---
title: "List of examples of Stigler's law"
chunk: 4/5
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"
---

== M ==
Maxwell's equations. The modern form of the equations in their most common formulation is credited to Oliver Heaviside, based on James Clerk Maxwell's original work.
Madelung rule, describing the order in which electron orbitals are filled, named after Erwin Madelung but first discovered by Charles Janet.
Magellanic Clouds, while observed by Antonio Pigafetta on one of Magellan's voyages there were previous reports made by 16th century Italian authors Peter Martyr d'Anghiera and Andrea Corsali and earlier reports by Arabic astronomers.
Matthew effect, named by Robert K. Merton after the writer of the Gospel of Matthew 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.
Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. 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 Emilio Segrè, the original algorithm was invented by Enrico Fermi 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 Edward Lawry Norton 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 Oort cloud around the Solar System was first postulated by Ernst Öpik in 1932 and independently introduced by Jan Oort in 1960.
Olbers' paradox was formulated by Kepler in the 17th century, long before Olbers was born.

== P ==
Padé approximant: named after and developed by Henri Padé around 1890, but was first introduced by Ferdinand Georg Frobenius.
Pascal's triangle: studied by and named for Blaise Pascal, but constructed several times before him independently.
Pearson's Coefficient of Correlation: was originally derived by Auguste Bravais and published in 1846.
Pell's equation, 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.
Penrose triangle, 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.
Petersen graph as an example in graph theory, put forward by Julius Petersen in 1898, though it previously appeared in a paper by A. B. Kempe (1886).
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.
Platonic solids were described earlier by Theaetetus, and some of them even earlier, by the Pythagoreans.
Playfair's axiom, an alternative to Euclid's fifth postulate on parallel lines, first stated by Proclus in the 5th century AD but named after John Playfair after he included it in his 1795 book Elements of Geometry and credited it to William Ludlam.
Playfair cipher, invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1854, but named after Lord Playfair who promoted its use.
Poe's law, formally stated by Nathan Poe in 2005, but following Internet norms going back as far as Jerry Schwarz in 1983.
The Poincaré disk model and the Poincaré half-plane model of hyperbolic geometry are named after Henri Poincaré who studied them in 1882. However, Eugenio Beltrami published a paper on these models previously in 1868.
Poisson distribution: described by Siméon Denis Poisson in 1837, though the result had already been given in 1711-21 by Abraham de Moivre.
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 François Arago observed it or the Fresnel bright spot after Augustin-Jean Fresnel's theory, though it had already been observed by Joseph-Nicolas Delisle and Giacomo F. Maraldi a century earlier.
Prim's algorithm, developed in 1930 by the Czech mathematician Vojtěch Jarník and independently rediscovered by Prim in 1957.
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.
Pythagorean theorem, named after the mathematician Pythagoras, although it was known before him to Babylonian mathematicians (it is not known if the Babylonians possessed a proof of the result; nor is it known whether Pythagoras proved the result).