---
title: "List of examples of Stigler's law"
chunk: 2/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler's_law"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:46:08.081898+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== C ==
Cantor–Bernstein–Schröder theorem (also known by other variations, such as Schröder-Bernstein theorem) first proved by Richard Dedekind
Cantor set, discovered in 1874 by Henry John Stephen Smith and introduced by German mathematician Georg Cantor 1883.
Carmichael number: Václav Šimerka listed the first seven Carmichael numbers in 1885; they are named after Robert Daniel Carmichael who subsequently discovered the first one in 1910.
Cartan matrices, first investigated by Wilhelm Killing.
Cardano's formula, the solution to general cubic equations. Cardano stated that it was discovered by Scipione del Ferro, who passed the knowledge to his student Antonio Maria Fior.  Around 1535 Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia learned of this from Fior and re-derived the formula for the cubic, which he later shared with  Cardano.
Cassegrain reflector, named after a design published in 1672 which has been attributed to Laurent Cassegrain, but was already known to Bonaventura Cavalieri in 1632 and Marin Mersenne in 1636.
Cartesian duality: Named for René Descartes, but Teresa of Avila and her contemporaries wrote about similar methods of philosophical exploration eight to ten years before Descartes was born.
Cavendish balance for measuring the universal gravitational constant, first devised and constructed by John Michell.
The Cayley–Hamilton theorem was proven for the general case by Ferdinand Frobenius.
Chandrasekhar limit, the mass upper limit of a white dwarf, was first derived by Wilhelm Anderson and E. C. Stoner, and later improved by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
Chebyshev's inequality 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 for Herman Chernoff 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 John Tukey, but invented 160 years earlier in 1805 by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
Coriolis force which was previously recognized by others but was first mathematically described in an 1835 paper by Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis
Curie point, a critical temperature of phase change in ferromagnetism, named for Pierre Curie, 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 who had attributed its earlier discovery to Moses Schönfinkel, though the principle can be traced back to work in 1893 by Gottlob Frege.

== D ==
Deming cycle of continuous improvement. Deming himself always referred to it as the "Shewhart cycle".
De Morgan's laws 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.
Dunning-Kruger Effect was early warned by Bertrand Russell when he stated that "the fundamental problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt".
Dyson spheres are named after Freeman Dyson, but Dyson himself credited the original idea to Olaf Stapledon.

== E ==
Euler's number: the discovery of the constant itself is credited to Jacob Bernoulli, but it is named after Leonhard Euler.
Euler's formula: an equivalent formula was proved by Roger Cotes 30 years before Euler published his proof.

== F ==
Fadeev–Popov ghosts, and their role in quantizing gauge theories, were first discovered by Richard Feynman. The second known work to make use of them was by Bryce DeWitt. Two weeks later, Ludwig Faddeev and Victor Popov published their work on the path integral treatment of these ghosts, leading Gerard 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman to choose their now standard name.
Farey sequence. Cauchy published the proof to a conjecture put forth by Farey. Unknown to both men, similar results had been published earlier by Charles Haros.
Fermi's golden rule, a quantum mechanical calculation, was discovered by Paul Dirac.
The Fermi paradox, stated (in an unpublished work) by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1933, long before Fermi.  Tsiolkovsky, in turn, stated that others had already considered this question.
The Floyd–Warshall algorithm 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, Bernard Roy had previously published an equivalent algorithm in 1959.
The Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum were first noted by William Hyde Wollaston twelve years before they were rediscovered and studied systematically by Joseph von Fraunhofer.
Fresnel lens. 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).