamir）和伦纳德·阿德曼（Leonard Adleman）一起提出的。当时他们三人都在麻省理工学院工作。RSA就是他们三人姓氏开头字母拼在一起组成的。其实1973年，在英国政府通讯总部工作的数学家克利福德·柯克斯（英语：）在一个内部文件中就提出了一个相同的算法，但他的发现被列入机密，一直到1997年才被发表。

## A

- 阿哈罗诺夫-玻姆效应。Werner Ehrenberg和Raymond E. Siday在1949年首次预测了这种效应，后来亚基尔·阿哈罗诺夫和戴维·玻姆在1959年重新发现了类似的效应
- 阿拉伯数字，于7世纪左右在印度发展起来的。
- Argand diagram于1797年由卡斯帕尔·韦塞尔创作，比让-罗贝尔·阿尔冈早9年。
- 阿瑞尼斯方程式。该方程最早由荷兰化学家J. H. van 't Hoff于1884年发现；五年后1889年，瑞典化学家斯万特·奥古斯特·阿伦尼乌斯为其提供了物理理由和解释。
- 奥杰效应。由莉泽·迈特纳于1922年首次发现，然后于1923年又由Pierre Victor Auger独立发现。

## B

- 贝利-波尔温-普劳夫公式 was discovered by 西蒙·普劳夫, who has since expressed regret at having to share credit for his discovery.
- 贝克德尔测验, a gender bias test for films popularised by and named after Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip writer Alison Bechdel, despite her repeated insistence that the test was devised by her friend Liz Wallace.
- 贝尔曼-福特算法, which is an algorithm for computing the shortest-length path, was proposed by Alfonso Shimbel, who presented the algorithm in 1954, but was named after Richard Bellman and Lester Ford Jr., who published equivalent forms in 1956 and 1958.
- 本福特定律, named after physicist Frank Benford, who stated it in 1938, although it had been previously stated by 西蒙·纽康 in 1881.
- 伯特兰投票问题 proved using André's reflection method, which states the probability that the winning candidate in an election stays in the lead throughout the count. It was first published by W. A. Whitworth in 1878, nine years before Joseph Louis François Bertrand; Désiré André's proof did not use reflection, though reflection is now the method commonly taught.
- The 贝塞麦转炉炼钢法 was discovered by William Kelly in 1851. Henry Bessemer was the first to obtain a patent in 1855.
- The 贝特–萨尔皮特方程 (named after Hans Bethe and Edwin Salpeter), which describes the bound states of a two-body system in quantum field theoretical. The equation was first published by 南部阳一郎, but without derivation.
- Betz' law, which shows the maximum attainable energy efficiency of a wind turbine, was discovered first by Frederick W. Lanchester. It was subsequently independently rediscovered by Albert Betz and also Nikolai Zhukovsky.
- 贝特里奇头条定律, stating that when a headline asks a (yes-no) question, the answer is no. Considered "an old truism among journalists", it was well known before Betteridge wrote about it in 2009.
- The Bilinski dodecahedron appears in a 1752 book by John Lodge Cowley but is named after Stanko Bilinski, who rediscovered it in 1960.
- The 布莱克-舒尔斯模型 postulating a geometric Brownian motion as a model for stock market returns, credited to the 1973 academic papers of 费雪·布雷克, 迈伦·舒尔兹 and 罗伯特·科克斯·默顿 was first proposed by 保罗·萨缪尔森 in 1965.
- Blount's disease was described independently by C. Mau (1923) and Harald Nilsonne (1929), both writing in German, before it was described in English by Walter Putnam Blount (1937).
- Bode's law of 1772 states that the distances of the planets from the sun follow a simple arithmetical rule. But it was first stated by Johann Titius in 1766, not 约翰·波得.
- The 邦费罗尼校正 is named after Italian mathematician 卡罗·埃米利奥·邦费罗尼 for its use of Bonferroni inequalities. However, its development is often credited to Olive Jean Dunn, who described the procedure's application to confidence intervals.
- BC正规形式, a normal form used in database normalization. Definition of what we now know as BCNF appeared in a paper by Ian Heath in 1971. Date writes: "Since that definition predated Boyce and Codd's own definition by some three years, it seems to me that BCNF ought by rights to be called Heath normal form. But it isn't."
- 玻意耳-马略特定律, which stipulates the reciprocal relation between the pressure and the volume of a gas, was first noted by Richard Towneley and Henry Power. In France, the law is known as Mariotte's law, after 埃德姆·马略特, who published his results later than Boyle, but crucially added that the relation holds only when temperature is kept constant.
- Bradley–Terry model, one of the most popular models for 成对比较, first described by Ernst Zermelo in 1929.
- Brayton Cycle, as quoted from Wikipedia itself: The engine cycle is named after George Brayton (1830–1892), the American engineer who developed it originally for use in piston engines, although it was originally proposed and patented by Englishman John Barber in 1791.
- Burnside's lemma, a counting technique in group theory was discovered by Augustin Louis Cauchy, or possibly others. William Burnside originally attributed it to Ferdinand Georg Frobenius. Ironically, Burnside made many original contributions to group theory, and Burnside's Lemma is sometimes jokingly referred to as "the lemma that is not Burnside's".
- 布里丹之驴 originates from the Persian philosopher 安萨里. The version popularised by Jean Buridan also does not include the eponymous donkey.

## C

- Cantor–Bernstein–Schröder theorem (also known by other variations, such as Schröder-Bernstein theorem) first proved by Richard Dedekind
- 康托尔集: discovered in 1874 by Henry John Stephen Smith and introduced by German mathematician Georg Cantor 1883.
- 卡迈克尔数: Václav Šimerka listed the first seven Carmichael numbers in 1885; they are named after 罗伯特·丹尼·卡迈克尔 who subsequently discovered the first one in 1910.
- Cartan matrices: first investigated by Wilhelm Killing.
- Cardano's formula: The solution to general 三次方程s, is known as Cardano's formula, despite Cardano stating that it was discovered by Scipione del Ferro, who passed the knowledge to his student Antonio Maria Fior. Around 1535 尼科洛·塔尔塔利亚 learned of this from Fior and re-derived the formula for the cubic, which he later shared with Cardano.
- 卡塞格林反射镜, named after a design published in 1672 which has been attributed to 洛朗·卡塞格兰, but was already known to 博纳文图拉·卡瓦列里 in 1632 and 马兰·梅森 in 1636.
- Cartesian duality: Named for Rene Descartes, but Teresa of Avila and her contemporaries wrote about similar methods of philosophical exploration 8 to 10 years before Descartes was born.
- Cavendish balance: for measuring the universal gravitational constant, first devised and constructed by 约翰·米歇尔.
- 钱德拉塞卡极限: The mass upper limit of a white dwarf, it was first discovered by Wilhelm Anderson and E. C. Stoner, and was only later improved by 苏布拉马尼扬·钱德拉塞卡.
- 切比雪夫不等式: Guarantees that, for a wide class of probability distributions, no more than a certain fraction of values can be more than a certain distance from the mean. It was first formulated by his friend and colleague Irénée-Jules Bienaymé in 1853 and proved by Chebyshev in 1867.
- Chernoff bound: A bound on the tail distribution of sums of independent random variables, named after 赫尔曼·切尔诺夫 but due to Herman Rubin.
- Cobb–Douglas: A production function named after Paul H. Douglas, and Charles W Cobb, developed earlier by Philip Wicksteed.
- Cooley–Tukey algorithm named after J. W. Cooley and 约翰·图基 but invented 160 years earlier in 1805 by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
- Curie point: a critical temperature of phase change in ferromagnetism. Named after 皮埃尔·居里, who reported it in his thesis in 1895, but the phenomenon was found by Claude Pouillet before 1832.
- Currying: a technique for transforming an n-arity function to a chain of functions. Named after Haskell Curry, though it was originally discovered by Moses Schönfinkel.

## D

- Deming cycle of continuous improvement. Deming himself always referred to it as the "Shewhart cycle".
- 德摩根定律 of logic, transformation rules of propositional logic. Named after 19th-century British mathematician Augustus De Morgan, but already known to medieval philosophers such as Jean Buridan.
- 戴森球s are named after 弗里曼·戴森, but Dyson himself credited the original idea to 奥拉夫·斯塔普雷顿.

## E

- Euler's number: the "discovery" of the constant itself is credited to 雅各布·伯努利, but it is named after Leonhard Euler.
- 欧拉公式: an equivalent formula was proved by Roger Cotes 30 years before Euler published his proof.

## F

- 法里数列. Cauchy published the proof to a conjecture put forth by Farey. Unknown to both men, similar results had been published earlier by Charles Haros.
- 快速傅里叶变换. The algorithm proposed in 1965 by Cooley and Tukey to interpolate the coefficients of a polynomial from its evaluations in a quasi-linear number of multiplication was invented in 1805 by Gauss.
- 费马大定理. An unusual example in that it is named after Pierre de Fermat who proposed it three and a half centuries prior to its proof by Andrew Wiles.
- 费米黄金定则, a quantum mechanical calculation, was discovered by Paul Dirac.
- The 费米悖论, stated (in an unpublished work) by 康斯坦丁·齐奥尔科夫斯基 in 1933, long before Fermi. Tsiolkovsky, in turn, stated that others had already considered this question.
- The Floyd-Warshall算法 for finding shortest paths in a weighted graph is named after Robert Floyd and Stephen Warshall who independently published papers about it in 1962. However, 贝尔纳·罗伊 had previously published an equivalent algorithm in 1959.
- The 夫朗和斐谱线 in the solar spectrum were first noted by 威廉·海德·沃拉斯顿 twelve years before they were rediscovered and studied systematically by 约瑟夫·冯·夫琅和费.
- 菲涅耳透镜. The idea of creating a thinner, lighter lens by making it with separate sections mounted in a frame is often attributed to Georges-Louis Leclerc.
- Frobenius elements in a Galois group of global fields were first created by Dedekind.
- Fibonacci numbers. Fibonacci was not the first to discover the famous sequence. They existed in Indian mathematics since 200 BC (Fibonacci gave the series in 1202 AD).

## G

- Galileo's paradox: the property of infinite sets was known to 邓斯·司各脱.
- 高斯定律: first described by Joseph Louis Lagrange in 1773, over half a century before Gauss.
- Gauss's theorem: first proved by Ostrogradsky in 1831.
- Gaussian distribution: the normal distribution was introduced by 亚伯拉罕·棣莫弗 in 1733, but named after Carl Friedrich Gauss who began using it in 1794.
- 高斯消去法: was already in well-known textbooks such as Thomas Simpson's when Gauss in 1809 remarked that he used "common elimination."
- 吉布斯现象: named for Josiah Willard Gibbs who published in 1901. First discovered by Henry Wilbraham in 1851.
- 古德哈特定律, with several earlier variations, like 坎贝尔定律.
- The Graetz circuit, also known as the diode bridge, was invented and patented in 1896 by Karol Pollak a year before it was published by Leo Graetz.
- The 格里望远镜 is named after James Gregory, who published it in 1663, but was already known to 博纳文图拉·卡瓦列里 in 1632 and 马兰·梅森 in 1636.
- 劣币驱逐良币 was described by 尼古拉·哥白尼 in 1519, the year of 托马斯·格雷沙姆's birth.
- Gröbner basis: the theory was developed by Bruno Buchberger, who named them after his advisor, Wolfgang Gröbner.

## H

- Halley's comet was observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, but named after 爱德蒙·哈雷 who computed its orbit and accurately predicted its return.
- 哈斯图s were used by Henri Gustav Vogt three years before the birth of 赫尔穆特·哈斯.
- Higgs field is named after 彼得·希格斯 but was first theorized by 罗伯特·布劳特 and 弗朗索瓦·恩格勒, albeit not published before Higgs had submitted his own paper.
- 海伦公式 is named after 亚历山大港的希罗 but is due to Archimedes.
- HP滤波 was popularized in the field of economics in the 1990s by economists Robert J. Hodrick and Nobel Memorial Prize winner 爱德华·普雷斯科特. However, it was first proposed much earlier by 埃德蒙·泰勒·魏泰克 in 1923.
- 哈勃–勒梅特定律 was derived by Georges Lemaître two years before 爱德文·哈勃.

## I

- Ising model was invented by 威廉·楞次, but given to his student 恩斯特·伊辛 to study.

## J

- Jacobson's organ was first discovered by Frederik Ruysch before 1732.
- Jordan's Law (in the sense of sister species often being allopatric): Jordan himself gives Wagner credit for earlier observation of this pattern.
- Joukowski transformation was first derived by Otto Blumenthal in 1913. Edit: A mere 3 years after Joukowski (who was actually Nikolay Zhukovsky), published it in 1910.

## K

- Kasiski analysis: invented by Charles Babbage who recorded it in his diary but didn't otherwise publish it.
- SN 1604 was first observed by Lodovico delle Colombe several days before 约翰内斯·开普勒
- 基灵型: invented by Élie Cartan
- Kort nozzle: was developed first by Luigi Stipa (1931) and later by Ludwig Kort (1934)
- 柯伊伯带: theoretically described by a number of astronomers before 杰拉德·柯伊伯; Kuiper theorized that such a belt no longer existed.
- Kodály method: was conceived and developed for music teaching by Jenő Ádám; a pupil of Kodály.
- 克罗内克积: Johann Georg Zehfuss already in 1858 described the matrix operation we now know as the Kronecker product

## L

- 洛必达法则 to calculate the limit of quotient of functions at a point were both functions converge to 0 (or both converge to infinity) is named after 纪尧姆·德·洛必达, but is generally believed to have been discovered by 约翰·白努利.
- 拉马克主义 is generally used to refer to the idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics or soft inheritance, but the idea predates Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and was not the central part of his theory of transmutation of species.
- Lambert–Beer law was discovered by 皮埃尔·布盖.
- 拉普拉斯-龙格-冷次向量 was first discovered as a conserved quantity by 雅各布·赫尔曼 and 约翰·白努利.
- Π的莱布尼茨公式: The formula was first discovered by 15th-century Indian mathematician 桑伽玛格拉玛的玛达瓦, but it is named after Gottfried Leibniz after the latter discovered it independently 300 years later.
- Lexis diagram is named after 威尔赫姆·莱克希斯 but was previously theorized by Gustav Zeuner and Otto Brasche.
- The 利氏冷凝管, which 尤斯图斯·冯·李比希 popularized, was attributed to Göttling by Liebig himself, but had already been developed independently by Poisonnier, Weigel, and Gadolin.
- Lhermitte's sign in neurology, the "barber chair phenomenon" was first described by Pierre Marie and Chatelin. French neurologist Jean Lhermitte published his first report three years later.
- 林纳斯定律: named after Linus Torvalds, but actually described by Eric S. Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

## M

- Madelung rule, describing the order in which electron orbitals are filled, named after Erwin Madelung but first discovered by 夏尔·雅内.
- 马太效应, named by Robert K. Merton after the writer of the 马太福音 quoting the words of Jesus.
- Meadow's law, the formulation that one cot death in a family is tragic, two suspicious, and three murder, originally described by D.J. and V.J.M. Di Maio.
- 梅特罗波利斯－黑斯廷斯算法. The algorithm was named after Nicholas Metropolis, who was the director of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory at the time of writing the paper Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines. However, Metropolis did not contribute to that study in any way, as confirmed by various sources. The research problem was proposed by Augusta H. Teller and solved by Marshall N. Rosenbluth and Arianna W. Rosenbluth. Furthermore, according to Roy Glauber and 埃米利奥·塞格雷, the original algorithm was invented by 恩里科·费米 and reinvented by Stan Ulam.
- Moore's Law

## N

- Newton's first and second laws of mechanics were known and proposed in separate ways by Galileo, Hooke and Huygens before Newton did in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton owns the discovery of only the third one.
- Norman's law, proposed by Donald Norman, is a general restatement of Stigler's Law, "No saying or pronouncement is named after its originator." This law was named for Norman as an example of Stigler's Law – which was, itself, not named after its originator.
- Norton's theorem was published in November 1926 by Hans Ferdinand Mayer and independently discovered by 爱德华·劳里·诺顿 who presented it in an internal Bell Labs technical report, dated November 1926.
- Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. The name Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem honours Harry Nyquist and Claude Shannon, but the theorem was also previously discovered by E. T. Whittaker (published in 1915) and Shannon cited Whittaker's paper in his work. (from Wikipedia)

## O

- The 奥尔特云 around the solar system was first postulated by 恩斯特·厄皮克 in 1932 and independently introduced by 扬·奥尔特 in 1960.
- 奥伯斯佯谬 was formulated by Kepler in the 17th century, long before Olbers was born.

## P

- 帕德近似: named after and developed by 亨利·帕德 around 1890, but was first introduced by Ferdinand Georg Frobenius.
- 杨辉三角形: named after and discovered by Pascal, but identified several times before him independently.
- Pearson's Coefficient of Correlation: was originally derived by 奥古斯特·布拉菲 and published in 1846.
- 佩尔方程, studied in ancient India, but mistakenly attributed to John Pell by Leonhard Euler. Apparently Euler confused Lord Brouncker (first European mathematician to find a general solution of the equation) with Pell.
- 潘洛斯三角, an impossible object, first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. The mathematician Roger Penrose independently devised and popularised it in the 1950s
- 佩特森图 as an example in graph theory, put forward by Julius Petersen in 1898, though it previous appeared in a paper by .
- Pfizer vaccine, a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine developed by BioNTech. Due to its small size, BioNTech partnered with the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Fosun for support with clinical trials, logistics and manufacturing. The vaccine's clinical name is BNT162b2 and it is currently marketed under the name Comirnaty.
- 柏拉图立体s were described earlier by Theaetetus, and some of them even earlier, by the Pythagoreans.
- 普莱费尔公理, an alternative to Euclid's fifth postulate on parallel lines, first stated by 普罗克洛 in the 5th century AD but named after 约翰·普莱费尔 after he included it in his 1795 book Elements of Geometry and credited it to William Ludlam.
- 波雷费密码, invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1854, but named after Lord Playfair who promoted its use.
- 坡氏定律, formally stated by Nathan Poe in 2005, but following Internet norms going back as far as Jerry Schwarz in 1983.
- The 庞加莱圆盘模型 and the 庞加莱半平面模型 of hyperbolic geometry are named after Henri Poincaré who studied them in 1882. However, 埃乌杰尼奥·贝尔特拉米 published a paper on these models previously in 1868.
- 卜瓦松分布: described by 西梅翁·德尼·泊松 in 1837, though the result had already been given in 1711-21 by 亚伯拉罕·棣莫弗.
- Poisson spot: predicted by Fresnel's theory of diffraction, named after Poisson, who ridiculed the theory, especially its prediction of the existence of this spot It is also called the Arago spot as 弗朗索瓦·阿拉戈 observed it or the Fresnel bright spot after 奥古斯丁·菲涅耳's theory, though it had already been observed by 约瑟夫-尼古拉斯·德利尔 and Giacomo F. Maraldi a century earlier.
- 普林姆算法: the algorithm was developed in 1930, 27 years before Prim independently did, by the Czech mathematician Vojtěch Jarník.
- Prinzmetal angina: also known as variant angina, referring to angina (chest pain) caused by vasospasm of the coronary arteries. Described twice in the 1930s before being published by Prinzmetal in 1959.
- 勾股定理, named after the mathematician 毕达哥拉斯, although it was known before him to Babylonian mathematicians (although it is not known if the Babylonians possessed a proof of the result; yet it is not known either, whether Pythagoras proved the result).

## R

- The Reynolds number in fluid mechanics was introduced by George Stokes, but is named after 奥斯鲍恩·雷诺, who popularized its use.
- Richards equation is attributed to Richards in his 1931 publication, but was earlier introduced by Richardson in 1922 in his book "Weather prediction by numerical process." (Cambridge University press. p. 262) as pointed out by John Knight and Peter Raats in "The contributions of Lewis Fry Richardson to drainage theory, soil physics, and the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum" EGU General Assembly 2016.

## S

- The Sankey diagram was invented by 查尔斯·约瑟夫·米纳德
- The 肖特基二极管 was neither discovered by Schottky nor its operation correctly explained by him. The actual nature of the metal–semiconductor junction was noted by Hans Bethe.
- The 康托尔-伯恩斯坦-施罗德定理 in set theory was first stated without proof by Georg Cantor and first proved by Richard Dedekind
- Shuey's equation from 1985, which is an approximation of the Zoeprittz Equation first published in 1919.
- 辛普森悖论, a term introduced by Colin R. Blyth in 1972; but Edward Simpson did not actually discover this statistical paradox.
- The 西姆松定理 in geometry is named for Robert Simson, but cannot be found in Simson's works. Instead, it was first discovered by William Wallace in 1797.
- 斯涅尔定律 of refraction, named after 威理博·司乃耳, a Dutch scientist, also known as Descartes law of refraction (after 勒内·笛卡尔) was discovered by Ibn Sahl.
- the Snellius–Pothenot problem was solved by Willebrord Snellius only, and restated by Laurent Pothenot 75 years later
- Steiner triple systems named for Jakob Steiner's work in 1754 were first found by Thomas Kirkman in 1746–1750.
- Stigler's law, attributed by 史蒂芬·史蒂格勒 himself to Robert K. Merton, though the phenomenon had previously been noted by others.
- 史特灵公式, which was presaged in published work by 亚伯拉罕·棣莫弗.
- Stokes's theorem discovered by 第一代开尔文男爵威廉·汤姆森

## T

- The tetralogy of Fallot was described in 1672 by Niels Stensen, but named after Étienne-Louis Arthur Fallot who also described it in 1888.
- Taylor's law in ecology was discovered by H. Fairfield Smith in 1938 but named after L. R. Taylor who rediscovered it in 1961.
- Thévenin's theorem in circuit theory was discovered by 赫尔曼·冯·亥姆霍兹 in 1853 but named after 莱昂·夏尔·戴维南 who rediscovered it in 1883.

## V

- 文氏图s are named after John Venn, who popularized them in the 1880s, but Leonhard Euler had already introduced them in 1768.
- 维吉尼亚密码 was originally described by 吉奥万·巴蒂斯塔·贝拉索 in his 1553 book La cifra del. Sig. Giovan Battista Bellaso, but later misattributed to 布莱斯·德·维吉尼亚 in the 19th century.
- The 冯·诺伊曼结构 of computer hardware is misattributed to John von Neumann because he wrote a preliminary report called "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" that did not include the names of the inventors: 约翰·莫奇利 and 约翰·皮斯普·埃克特
- 沃罗诺伊图s are named after 格奥尔基·沃罗诺伊, who defined and studied the general n-dimensional case in 1908, but have already been used by Descartes (1644), Lejeune Dirichlet (1850) and Snow (1854).

## W

- Wang tiles were hypothesized by Hao Wang not to exist, but an example was constructed by his student Robert Berger.
- 惠斯登电桥, an electrical measuring instrument invented by Samuel Hunter Christie in 1833, but named after Sir Charles Wheatstone who improved and popularized it in 1843.
- 魏德曼花纹s, named after Count Alois von Beckh Widmanstätten in 1808, but previously reported by William Thomson (mineralogist) in 1804.
- Wike's law of low odd primes, a principle of design of experiments, was stated by Sir Ronald A. Fisher in 1935 but named by Edwin Wike in 1973.
- 威尔逊循环, named in 1974 by Kevin C. A. Burke after the Canadian geologist J. Tuzo Wilson for Wilson's 1966 proposal that the Atlantic Ocean had previously closed and then opened again, a theory that the Swiss geologist Émile Argand had proposed in the 1920s.

## Y

- 八木天线, a successful and popular beam antenna, whose primary inventor was 宇田新太郎, but which was popularized by, and formerly popularly named for, his collaborator 八木秀次.

## Z

- 齐夫定律 states that given some corpus of natural language utterances, the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. The law is named after George Kingsley Zipf, an early twentieth century American linguist. Zipf popularized Zipf's law and sought to explain it, though he did not claim to have originated it.