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A question posed on academia.SE prompts this follow-up question:

Is there an example of a famous physical law, constant, equation, theorem etc that was named after its discoverer by the discoverer him/herself?

Thinking of things like Newton's Laws, Josephson effect, Kalman filter, Turing machine, etc.

Usually these things are named by others - but did anyone ever say "I discovered what I propose to call the Jones effect"?

For reference, you can find a long list of "laws named after people" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_laws_named_after_people (with thanks to J.W. Perry for first posting the link, and to HDE226868 for restoring it when the original comment was deleted)

I'm sure it's not a complete list...

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Floris
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    My guess is the closest will be some sort of taxonomist naming a species after themselves.. – user2813274 Dec 19 '14 at 19:30
  • @user2813274 - Great point! Indeed, in taxonomy a species is often named after the discoverer. I am really asking about "bigger" discoveries though - and specifically I'm looking for examples where the general rule/perception "this isn't proper" is being broken. Since it is generally accepted in taxonomy, it doesn't fall under the "not done" rule. – Floris Dec 19 '14 at 19:55
  • Are we avoiding Stigler's law of eponymy? – HDE 226868 Dec 19 '14 at 21:22
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    No we're not. You will find it was discussed in the comments of the original question linked above: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/34547/can-a-discoverer-give-the-name-he-wants-to-his-finding#comment76638_34548 – Floris Dec 19 '14 at 21:24
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    Parkinson's Laws. – Alexandre Eremenko Dec 20 '14 at 12:05
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    @AlexandreEremenko - that's a good one; the original article can be found at http://www.economist.com/node/14116121 and includes the line Before the discovery of a new scientific law—herewith presented to the public for the first time, and to be called Parkinson's Law* . Reading the whole article, it's clearly intended as an attempt at humor -- but the "Law" stuck... – Floris Dec 20 '14 at 19:52
  • Earlier, @J.W.Perry put this link in a comment and then deleted it, but it's very good: List of scientific laws named after people. – HDE 226868 Dec 20 '14 at 20:07
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    @HDE226868 - that is clearly a great link to have. I will put it in the question so it doesn't disappear. – Floris Dec 20 '14 at 20:22
  • @Floris what do you mean by "in taxonomy a species is often named after the discoverer"? A species is named by a genus name, a species name (both latinized) and the name of the author of the species name. If you meant that last one, it is not "often" it is "always" because it is compulsory; if you meant the actual species name (in latin) it is not "often" it is "hardly ever": most journals would forbid you to name a species after yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if some taxonomists indeed named species after themselves but this is certainly not common. – plannapus Dec 21 '14 at 08:17
  • @plannapus I did not know a species had to be named after its discoverer - for example Pithecanthropus Erectus (later called Homo Erectus Erectus) was discovered by Eugene Dubois but is not named after him. Where do you get the "compulsory" from? – Floris Dec 21 '14 at 15:22
  • That's not what I m saying at all. A species is named the following way: "Homo sapiens Linnaeus 1758", it is Linnaeus who named that species sapiens, and it is compulsory to keep his name alongside the species. Other than that Linnaeus never named a species linnaei. That was my point. The species keep his name because it is compulsory but he did not name it after himself. No taxonomist does. – plannapus Dec 21 '14 at 18:09
  • @plannapus OK I understand, thanks for the clarification. It's not my area of expertise as you can tell. At any rate, this is not what I am trying to get at with this question - it's really about people who went against the grain in naming something after themselves which is not the case in taxonomy. – Floris Dec 21 '14 at 18:46
  • Would the Peter principle count: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle ? Although it is management science, physicists have begun entering the field too (calling it econo-/sociophysics), and as such it has more of a "physical" meaning too. See for example the article http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455, which won a 2010 Ig Nobel. – alarge Dec 22 '14 at 21:06
  • @alarge Peter principle and Parkinson's Law fall within the scope of the question although in both cases they were attempts at humor which puts them into a category of their own I think. Feel free to make it an answer... – Floris Dec 22 '14 at 21:44
  • should this be community wiki? – Ooker Mar 24 '18 at 05:34

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This isn't really a physical law, nor is it exactly what you're asking for, but the statistical concept usually known as the "Akaike Information Criterion" (AIC) was indeed called AIC by Akaike, but with the name "an information criterion."

I don't know historically whether that was intentional or not, but when Sumio Watanabe called his extension the "Widely Applicable Information Criterion" (WAIC) the standard name of "Watanabe-Akaike Information Criterion" shortly followed.

Andrew Gelman has joked that he should develop an information criterion with Aki Vehtari and call it the "Very Good Information Criterion."

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In 2013, Harminder Dua announced the discovery of the eponymous Dua's layer in the eye. Wikipedia writes:

While some scientists welcomed the announcement, other scientists cautioned that time was needed for other researchers to confirm the discovery and its significance. Others have met the claim "with incredulity". The choice of the name Dua's Layer has also been criticized.

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Here is an interesting twist.

The Black-Scholes model for option pricing first appeared in:

Black, Fischer; Scholes, Myron (1973). "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities". Journal of Political Economy 81 (3): 637–654.

where they derived and solved the governing partial differential equation, now referred to as the Black-Scholes equation. Robert Merton provided a crucial step in deriving the PDE rigorously using a dynamic hedging argument -- an improvement on an approach considered by Black and Scholes. He was subsequently acknowledged in a footnote.

Of course, there was no explicit reference to "Black-Scholes model" in the original publication. Later Merton published a paper where he named the model Black-Scholes.

Merton and Scholes were awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize Economics for this work. The model is now commonly referred to as the Black-Scholes-Merton option pricing model.

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