---
title: "List of scientific priority disputes"
chunk: 1/1
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_priority_disputes"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:40:36.340823+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

This is a list of priority disputes in history of science and science-related fields (such as mathematics).


== Astronomy ==
1558 invention of the geoheliocentric system: Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Raimarus Ursus
1609–1610 Galilean moons: Galileo, Simon Marius
1612 discovery of sunspots: Galileo Galilei, Christoph Scheiner
1846 prediction of Neptune: Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams
2004–2005 controversy over the discovery of Haumea: José Luis Ortiz Moreno, Michael E. Brown.


== Biology and medicine ==
1652 discovery of the lymphatic system: Olof Rudbeck, Thomas Bartholin
c. 1660 teaching a deaf-mute person to speak: John Wallis, William Holder
c. 1667 first human blood transfusion: Richard Lower, Henry Oldenburg, Jean-Baptiste Denys
c. 1859 development of the theory of evolution: Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Patrick Matthew
1877–1892 Bone Wars:  Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh.
1882–1889: Koch–Pasteur rivalry: Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch.
1899–1902 discovery of the life cycle of malarial parasite: Giovanni Battista Grassi, Ronald Ross
1953–1962 discovery of the DNA structure: Francis Crick, James D. Watson, Rosalind Franklin, Erwin Chargaff, Oswald Avery
1971–1973 discovery of opiate receptors: Candace Pert, Solomon H. Snyder1971–1975 invention of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): Paul Lauterbur, Peter Mansfield, Raymond Vahan Damadian, and others (see 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)
1983 discovery of HIV: Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier (see 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)


== Chemistry ==
1604-1777 discovery of oxygen: Joseph Priestley, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
1864 synthesis dicarboxylic acids from carboxylic acids (diacids from monoacid reactions): Hugo Müller, Hermann Kolbe, Hans Hübner, Friedrich Konrad Beilstein, Maxwell Simpson.
1870–1895 development of the periodic table: Dmitri Mendeleev, Lothar Meyer
1960–1994 Transfermium Wars: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.


== Mathematics ==
1550–1557 discovery of solutions to cubic equations: Niccolò Tartaglia, Gerolamo Cardano
1669–1704 discovery of l'Hôpital's rule: Guillaume de l'Hôpital, Johann Bernoulli.
1699–1716 Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy: Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz
1949 proof of the prime number theorem: Atle Selberg and/or Paul Erdős
2002–2003 proof of the Poincaré conjecture: Grigori Perelman or Shing-Tung Yau


== Physics ==
1679–1680 Newton–Hooke priority controversy for the inverse square law: Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke.
1739–1740 development of the Bernoulli's principle between Johann Bernoulli and his son Daniel Bernoulli.
1741–1751 development of the stationary-action principle: Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1842–1845 discovery of mechanical equivalent of heat: James Prescott Joule, Julius von Mayer
1864–1890 discovery of radio waves: James Clerk Maxwell, Oliver Lodge, Heinrich Hertz, David Edward Hughes
1889–1905 special relativity priority dispute: Albert Einstein, Henri Poincaré, Hendrik Lorentz
1915 general relativity priority dispute: Albert Einstein, David Hilbert
1930–1935 development of the Chandrasekhar limit: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Edmund Clifton Stoner, Wilhelm Anderson
1961 development of the Eightfold Way: Murray Gell-Mann, Yuval Ne'eman
1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe: High-Z Supernova Search Team, Supernova Cosmology Project.


== Technology ==
1671–1673 invention of the watch balance spring: Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens.
1876 Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy: Johann Philipp Reis, Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray.
1878 invention of the incandescent light bulb: Thomas Edison, Joseph Swan.
Claims to the first powered flight: Shivkar Bapuji Talpade in the Marutsakhā (1895), Clément Ader in the Avion III (1897), Gustave Whitehead in his No's. 21 and 22 aeroplanes (1901–1903), Richard Pearse in his monoplane (1903–1904), Samuel Pierpont Langley's Aerodrome A (1903), Karl Jatho in Jatho biplane (1903), The Wright brothers in the Wright Flyer (1903), Alberto Santos-Dumont in the 14 Bis (1906)
c. 1880–1890 War of the currents: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse
1896–1906 invention of radio: Oliver Lodge, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Reginald Fessenden, Guglielmo Marconi,  Roberto Landell de Moura, Alexander Popov, Nikola Tesla
1927–1939 Invention of electronic television: Philo T. Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworykin


== Notes ==


== See also ==
List of examples of Stigler's law
List of scientific debates
Nobel Prize controversies
List of multiple discoveries


== References ==