{"id":34,"date":"2007-09-07T02:06:06","date_gmt":"2007-09-07T07:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=34"},"modified":"2007-09-07T02:16:47","modified_gmt":"2007-09-07T07:16:47","slug":"the-zeroth-theorem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"The zeroth theorem"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Zeroth Theorem in the history of physics states that a discovery named after an individual often did not originate with that person. <\/em><\/p>\n

It may be pompous and contrived (and let’s face, who ain’t?) but the zeroth theorem is surely worth a post since David “Orc” Jackson from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has done such a good job a-huntin and a-scourin for the scoundrels who’ve taken credit for things they ain’t done.<\/p>\n

Orc Jackson says there ain’t no shortage of examples of the Zeroth Theorem in the history of science and his paper is full of em. Here are a few:<\/p>\n

Avogadro’s number<\/a> (6 x 10^23) was first calculated by Johan Loschmidt in 1865 at least 40 years before Avogadro was posthumously and mistakenly given the credit.<\/p>\n

Olber’s paradox<\/a> was discussed at least a 150 years before Olber was born<\/p>\n

The Dirac delta function<\/a> was invented by the English electrical engineer Oliver Heaviside<\/a> 30 years before Paul Dirac published his version<\/p>\n

And the Lorentz guage condition<\/a> was dreamt up by a bloke with an almost identical name (Ludvig Lorenz) almost 40 years before Hendrik Lorentz published it in 1904<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can guess what ya’ll a-thinkin: who was this Zeroth bloke and whose idea did he steal for this theorem?<\/p>\n

Ref: arxiv.org\/abs\/0708.4249<\/a>: Examples of the Zeroth Theorem of the History of Physics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Zeroth Theorem in the history of physics states that a discovery named after an individual often did not originate with that person. It may be pompous and contrived (and let’s face, who ain’t?) but the zeroth theorem is surely worth a post since David “Orc” Jackson from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fightin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}