List of multiple discoveries#20th century

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Historians and sociologists have remarked the occurrence, in science, of "multiple independent discovery". Robert K. Merton defined such "multiples" as instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other.{{cite journal |last1=Merton |first1=Robert K. |title=Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science |journal=European Journal of Sociology |date=December 1963 |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=237–282 |doi=10.1017/S0003975600000801 |jstor=23998345 |s2cid=145650007}} Reprinted in: {{cite book |first=Robert K. |last=Merton |title=On Social Structure and Science |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=eprv7hMdO-IC&q=multiples&pg=PA305 |date=15 September 1996 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-52070-4 |pages=305–}} "Sometimes", writes Merton, "the discoveries are simultaneous or almost so; sometimes a scientist will make a new discovery which, unknown to him, somebody else has made years before."{{cite book |first=Robert K. |last=Merton |title=The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=zPvcHuUMEMwC&q=merton+%22The+Sociology+of+Science%22&pg=PA371 |date=1973 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-52092-6 |page=371}}

Commonly cited examples of multiple independent discovery are the 17th-century independent formulation of calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz;{{Cite journal |last=Cajori |first=Florian |author-link=Florian Cajori |date=1919 |title=Who Was the First Inventor of the Calculus? |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/2974042?origin=crossref |journal=The American Mathematical Monthly |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=15 |doi=10.2307/2974042}} the 18th-century discovery of oxygen by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier and others; and the theory of the evolution of species, independently advanced in the 19th century by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

Multiple independent discovery, however, is not limited to such famous historic instances. Merton believed that it is multiple discoveries, rather than unique ones, that represent the common pattern in science.Robert K. Merton, "Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery: a Chapter in the Sociology of Science", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 105: 470–86, 1961. Reprinted in Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 343–70.

Merton contrasted a "multiple" with a "singleton"—a discovery that has been made uniquely by a single scientist or group of scientists working together.Robert K. Merton, On Social Structure and Science, p. 307.

The distinction may blur as science becomes increasingly collaborative.Sarah Lewin Frasier and Jen Christiansen, "Nobel Connections: A deep dive into science's greatest prize", Scientific American, vol. 331, no. 3 (October 2024), pp. 72–73.

A distinction is drawn between a discovery and an invention, as discussed for example by Bolesław Prus.Bolesław Prus, O odkryciach i wynalazkach (On Discoveries and Inventions): A Public Lecture Delivered on 23 March 1873 by Aleksander Głowacki [Bolesław Prus], Passed by the [Russian] Censor (Warsaw, 21 April 1873), Warsaw, Printed by F. Krokoszyńska, 1873, p. 12. However, discoveries and inventions are inextricably related, in that discoveries lead to inventions, and inventions facilitate discoveries; and since the same phenomenon of multiplicity occurs in relation to both discoveries and inventions, this article lists both multiple discoveries and multiple inventions.

3rd century BCE

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13th century CE

14th century

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  • 1370: Gresham's (Copernicus') law: Nicole Oresme (c. 1370); Nicolaus Copernicus (1519);"Copernicus seems to have drawn up some notes [on the displacement of good coin from circulation by debased coin] while he was at Olsztyn in 1519. He made them the basis of a report on the matter, written in German, which he presented to the Prussian Diet held in 1522 at Grudziądz .... He later drew up a revised and enlarged version of his little treatise, this time in Latin, and setting forth a general theory of money, for presentation to the Diet of 1528." Angus Armitage, The World of Copernicus, 1951, p. 91. Thomas Gresham (16th century); Henry Dunning Macleod (1857). Ancient references to the same concept include one in Aristophanes' comedy The Frogs (405 BCE), which compares bad politicians to bad coin (bad politicians and bad coin, respectively, drive good politicians and good coin out of circulation).{{cite web |last=Αριστοφάνης |title=Βάτραχοι |url= http://el.wikisource.org/wiki/Βάτραχοι#v720 |publisher=Βικιθήκη |access-date=19 April 2013}}

16th century

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  • Galileo Galilei and Simon Stevin: heavy and light balls fall together (contra Aristotle).
  • Galileo Galilei and Simon Stevin: Hydrostatic paradox (Stevin c. 1585, Galileo c. 1610).
  • 1520: Scipione dal Ferro (1520) and Niccolò Tartaglia (1535) independently developed a method for solving cubic equations.
  • Olbers' paradox (the "dark-night-sky paradox") was described by Thomas Digges in the 16th century, by Johannes Kepler in the 17th century (1610), by Edmond Halley and by Jean-Philippe de Chéseaux in the 18th century, by Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers in the 19th century (1823), and definitively by Lord Kelvin in the 20th century (1901); some aspects of Kelvin's argument had been anticipated in the poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe's essay, Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848), which also presaged by three-quarters of a century the Big Bang theory of the universe.{{cite journal |last=Cappi |first=Alberto |date=1994 |title=Edgar Allan Poe's Physical Cosmology |journal=Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society |volume=35 |pages=177–192 |bibcode=1994QJRAS..35..177C}}* {{cite journal |last=Rombeck |first=Terry |date=22 January 2005 |title=Poe's little-known science book reprinted |journal=Lawrence Journal-World & News |url= http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/jan/22/poes_littleknown_science/}}Marilynne Robinson, "On Edgar Allan Poe", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXII, no. 2 (5 February 2015), pp. 4, 6.
  • 1596: Continental drift, in varying independent iterations, was proposed by Abraham Ortelius {{Harv|Ortelius|1596}},{{Citation |last=Romm |first=James |title=A New Forerunner for Continental Drift |journal=Nature |date=3 February 1994 |volume=367 |pages=407–408 |doi=10.1038/367407a0 |postscript=. |issue=6462 |bibcode=1994Natur.367..407R |s2cid=4281585}} Theodor Christoph Lilienthal (1756),{{Cite web |first=Harro |last=Schmeling |url= http://www.geophysik.uni-frankfurt.de/~schmelin/skripte/Geodynn1-kap1-2-S1-S22-2004.pdf |title=Geodynamik |date=2004 |publisher=University of Frankfurt |language=de}} Alexander von Humboldt (1801 and 1845), Antonio Snider-Pellegrini {{Harv|Snider-Pellegrini|1858}}, Alfred Russel Wallace,{{citation |first=Alfred Russel |last=Wallace |title=Darwinism ... |date=1889 |chapter=12 |publisher=Macmillan |page=341 |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=0S4aAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA341}} Charles Lyell,{{citation |first=Charles |last=Lyell |title=Principles of Geology ... |date=1872 |edition=11th |publisher=John Murray |page=258 |url= https://archive.org/stream/principlesgeolo41lyelgoog#page/n287/mode/1up/}} Franklin Coxworthy (between 1848 and 1890),{{cite book |last1=Coxworthy |first1=Franklin |title=Electrical Condition; Or, How and where Our Earth was Created |date=1924 |publisher=J. S. Phillips |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=STj7PAAACAAJ |access-date=6 December 2014}} Roberto Mantovani (between 1889 and 1909), William Henry Pickering (1907),{{Citation |last=Pickering |first=W. H |title=The Place of Origin of the Moon – The Volcani Problems |journal=Popular Astronomy |volume=15 |pages=274–287 |date=1907 |bibcode=1907PA.....15..274P}}, Frank Bursley Taylor (1908),{{cite journal |first=Frank |last=Bursley Taylor |date=3 June 1910 |url= http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101080758822;view=1up;seq=207 |title=Bearing of the Tertiary mountain belt on the origin of the earth's plan |journal=Bulletin of the Geological Society of America |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=179–226|doi=10.1130/GSAB-21-179 |bibcode=1910GSAB...21..179T }} and Alfred Wegener (1912).{{Citation |last=Wegener |first=Alfred |date=6 January 1912 |title=Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane), auf geophysikalischer Grundlage |journal=Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen |volume=63 |pages=185–195, 253–256, 305–309 |url= http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Polarforsch2005_1_3.pdf |postscript=. |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20111004001150/http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Polarforsch2005_1_3.pdf |archive-date=4 October 2011}} In addition, in 1885 Eduard Suess had proposed a supercontinent GondwanaEduard Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde (The Face of the Earth), vol. 1 (Leipzig, (Germany): G. Freytag, 1885), [http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015048893047;view=1up;seq=792 page 768.] From p. 768: "Wir nennen es Gondwána-Land, nach der gemeinsamen alten Gondwána-Flora, … " (We name it Gondwána-Land, after the common ancient flora of Gondwána ... ) and in 1893 the Tethys Ocean,{{cite journal |first=Edward |last=Suess |date=March 1893 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=yQUVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA180 |via=Google Books |title=Are ocean depths permanent? |journal=Natural Science: A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress |volume=2 |pages=180–187 |quote=This ocean we designate by the name 'Tethys', after the sister and consort of Oceanus. The latest successor of the Tethyan Sea is the present Mediterranean.}} assuming a land-bridge between the present continents submerged in the form of a geosyncline; and in 1895 John Perry had written a paper proposing that the Earth's interior was fluid, and disagreeing with Lord Kelvin on the age of the Earth.{{cite journal |last=Perry |first=John |date=1895 |title=On the age of the earth |journal=Nature |volume=51 |url= http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015038750868;view=1up;seq=266 |via=Hathi Trust |pages=224–227, 341–342, 582–585}}

17th century

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18th century

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  • 1740s: Platinum{{spaced ndash}}Antonio de Ulloa and Charles Wood (both in the 1740s).
  • 1745: Leyden Jar{{spaced ndash}}Ewald Georg von Kleist (1745) and Pieter van Musschenbroek (1745–46).Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 17.
  • 1749: Lightning rod{{spaced ndash}}Benjamin Franklin (1749) and Prokop Diviš (1754) (debated: Diviš's apparatus is assumed to have been more effective than Franklin's lightning rods in 1754, but was intended for a different purpose than lightning protection).
  • 1756: Law of conservation of matter{{spaced ndash}}discovered by Mikhail Lomonosov, 1756;Vladimir D. Shiltsev, "Nov. 19, 1771: Birth of Mikhail Lomonosov, Russia's first modern scientist", APS [American Physical Society] News, November 2011 (vol. 20, no. 10) [https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201111/physicshistory.cfm]. and independently by Antoine Lavoisier, 1778.Anirudh, "10 Major Contributions of Antoine Lavoisier", 17 October 2017 [https://learnodo-newtonic.com/antoine-lavoisier-contributions].
  • 1773: Oxygen{{spaced ndash}}Carl Wilhelm Scheele (Uppsala, 1773), Joseph Priestley (Wiltshire, 1774). The term was coined by Antoine Lavoisier (1777). Michael Sendivogius ({{langx|pl|Michał Sędziwój}}; 1566–1636) is claimed as an earlier discoverer of oxygen.{{Cite web |url= http://www.masonic.benemerito.net/msricf/papers/marples/marples-michael.sendivogius.pdf |title=MICHAEL SENDIVOGIUS, ROSICRUCIAN, and FATHER OF STUDIES OF OXYGEN}}
  • 1783: Black-hole theory{{spaced ndash}}John Michell, in a 1783 paper in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, wrote: "If the semi-diameter of a sphere of the same density as the Sun in the proportion of five hundred to one, and by supposing light to be attracted by the same force in proportion to its [mass] with other bodies, all light emitted from such a body would be made to return towards it, by its own proper gravity."[http://www.astronomyedinburgh.org/publications/journals/39/blackholes.html Alan Ellis, "Black Holes{{spaced ndash}}Part 1{{spaced ndash}}History", Astronomical Society of Edinburgh, Journal 39, 1999] {{Webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20171006004950/http://www.astronomyedinburgh.org/publications/journals/39/blackholes.html |date=6 October 2017}}. A description of Michell's theory of black holes. A few years later, a similar idea was suggested independently by Pierre-Simon Laplace.Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam, 1996, pp. 43–45.
  • 1798: Malthusian catastrophe{{spaced ndash}}Thomas Robert Malthus (1798), Hong Liangji (1793)."Hong's essential insight is the same as Malthus's". Wm Theodore de Bary, Sources of East Asian Tradition, vol. 2: The Modern Period, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 85.
  • A method for measuring the specific heat of a solid{{spaced ndash}}devised independently by Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford; and by Johan Wilcke, who published his discovery first (apparently not later than 1796, when he died).
  • 1799: Complex plane{{spaced ndash}}Geometrical representation of complex numbers was discovered independently by Caspar Wessel (1799), Jean-Robert Argand (1806), John Warren (1828), and Carl Friedrich Gauss (1831).Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality, Vintage Books, 2005, p. 81.

19th century

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20th century

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  • E = mc2, though only Einstein provided the accepted interpretation{{spaced ndash}}Henri Poincaré, 1900; Olinto De Pretto, 1903; Albert Einstein, 1905; Paul Langevin, 1906.Barbara Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, New York, W.W. Norton, 2005, {{ISBN|0-393-05137-4}}, p. 166.
  • 1902: Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri independently proposed that the hereditary information is carried in the chromosomes.
  • 1902: Richard Assmann and Léon Teisserenc de Bort independently discovered the stratosphere.
  • 1904: Epinephrine synthesized independently by Friedrich Stolz and by Henry Drysdale Dakin.
  • 1905: Brownian motion was independently explained by Albert Einstein (in one of his 1905 papers) and by Marian Smoluchowski in 1906.{{cite journal |last=von Smoluchowski |first=M. |title=Zur kinetischen Theorie der Brownschen Molekularbewegung und der Suspensionen |journal=Annalen der Physik |volume=326 |issue=14 |pages=756–780 |date=1906 |language=de |doi=10.1002/andp.19063261405 |bibcode=1906AnP...326..756V |url= https://zenodo.org/record/1424073}}
  • 1905: The Einstein Relation was revealed independently by William Sutherland in 1905,{{cite journal |title=LXXV. A dynamical theory of diffusion for non-electrolytes and the molecular mass of albumin |journal=Philosophical Magazine |series=Series 6 |first=William |last=Sutherland |date=1 June 1905 |volume=9 |issue=54 |pages=781–785 |doi=10.1080/14786440509463331 |url= https://zenodo.org/record/1430774}}{{Cite web |url= http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/theo1/hanggi/History/Robert_Brown_Vortrag.pdf |title="Stokes-Einstein-Sutherland equation", P. Hänggi}} by Albert Einstein in 1905,{{cite journal |last=Einstein |first=A. |title=Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen |journal=Annalen der Physik |volume=322 |issue=8 |pages=549–560 |date=1905 |language=de |doi=10.1002/andp.19053220806 |bibcode=1905AnP...322..549E |url= http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/2785 |doi-access=free}} and by Marian Smoluchowski in 1906.
  • 1905: The chromosomal XY sex-determination system—that males have XY, and females XX, sex chromosomes—was discovered independently by Nettie Stevens, at Bryn Mawr College, and by Edmund Beecher Wilson at Columbia University.{{Cite journal |last=Brush |first=Stephen G. |date=June 1978 |title=Nettie M. Stevens and the Discovery of Sex Determination by Chromosomes |jstor=230427 |journal=Isis |volume=69 |issue=2 |pages=162–172 |doi=10.1086/352001 |pmid=389882 |s2cid=1919033}}
  • 1907: Lutetium discovered independently by French scientist Georges Urbain and by Austrian mineralogist Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach.
  • 1907: Hilbert space representation theorem, also known as Riesz representation theorem, the mathematical justification of the Bra-ket notation in the theory of quantum mechanics{{spaced ndash}} independently proved by Frigyes Riesz and Maurice René Fréchet.
  • 1908: The Hardy–Weinberg principle is a principle of population genetics that states that, in the absence of other evolutionary influences, allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation. This law was formulated in 1908 independently by German obstetrician-gynecologist Wilhelm Weinberg and, a little later and a little less rigorously, by British mathematician G.H. Hardy.
  • 1908: The Stark–Einstein law (aka photochemical equivalence law, or photoequivalence law){{spaced ndash}}independently formulated between 1908 and 1913 by Johannes Stark and Albert Einstein. It states that every photon that is absorbed will cause a (primary) chemical or physical reaction.{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Photochemical equivalence law |url= http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/457732/photochemical-equivalence-law |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica Online |access-date=7 November 2009}}
  • 1908: Frequency-hopping spread spectrum in radio work was described by Johannes Zenneck (1908), Leonard Danilewicz (1929),Władysław Kozaczuk, Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War II, edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, Maryland, University Publications of America, 1984, {{ISBN|0-89093-547-5}}, p. 27. Willem Broertjes (1929), and Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil (1942 US patent).
  • 1911: Ejnar Hertzsprung created the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, abbreviated H–R diagram, HR diagram, or HRD – a scatter plot of stars showing the relationship between the stars' absolute magnitudes or luminosities versus their stellar classifications or effective temperatures – a major step toward an understanding of stellar evolution. In 1913 the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram was independently created by Henry Norris Russell.
  • 1912-1917: Alexander Bogdanov formulated principles such as feedback, dynamic equilibrium, synergy, and the theory of constraints under the transdisciplinary framework of "tektology". A number of very similar approaches were founded by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (general systems theory, 1950s), Hermann Schmidt (allgemeine Regelkreislehre (universal science of feedback, 1930s), Ștefan Odobleja (psychologie consonantiste, 1936) and Norbert Wiener (cybernetics, 1945).
  • By 1913, vitamin A was independently discovered by Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and by Lafayette Mendel and Thomas Burr Osborne at Yale University, who studied the role of fats in the diet.
  • 1915: Bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria){{spaced ndash}}Frederick Twort (1915), Félix d'Hérelle (1917).
  • 1915: Rotor cipher machines{{spaced ndash}}Theo A. van Hengel and R.P.C. Spengler (1915); Edward Hebern (1917); Arthur Scherbius (Enigma machine, 1918); Hugo Koch (1919); Arvid Damm (1919).
  • 1921: The simultaneous discovery of Ramsauer-Townsend effect by Carl Ramsauer and John Sealy Townsend (1921).
  • 1922: Sound film{{spaced ndash}}Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner (1922), Lee De Forest (1923).
  • 1922: The Big Bang theory of the universe—that the universe is expanding from a single original point—was developed from the independent derivation of the Friedmann equations from Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity by the Russian, Alexander Friedmann, in 1922, and by the Belgian, Georges Lemaître, in 1927.Brian Greene, "Why He [Albert Einstein] Matters: The fruits of one mind shaped civilization more than seems possible", Scientific American, vol. 313, no. 3 (September 2015), pp. 36–37. The Big Bang theory was confirmed in 1929 by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble's analysis of galactic redshifts.{{cite web |title=Big bang theory is introduced – 1927 |url= https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dp27bi.html |website=A Science Odyssey |publisher=WGBH |access-date=31 July 2014}} But the Big Bang theory had been presaged three-quarters of a century earlier in the American poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe's then much-derided essay, Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848).{{cite journal |last=Rombeck |first=Terry |date=22 January 2005 |title=Poe's little-known science book reprinted |journal=Lawrence Journal-World & News |url= http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/jan/22/poes_littleknown_science/}}Robinson, Marilynne, "On Edgar Allan Poe", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXII, no. 2 (5 February 2015), pp. 4, 6.
  • 1923: Georgios Papanikolaou is credited with discovering as early as 1923 that cervical cancer cells can be detected microscopically, though his invention of the Pap test went largely ignored by physicians until 1943. Aurel Babeş of Romania independently made similar discoveries in 1927.M.J. O'Dowd, E.E. Philipp, The History of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, London, Parthenon Publishing Group, 1994, p. 547.
  • 1924: "Primordial soup" theory of the abiogenetic evolution of life from carbon-based molecules{{spaced ndash}}Alexander Oparin (1924), J.B.S. Haldane (1925).
  • 1926: Jet stream was detected in the 1920s by Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Oishi, whose work largely went unnoticed outside Japan because he published his findings in Esperanto.Ooishi, W. (1926) Raporto de la Aerologia Observatorio de Tateno (in Esperanto). Aerological Observatory Report 1, Central Meteorological Observatory, Japan, 213 pages.{{cite journal |last1=Lewis |first1=John M. |date=2003 |title=Oishi's Observation: Viewed in the Context of Jet Stream Discovery |journal=Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society |volume=84 |issue=3 |pages=357–369 |doi=10.1175/BAMS-84-3-357 |bibcode=2003BAMS...84..357L |doi-access=free}} Often given some credit for discovery of jet streams is American pilot Wiley Post, who in the year before his 1935 death noticed that at times his ground speed greatly exceeded his air speed.Acepilots.com. [http://www.acepilots.com/post.html Wiley Post.] Retrieved on 8 May 2008. Real understanding of the nature of jet streams is often credited to experience in World War II military flights.{{cite web |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/basics_jetstreams.shtml |title=Weather Basics – Jet Streams |access-date=8 May 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060829012128/http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/basics_jetstreams.shtml |archive-date=29 August 2006}}{{Cite web |url= http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/when-the-jet-stream-was-the-wind-of-war/nRxPD/ |title=When the jet stream was the wind of war |access-date=9 December 2018 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160129055603/http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/when-the-jet-stream-was-the-wind-of-war/nRxPD/ |archive-date=29 January 2016 |url-status=dead}}
  • 1926: Borůvka's algorithm, an algorithm for finding a minimum spanning tree in a graph, was first published in 1926 by Otakar Borůvka. The algorithm was rediscovered by Choquet in 1938; again by Florek, Łukasiewicz, Perkal, Steinhaus, and Zubrzycki; and again by Sollin in 1965.
  • 1927: The discovery of phosphocreatine was reported by Grace Palmer Eggleton and Philip Eggleton of the University of Cambridge{{cite journal |last1=Eggleton |first1=Philip |last2=Eggleton |first2=Grace Palmer |date=1927 |title=The inorganic phosphate and a labile form of organic phosphate in the gastrocnemius of the frog |journal=Biochemical Journal |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=190–195 |pmid=16743804 |pmc=1251888 |doi=10.1042/bj0210190}} and separately by Cyrus H. Fiske and Yellapragada Subbarow of Harvard Medical School.{{cite journal |last1=Fiske |first1=Cyrus H. |last2=Subbarow |first2=Yellapragada |date=1927 |title=The nature of the 'inorganic phosphate' in voluntary muscle |journal=Science |volume=65 |issue=1686 |pages=401–403 |doi=10.1126/science.65.1686.401 |pmid=17807679 |bibcode=1927Sci....65..401F}}
  • 1929: Dmitri Skobeltsyn first observed the positron in 1929.{{Cite book |title=Antimatter |last=Frank |first=Close |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-955016-6 |pages=50–52 |date=22 January 2009}} Chung-Yao Chao also observed the positron in 1929, though he did not recognize it as such.
  • 1930s: Quantum electrodynamics and renormalization (1930s–40s): Ernst Stueckelberg, Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynman, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, for which the latter 3 received the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics.
  • 1930: Undefinability theorem, an important limitative result in mathematical logic{{spaced ndash}}Kurt Gödel (1930; described in a 1931 private letter, but not published); Alfred Tarski (1933).
  • 1930: Chandrasekhar Limit—published by Subramanyan Chandrasekhar (1931–35); also computed by Lev Landau (1932).Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Press, 1996, p. 88. Also Edmund Clifton Stoner and Wilhelm Anderson (1930)
  • 1931: A theory of protein denaturation is widely attributed to Alfred Mirsky and Linus Pauling, who published their paper in 1936,{{cite journal |last1=Mirsky |first1=A. E. |last2=Pauling |first2=Linus |date=1936 |title=On the structure of native, denatured, and coagulated proteins |journal=PNAS |volume=22 |issue=7 |pages=439–447 |doi=10.1073/pnas.22.7.439 |pmid=16577722 |bibcode=1936PNAS...22..439M |pmc=1076802 |doi-access=free}} though it had been independently discovered in 1931 by Hsien Wu,{{cite journal |last1=Wu |first1=Hsien |date=1931 |title=Studies on Denaturation of Proteins XIII. A Theory of Denaturation (reprint) |journal=Chinese Journal of Physiology |volume=46 |pages=6–26 |doi=10.1016/S0065-3233(08)60330-7 |series=Advances in Protein Chemistry |isbn=9780120342464}} whom some now recognize as the originator of the theory.{{cite book |last1=Edsall |first1=John |title=Advances in Protein Chemistry Volume 46 |date=1995 |chapter=Hsien Wu and the First Theory of Protein Denaturation (1931) |doi=10.1016/S0065-3233(08)60329-0 |volume=46 |pages=1–5 |isbn=978-0-12-034246-4}}
  • Electroluminescence in silicon carbide, now known as the LED, was discovered independently by Oleg Losev in 1927 and by H.J. Round in 1907, and possibly in 1936 in zinc sulfide by Georges Destriau, who believed it was actually a form of incandescence.
  • 1932: Zipf's law, described by George Zipf (1932), was previously discovered by Felix Auerbach (1913), Jean-Baptiste Estoup (1916), Godfrey Dewey (1923), Edward U. Condon (1928). The law's naming after a later rediscoverer is therefore an example of Stigler's law of eponymy (named by Stephen Stigler after himself in 1980: see below).
  • 1934: Natural deduction, an approach to proof theory in philosophical logic{{spaced ndash}}discovered independently by Gerhard Gentzen and Stanisław Jaśkowski in 1934.
  • 1934: The Gelfond–Schneider theorem, in mathematics, establishes the transcendence of a large class of numbers. It was originally proved in 1934 by Aleksandr Gelfond, and again independently in 1935 by Theodor Schneider.
  • 1934: The Penrose triangle, also known as the "tribar", is an impossible object. It was first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. The mathematician Roger Penrose independently devised and popularized it in the 1950s.
  • 1936: In computer science, the concept of the "universal computing machine" (now generally called the "Turing Machine") was proposed by Alan Turing, but also independently by Emil Post,See the "bibliographic notes" at the end of chapter 7 in Hopcroft & Ullman, Introduction to Automata, Languages, and Computation, Addison-Wesley, 1979. both in 1936. Similar approaches, also aiming to cover the concept of universal computing, were introduced by S.C. Kleene, Rózsa Péter, and Alonzo Church that same year. Also in 1936, Konrad Zuse tried to build a binary electrically driven mechanical calculator with limited programability; however, Zuse's machine was never fully functional. The later Atanasoff–Berry Computer ("ABC"), designed by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, was the first fully electronic digital computing device;{{Citation |date=1976 |editor1-last=Ralston |editor1-first=Anthony |editor2-last=Meek |editor2-first=Christopher |title=Encyclopedia of Computer Science |edition=2nd |pages=488–489 |publisher=Petrocelli/Charter |isbn=978-0-88405-321-7}} while not programmable, it pioneered important elements of modern computing, including binary arithmetic and electronic switching elements,{{Citation |last1=Campbell-Kelly |first1=Martin |last2=Aspray |first2=William |date=1996 |title=Computer: A History of the Information Machine |page=84 |isbn=978-0-465-02989-1 |publisher=Basic Books |location=New York |title-link=Computer: A History of the Information Machine}}.Jane Smiley, The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer, 2010. though its special-purpose nature and lack of a changeable, stored program distinguish it from modern computers.
  • 1938: Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, was discovered in 1881 by Simon Newcomb and rediscovered in 1938 by Frank Benford.Jack Murtagh, "This Unexpected Pattern of Numbers Is Everywhere: A curious mathematical phenomenon called Benford's law governs the numbers all around us", Scientific American, vol. 329, no. 5 (December 2023), pp. 82–83. Newcomb's discovery was named after its rediscoverer, Benford, making it an example of Stigler's law of eponymy (named by Stephen Stigler after himself in 1980: see below).
  • The atom bomb was independently thought of by Leó Szilárd,Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1986, {{ISBN|0-671-44133-7}}, p. 27. Józef RotblatIrwin Abrams website,[http://www.irwinabrams.com/books/excerpts/annual95.html] and others.
  • 1939: The jet engine, independently invented by Hans von Ohain (1939), Secondo Campini (1940) and Frank Whittle (1941) and used in working aircraft.
  • 1941: In agriculture, the ability of synthetic auxins 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, and MCPA to act as hormone herbicides was discovered independently by four groups in the United States and Great Britain: William G. Templeman and coworkers (1941); Philip Nutman, Gerard Thornton, and Juda Quastel (1942); Franklin Jones (1942); and Ezra Kraus, John W. Mitchell, and Charles L. Hamner (1943). All four groups were subject to various aspects of wartime secrecy, and the exact order of discovery is a matter of some debate.{{cite journal |last=Troyer |first=James |title=In the beginning: the multiple discovery of the first hormone herbicides |journal=Weed Science |date=2001 |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=290–297 |doi=10.1614/0043-1745(2001)049[0290:ITBTMD]2.0.CO;2 |s2cid=85637273}}
  • 1947: The point-contact transistor was independently invented in 1947 by Americans William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, working at Bell Labs,{{cite web |title=Twists and Turns in the Development of the Transistor |publisher=Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. |url= http://www.todaysengineer.org/2003/May/history.asp |access-date=8 July 2015 |archive-date=8 January 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150108082709/http://www.todaysengineer.org/2003/May/history.asp |url-status=dead}} and in 1948 by German physicists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker, working at the Compagnie des Freins et Signaux, a Westinghouse subsidiary located in Paris.{{cite web |title=1948 – The European Transistor Invention |publisher=Computer History Museum |url= http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1948-European.html}} The Americans were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".{{Cite web |url= https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1956/summary/ |title=The Nobel Prize in Physics 1956 |website=NobelPrize.org}}
  • 1949: A formal definition of cliques in graph theory was simultaneously introduced by Luce and Perry (1949) and Festinger (1949).{{Cite journal |title=The analysis of sociograms using matrix algebra |last=Festinger |first=Leon |journal=Human Relations |date=1949 |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=153–158 |doi=10.1177/001872674900200205 |s2cid=143609308}}{{Cite journal |title=A method of matrix analysis of group structure |date=1949 |doi=10.1007/BF02289146 |last1=Luce |first1=R. Duncan |last2=Perry |first2=Albert D. |journal=Psychometrika |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=95–116 |pmid=18152948 |s2cid=16186758 |hdl=10.1007/BF02289146 |hdl-access=free}}
  • Late 1940s: NMR spectroscopy was independently developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s by the Purcell group at Harvard University and the Bloch group at Stanford University. Edward Mills Purcell and Felix Bloch shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries.{{Cite web |title=Background and Theory Page of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility |url= http://www.nmr.unsw.edu.au/usercorner/nmrhistory.htm |publisher=Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre – University of Southern Wales Sydney |date=9 December 2011 |access-date=9 February 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140127183200/http://www.nmr.unsw.edu.au/usercorner/nmrhistory.htm |archive-date=27 January 2014}}
  • 1950: Polio vaccine (1950–63): Hilary Koprowski, Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin.
  • 1952: The maser, a precursor to the laser, was described by Russian scientists in 1952, and built independently by scientists at Columbia University in 1953. The laser itself was developed independently by Gordon Gould at Columbia University and by researchers at Bell Labs, and by the Russian scientist Aleksandr Prokhorov.
  • 1958: The integrated circuit was devised independently by Jack Kilby in 1958[http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/kilbyctr/jackbuilt.shtml The Chip that Jack Built], c. 2008, HTML, Texas Instruments, retrieved 29 May 2008. and half a year later by Robert Noyce.Christophe Lécuyer, Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930–1970, MIT Press, 2006, {{ISBN|0-262-12281-2}}, p. 129. Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.Nobel Web AB, 10 October 2000 [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/press.html The Nobel Prize in Physics 2000], retrieved 29 May 2008.
  • Late 1950s: The QR algorithm for calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors of matrices was developed independently in the late 1950s by John G. F. Francis and by Vera N. Kublanovskaya.{{cite journal |last1=Golub |first1=G. |last2=Uhlig |first2=F. |title=The QR algorithm: 50 years later its genesis by John Francis and Vera Kublanovskaya and subsequent developments |journal=IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis |date=8 June 2009 |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=467–485 |doi=10.1093/imanum/drp012 |s2cid=119892206 |issn=0272-4979}} The algorithm is considered one of the most important developments in numerical linear algebra of the 20th century.{{cite journal |last1=Dongarra |first1=J. |last2=Sullivan |first2=F. |title=Guest Editors Introduction: The Top 10 Algorithms |journal=Computing in Science & Engineering |date=January 2000 |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=22–23 |doi=10.1109/MCISE.2000.814652 |bibcode=2000CSE.....2a..22D}}
  • 1960s: Kolmogorov complexity, also known as "Kolmogorov–Chaitin complexity", descriptive complexity, etc., of an object such as a piece of text is a measure of the computational resources needed to specify the object. The concept was independently introduced by Ray Solomonoff, Andrey Kolmogorov and Gregory Chaitin in the 1960s.See Chapter 1.6 in the first edition of Li & Vitanyi, An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications, who cite Chaitin (1975): "this definition [of Kolmogorov complexity] was independently proposed about 1965 by A.N. Kolmogorov and me ... Both Kolmogorov and I were then unaware of related proposals made in 1960 by Ray Solomonoff".
  • Early 1960s: The concept of packet switching, a communications method in which discrete blocks of data (packets) are routed between nodes over data links, was first explored by Paul Baran in the early 1960s, and then independently a few years later by Donald Davies.
  • Early 1960s: The principles of atomic layer deposition, a thin-film growth method that in the 2000s contributed to the continuation of semiconductor-device scaling in accord with Moore's law, were independently discovered in the early 1960s by the Soviet scientists Valentin Aleskovsky and Stanislav Koltsov and in 1974 by the Finnish inventor Tuomo Suntola.{{Cite journal |last1=Ahvenniemi |first1=Esko |last2=Akbashev |first2=Andrew R. |last3=Ali |first3=Saima |last4=Bechelany |first4=Mikhael |last5=Berdova |first5=Maria |last6=Boyadjiev |first6=Stefan |last7=Cameron |first7=David C. |last8=Chen |first8=Rong |last9=Chubarov |first9=Mikhail |date=16 December 2016 |title=Review Article: Recommended reading list of early publications on atomic layer deposition—Outcome of the "Virtual Project on the History of ALD" |journal=Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=010801 |doi=10.1116/1.4971389 |issn=0734-2101 |doi-access=free |bibcode=2017JVSTA..35a0801A}}{{Cite journal |last=Puurunen |first=Riikka L. |date=1 December 2014 |title=A Short History of Atomic Layer Deposition: Tuomo Suntola's Atomic Layer Epitaxy |journal=Chemical Vapor Deposition |volume=20 |issue=10–11–12 |pages=332–344 |doi=10.1002/cvde.201402012 |issn=1521-3862 |url= https://zenodo.org/record/3228179 |doi-access=free}}{{Cite journal |last1=Malygin |first1=Anatolii A. |last2=Drozd |first2=Victor E. |last3=Malkov |first3=Anatolii A. |last4=Smirnov |first4=Vladimir M. |date=1 December 2015 |title=From V. B. Aleskovskii's "Framework" Hypothesis to the Method of Molecular Layering/Atomic Layer Deposition |journal=Chemical Vapor Deposition |volume=21 |issue=10–11–12 |pages=216–240 |doi=10.1002/cvde.201502013 |issn=1521-3862}}
  • Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is a popular model in finance for trading off risk versus return. Three separate authors published it in academic journals and a fourth circulated unpublished papers.
  • 1963: In a major advance in the development of plate tectonics theory, the Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis was independently proposed by Lawrence Morley, and by Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews, linking seafloor spreading and the symmetric "zebra pattern" of magnetic reversals in the basalt rocks on either side of mid-ocean ridges.{{cite journal |last1=Heirtzler |first1=James R. |first2=Xavier |last2=Le Pichon |first3=J. Gregory |last3=Baron |date=1966 |title=Magnetic anomalies over the Reykjanes Ridge |journal=Deep-Sea Research |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=427–32 |doi=10.1016/0011-7471(66)91078-3 |ref=CITEREFHeirzlerLe PichonBaron1966 |bibcode=1966DSRA...13..427H}}
  • Cosmic microwave background as a signature of the Big Bang was confirmed by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs. Penzias and Wilson had been testing a very sensitive microwave detector when they noticed that their equipment was picking up a strange noise that was independent of the orientation (direction) of their instrument. At first they thought the noise was generated due to pigeon droppings in the detector, but even after they removed the droppings the noise was still detected. Meanwhile, at nearby Princeton University two physicists, Robert Dicke and Jim Peebles, were working on a suggestion of George Gamow's that the early universe had been hot and dense; they believed its hot glow could still be detected but would be so red-shifted that it would manifest as microwaves. When Penzias and Wilson learned about this, they realized that they had already detected the red-shifted microwaves and (to the disappointment of Dicke and Peebles) were awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics.
  • 1963: Conductive polymers: Between 1963 and 1977, doped and oxidized highly conductive polyacetylene derivatives were independently discovered, "lost", and then rediscovered at least four times. The last rediscovery won the 2000 Nobel prize in Chemistry, for the "discovery and development of conductive polymers". This was without reference to the previous discoveries.Citations in article "Conductive polymers".
  • 1964: The relativistic model for the Higgs mechanism was developed by three independent groups: Robert Brout and François Englert; Peter Higgs; and Gerald Guralnik, Carl Richard Hagen, and Tom Kibble.Sean Carrol, The Particle at the End of the Universe: The Hunt for the Higgs and the Discovery of a New World, Dutton, 2012, p.228. [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15744013-the-particle-at-the-end-of-the-universe] Slightly later, in 1965, it was also proposed by Soviet undergraduate students Alexander Migdal and Alexander Markovich Polyakov.{{cite journal |first1=A. A. |last1=Migdal |author1-link=Alexander Migdal |first2=A. M. |last2=Polyakov |author2-link=Alexander Markovich Polyakov |url= http://www.jetp.ac.ru/cgi-bin/dn/e_024_01_0091.pdf |title=Spontaneous Breakdown of Strong Interaction Symmetry and Absence of Massless Particles |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20131203014220/http://www.jetp.ac.ru/cgi-bin/dn/e_024_01_0091.pdf |archive-date=3 December 2013 |journal=JETP |volume=51 |page=135 |date=July 1966}} (English translation: Soviet Physics JETP, vol. 24, p. 1, January 1967.) The existence of the "Higgs boson" was finally confirmed in 2012; Higgs and Englert were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2013.
  • 1965: The Cocke–Younger–Kasami algorithm was independently discovered three times: by T. Kasami (1965), by Daniel H. Younger (1967), and by John Cocke and Jacob T. Schwartz (1970).
  • The Wagner–Fischer algorithm, in computer science, was discovered and published at least six times.{{Cite journal |last1=Navarro |first1=Gonzalo |doi=10.1145/375360.375365 |title=A guided tour to approximate string matching |journal=ACM Computing Surveys |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=31–88 |date=2001 |url= http://repositorio.uchile.cl/bitstream/handle/2250/126168/Navarro_Gonzalo_Guided_tour.pdf |citeseerx=10.1.1.452.6317 |s2cid=207551224}}{{rp|43}}
  • 1967: The affine scaling method for solving linear programming was discovered by Soviet mathematician I.I. Dikin in 1967. It went unnoticed in the West for two decades, until two groups of researchers in the U.S. reinvented it in 1985.
  • 1968: Neutral theory of molecular evolution was introduced by a Japanese biologist, Motoo Kimura, in 1968, and independently by two American biologists, Jack Lester King and Thomas Hughes Jukes, in 1969.
  • 1969: Thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) structure was determined, and the hormone synthesized, independently by Andrew V. Schally and Roger Guillemin, who shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine.Joshua Rothman, "The Rules of the Game: How does science really work?" (review of Michael Strevens, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, Liveright), The New Yorker, 5 October 2020, pp. 67–71. (p. 68.)
  • 1970: Howard Temin and David Baltimore independently discovered reverse transcriptase enzymes.
  • The Knuth–Morris–Pratt string searching algorithm was developed by Donald Knuth and Vaughan Pratt and independently by J. H. Morris.
  • 1971: The Cook–Levin theorem (also known as "Cook's theorem"), a result in computational complexity theory, was proven independently by Stephen Cook (1971 in the U.S.) and by Leonid Levin (1973 in the USSR). Levin was not aware of Cook's achievement because of communication difficulties between East and West during the Cold War. The other way round, Levin's work was not widely known in the West until around 1978.See Garey & Johnson, Computers and intractability, p. 119.
    Cf. also the survey article by Trakhtenbrot (see "External Links").
    Levin emigrated to the U.S. in 1978.
  • 1972: The Bohlen–Pierce scale, a harmonic, non-octave musical scale, was independently discovered by Heinz Bohlen (1972), Kees van Prooijen (1978) and John R. Pierce (1984).
  • 1973: RSA, an algorithm suitable for signing and encryption in public-key cryptography, was publicly described in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman. An equivalent system had been described in 1973 in an internal document by Clifford Cocks, a British mathematician working for the UK intelligence agency GCHQ, but his work was not revealed until 1997 due to its top-secret classification.
  • 1973: Asymptotic freedom, which states that the strong nuclear interaction between quarks decreases with decreasing distance, was discovered in 1973 by David Gross and Frank Wilczek, and by David Politzer, and was published in the same 1973 edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.D. J. Gross, F. Wilczek, [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.30.1343 Ultraviolet behavior of non-abeilan gauge theoreies], Physical Review Letters 30 (1973) 1343–1346;

H. D. Politzer, [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.30.1346 Reliable perturbative results for strong interactions], Physical Review Letters 30 (1973) 1346–1349 For their work the three received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004.

  • 1974: The J/ψ meson was independently discovered by a group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, headed by Burton Richter, and by a group at Brookhaven National Laboratory, headed by Samuel Ting of MIT. Both announced their discoveries on 11 November 1974. For their shared discovery, Richter and Ting shared the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics.
  • 1975: Endorphins were discovered independently in Scotland and the US in 1975.
  • 1975: Two English biologists, Robin Holliday and John Pugh, and an American biologist, Arthur Riggs, independently suggested that methylation, a chemical modification of DNA that is heritable and can be induced by environmental influences, including physical and emotional stresses, has an important part in controlling gene expression. This concept has become foundational for the field of epigenetics, with its multifarious implications for physical and mental health and for sociopolitics.Israel Rosenfield and [dward Ziff, "Epigenetics: The Evolution Revolution", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXV, no. 10 (7 June 2018), pp. 36,38.
  • 1976: Mevastatin (compactin; ML-236B) was independently discovered by Akira Endo in Japan in a culture of Penicillium citrinium{{cite journal |last1=Endo |first1=Akira |last2=Kuroda |first2=M. |last3=Tsujita |first3=Y. |date=1976 |title=ML-236A, ML-236B, and ML-236C, new inhibitors of cholesterogenesis produced by Penicillium citrinium |journal=The Journal of Antibiotics |volume=29 |issue=12 |pages=1346–8 |doi=10.7164/antibiotics.29.1346 |pmid=1010803 |doi-access=free}} and by a British group in a culture of Penicillium brevicompactum.{{cite journal |last1=Brown |first1=Alian G. |last2=Smale |first2=Terry C. |last3=King |first3=Trevor J. |last4=Hasenkamp |first4=Rainer |last5=Thompson |first5=Ronald H. |date=1976 |title=Crystal and Molecular Structure of Compactin, a New Antifungal Metabolite from Penicillium brevicompactum |journal=J. Chem. Soc. Perkin Trans. |volume=1 |issue=11 |pages=1165–1170 |doi=10.1039/P19760001165 |pmid=945291}} Both reports were published in 1976.
  • 1980: The asteroid cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that wiped out much life on Earth, including all dinosaurs except for birds, was published in ScienceAlvarez, L W; Alvarez, W; Asaro, F; Michel, H V (1980). "Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction" (PDF). Science. 208 (4448): 1095–1108. Bibcode:1980Sci...208.1095A. doi:10.1126/science.208.4448.1095. {{PMID|17783054}}. S2CID 16017767. by Luis and Walter Alvarez et al.; and independently 2 weeks earlier, in Nature, by Dutch geologist Jan Smit and Belgian geologist Jan Hertogen.Peter Brannen, "The Worst Times on Earth: Mass extinctions send us a warning about the future of life on this planet", Scientific American, vol. 323, no. 3 (September 2020), pp. 74–81. (The Smit–Hertogen independent discovery is referenced on p. 80.)
  • 1980: Stigler's law of eponymy, stating that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer, was self-named for ironic effect by Stephen Stigler (1980), who acknowledged that this law had earlier been discovered by many others, including Henry Dudeney (1917).
  • 1983: Two separate research groups led by American Robert Gallo and French investigators {{lang|fr|Françoise Barré-Sinoussi|italic=no}} and Luc Montagnier independently declared that a novel retrovirus may have been infecting AIDS patients, and published their findings in the same issue of the journal Science.{{cite journal |last1=Gallo |first1=R. C. |last2=Sarin |first2=P. S. |last3=Gelmann |first3=E. P. |last4=Robert-Guroff |first4=M. |last5=Richardson |first5=E. |last6=Kalyanaraman |first6=V. S. |last7=Mann |first7=D. |last8=Sidhu |first8=G. D. |last9=Stahl |first9=R. E. |last10=Zolla-Pazner |first10=S. |last11=Leibowitch |first11=J. |last12=Popovic |first12=M. |title=Isolation of human T-cell leukemia virus in acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) |journal=Science |volume=220 |issue=4599 |pages=865–867 |date=1983 |pmid=6601823 |doi=10.1126/science.6601823 |bibcode=1983Sci...220..865G}}{{cite journal |last1=Barré-Sinoussi |first1=F. |last2=Chermann |first2=J. C. |last3=Rey |first3=F. |last4=Nugeyre |first4=M. T. |last5=Chamaret |first5=S. |last6=Gruest |first6=J. |last7=Dauguet |first7=C. |last8=Axler-Blin |first8=C. |last9=Vézinet-Brun |first9=F. |last10=Rouzioux |first10=C. |last11=Rozenbaum |first11=W. |last12=Montagnier |first12=L. |title=Isolation of a T-lymphotropic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) |journal=Science |volume=220 |issue=4599 |pages=868–871 |date=1983 |pmid=6189183 |doi=10.1126/science.6189183 |bibcode=1983Sci...220..868B |s2cid=390173}}{{cite web |url= https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2008/press.html |title=The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Press Release |website=www.nobelprize.org |access-date=28 January 2018}} A third contemporaneous group, at the University of California, San Francisco, led by Dr. Jay Levy, in 1983 independently discovered an AIDS virus{{cite journal |last=Levy |first=J. A. |display-authors=etal |date=1984 |title=Isolation of lymphocytopathic retroviruses from San Francisco patients with AIDS |journal=Science |volume=225 |issue=4664 |pages=840–842 |doi=10.1126/science.6206563 |pmid=6206563 |bibcode=1984Sci...225..840L}} which was very different from that reported by the Montagnier and Gallo groups and which indicated, for the first time, the heterogeneity of HIV isolates.{{cite journal |last1=Levy |first1=J. A. |last2=Kaminsky |first2=L. S. |last3=Morrow |first3=W. J. |last4=Steimer |first4=K. |last5=Luciw |first5=P. |last6=Dina |first6=D. |last7=Hoxie |first7=J. |last8=Oshiro |first8=L. |date=1985 |title=Infection by the retrovirus associated with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome |journal=Annals of Internal Medicine |volume=103 |issue=5 |pages=694–699 |doi=10.7326/0003-4819-103-5-694 |pmid=2996401}}
  • 1984: Quantum cryptography—the first cryptographic method to rely not on mathematical complexity but on the laws of physics—was first postulated in 1984 by Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard, working together, and later independently, in 1991, by Artur Ekert. The earlier scheme has proven the more practical.Tim Folger, "The Quantum Hack: Quantum computers will render today's cryptographic methods obsolete. What happens then?" Scientific American, vol. 314, no. 2 (February 2016), pp. 50, 53.
  • 1984: Comet Levy-Rudenko was discovered independently by David H. Levy on 13 November 1984 and the next evening by Michael Rudenko. (It was the first of 23 comets discovered by Levy, who is famous as the 1993 co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, the first comet ever observed crashing into a planet, Jupiter.)David H. Levy, "My Life as a Comet Hunter: The need to pass a French test, of all things, spurred half a century of cosmic sleuthing", Scientific American, vol. 314, no. 2 (February 2016), pp. 70–71.
  • 1985: The use of elliptic curves in cryptography (elliptic curve cryptography) was suggested independently by Neal Koblitz and Victor S. Miller in 1985.
  • 1987: The Immerman–Szelepcsényi theorem, another fundamental result in computational complexity theory, was proven independently by Neil Immerman and Róbert Szelepcsényi in 1987.See [http://www.eatcs.org/activities/awards/goedel1995.html EATCS on the Gödel Prize 1995] {{webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070804131454/https://www.eatcs.org/activities/awards/goedel1995.html |date=4 August 2007}}.
  • 1989: Thomas R. Cech (Colorado) and Sidney Altman (Yale) won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their independent discovery in the 1980s of ribozymes{{spaced ndash}}for the "discovery of catalytic properties of RNA"{{spaced ndash}}using different approaches. Catalytic RNA was an unexpected finding, something they were not looking for, and it required rigorous proof that there was no contaminating protein enzyme.
  • 1991: psychiatrist Christopher Kasparek proposed that schizophrenia be renamed "psychosis".Christopher Kasparek, "Psychiatry and Special Interests", The Psychiatric Times, February 1991, p. 6. In 2015 a similar suggestion was made by psychiatry professor Jim van Os, who proposed that schizophrenia be renamed "psychotic spectrum disorder".Van Os et al, NRC Handelsblad, 2015, laten we de diagnose schizofrenie vergeten http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/2015/03/07/laten-we-de-diagnose-schizofrenie-vergeten-1472619{{Cite journal|last=Os|first=Jim van|date=2016-02-02|title="Schizophrenia" does not exist|url=https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i375|journal=BMJ|language=en|volume=352|pages=i375|doi=10.1136/bmj.i375|issn=1756-1833|pmid=26837945|s2cid=116098585 |url-access=subscription}}
  • 1993: groups led by Donald S. Bethune at IBM and Sumio Iijima at NEC independently discovered single-wall carbon nanotubes and methods to produce them using transition-metal catalysts.
  • 1994: The local average treatment effect (LATE) was first introduced in the econometrics literature in 1994 by Guido W. Imbens and Joshua D. Angrist,{{Cite journal |last1=Imbens |first1=Guido W. |last2=Angrist |first2=Joshua D. |date=1994 |title=Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2951620 |journal=Econometrica |volume=62 |issue=2 |pages=467–475 |doi=10.2307/2951620 |jstor=2951620 |issn=0012-9682}} who shared half of the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Stuart G. Baker and Karen S. Lindeman in 1994 {{Cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=Stuart G. |last2=Lindeman |first2=Karen S. |date=1994-11-15 |title=The paired availability design: A proposal for evaluating epidural analgesia during labor |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sim.4780132108 |journal=Statistics in Medicine |language=en |volume=13 |issue=21 |pages=2269–2278 |doi=10.1002/sim.4780132108 |pmid=7846425 |issn=0277-6715}} independently published the LATE method for a binary outcome with the paired availability design and the key monotonicity assumption. An early version of LATE involved one-sided noncompliance (and hence no monotonicity assumption). In 1983 Baker wrote a technical report describing LATE for one-sided noncompliance that was published in 2016 in a supplement. In 1984, Bloom published a paper on LATE with one-sided compliance. A history of multiple discoveries involving LATE appears in Baker and Lindeman (2024).{{Cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=Stuart G. |last2=Lindeman |first2=Karen S. |date=2024-04-02 |title=Multiple Discoveries in Causal Inference: LATE for the Party |journal=CHANCE |language=en |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=21–25 |doi=10.1080/09332480.2024.2348956 |pmid=38957370 |pmc=11218811 |issn=0933-2480}}
  • 1998: Saul Perlmutter, Adam G. Riess, and Brian P. Schmidt—working as members of two independent projects, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team—simultaneously discovered in 1998 the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae. For this, they were jointly awarded the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.{{cite journal |bibcode=1992Ap&SS.191..107P |doi=10.1007/BF00644200 |title=Inflation and compactification from Galaxy redshifts? |date=1992 |last1=Paál |first1=G. |last2=Horváth |first2=I. |last3=Lukács |first3=B. |journal=Astrophysics and Space Science |volume=191 |issue=1 |pages=107–124 |s2cid=116951785}}Richard Panek, "The Cosmic Surprise: Scientists discovered dark energy 25 years ago. They're still trying to figure out what it is", Scientific American, vol. 329, no.5 (December 2023), pp. 62–71.In regard to his "cosmological constant", "Einstein ... blundered twice: by introducing the cosmological constant for the wrong reason [to maintain a static universe, before the advent of the Big Bang theory] and again by throwing it out instead of exploring its implications [including an accelerating universe]." Lawrence M. Krauss, "What Einstein Got Wrong: Cosmology", Scientific American, vol. 313, no. 3 (September 2015), p. 55.

21st century

File:Arthur B. McDonald & Takaaki Kajita 5172-2015.jpg, Kajita]]

File:James P. Allison EM1B5509 (32335657128).jpg]]

File:Tasuku Honjo EM1B5529 (46157227432).jpg]]

File:James Maynard MFO 2013.jpg]]

File:Reinhard Genzel 2018.jpg]]

File:Andrea Ghez (cropped1).jpg]]

File:Jennifer Doudna by Christopher Michel in 2023 01 (3x4 cropped).jpg]]

File:Emmanuelle Charpentier.jpg]]

File:KavliPrize-7021 (30643550468).jpg]]

File:Dr David Julius by christopher michel in 2022 04 (cropped2).jpg]]

File:Ardem Patapoutian by C Michel 67 (cropped).jpg]]

Quotations

{{Blockquote|"When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring."| Farkas Bolyai to his son János Bolyai, urging him to claim the invention of non-Euclidean geometry without delay|
quoted in Ming Li and Paul Vitanyi, An introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications, 1st ed., 1993, p. 83.}}

{{Blockquote|"[Y]ou do not [make a discovery] until a background knowledge is built up to a place where it's almost impossible not to see the new thing, and it often happens that the new step is done contemporaneously in two different places in the world, independently."| a physicist Nobel laureate interviewed by Harriet Zuckerman, in Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, 1977, p. 204.}}

{{Blockquote|"[A] man can no more be completely original ... than a tree can grow out of air."| George Bernard Shaw, preface to Major Barbara (1905).}}

{{Blockquote|I never had an idea in my life. My so-called inventions already existed in the environment – I took them out. I've created nothing. Nobody does. There's no such thing as an idea being brain-born; everything comes from the outside.| Thomas EdisonCasey Cep, "The Perfecter: A new biography of Thomas Edison recalibrates our understanding of the inventor's genius", The New Yorker, 28 October 2019, pp. 72–77. (p. 76.) Casey Cep makes reference to Robert K. Merton's concept of multiple discoveries, adding: "The problems of the age attract the problem solvers of the age, all of whom work more or less within the same constraints and avail themselves of the same existing theories and technologies." (p. 76.)}}

See also

Notes

{{notelist}}

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

Bibliography

{{refbegin|30em}}

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  • Tim Folger, "The Quantum Hack: Quantum computers will render today's cryptographic methods obsolete. What happens then?" Scientific American, vol. 314, no. 2 (February 2016), pp. 48–55.
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  • Owen Gingerich, "Did Copernicus Owe a Debt to Aristarchus?" Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 16, no. 1 (February 1985), pp. 37–42. [http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1985JHA....16...37G/0000037.000.html 1985JHA....16...37G Page 37]
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  • A. Rupert Hall, Philosophers at War, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
  • Lawrence M. Krauss, "What Einstein Got Wrong: Cosmology (Everyone makes mistakes. But those of the legendary physicist are particularly illuminating)", Scientific American, vol. 313, no. 3 (September 2015), pp. 50–55.
  • David Lamb, Multiple Discovery: The Pattern of Scientific Progress, Amersham, Avebury Press, 1984.
  • David H. Levy, "My Life as a Comet Hunter: The need to pass a French test, of all things, spurred half a century of cosmic sleuthing", Scientific American, vol. 314, no. 2 (February 2016), pp. 70–71.
  • {{cite book |first1=Ming |last1=Li |first2=Paul |last2=Vitanyi |title=An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications, 1st ed |location=New York |publisher=Springer-Verlag |date=1993 |isbn=978-0-387-94053-3 |id=(U.S.), (Europe) |url= https://archive.org/details/introductiontoko00limi}}
  • Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, University of Chicago Press, 1973.
  • Robert K. Merton, On Social Structure and Science, edited and with an introduction by Piotr Sztompka, University of Chicago Press, 1996.
  • Jack Murtagh, "This Unexpected Pattern of Numbers Is Everywhere: A curious mathematical phenomenon called Benford's law governs the numbers all around us", Scientific American, vol. 329, no. 5 (December 2023), pp. 82–83.
  • {{Cite book |first=Abraham |last=Ortelius |date=1596 |orig-date=1570 |title=Thesaurus Geographicus |place=Antwerp |publisher=Plantin |language=la |edition=3rd |oclc=214324616}} (First edition published 1570, [https://books.google.com/books?id=YG1EAAAAcAAJ&pg=PR4 1587 edition online])
  • Richard Panek, "The Cosmic Surprise: Scientists discovered dark energy 25 years ago. They're still trying to figure out what it is", Scientific American, vol. 329, no.5 (December 2023), pp. 62–71.
  • Robert William Reid, Marie Curie, New York, New American Library, 1974, {{ISBN|0-00-211539-5}}.
  • Marilynne Robinson, "On Edgar Allan Poe", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXII, no. 2 (5 February 2015), pp. 4, 6.
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  • Joshua Rothman, "The Rules of the Game: How does science really work?" (review of Michael Strevens, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, Liveright), The New Yorker, 5 October 2020, pp. 67–71.
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  • Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, New York, Free Press, 1977.

{{refend}}