List of scientific priority disputes

This is a list of priority disputes in history of science and science-related fields (such as mathematics).

Astronomy

• 1558 invention of the geoheliocentric system: Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Raimarus Ursus^[1]
• 1609–1610 Galilean moons: Galileo, Simon Marius^[2]
• 1612 discovery of sunspots: Galileo Galilei, Christoph Scheiner^[3]
• 1846 prediction of Neptune: Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams
• 2004–2005 controversy over the discovery of Haumea: José Luis Ortiz Moreno, Michael E. Brown.^[4]

Biology and medicine

• 1652 discovery of the lymphatic system: Olof Rudbeck, Thomas Bartholin^[5][6][7]
• c. 1660 teaching a deaf-mute person to speak: John Wallis, William Holder^[8][9][10]
• c. 1667 first human blood transfusion: Richard Lower, Henry Oldenburg, Jean-Baptiste Denys^[11]
• c. 1859 development of the theory of evolution: Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Patrick Matthew^[12][13]
• 1877–1892 Bone Wars: Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh.
• 1882–1889: Koch–Pasteur rivalry: Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch.
• 1899–1902 discovery of the life cycle of malarial parasite: Giovanni Battista Grassi, Ronald Ross^[14][15][16]
• 1953–1962 discovery of the DNA structure: Francis Crick, James D. Watson, Rosalind Franklin, Erwin Chargaff, Oswald Avery^[17][18][19]
• 1971–1973 discovery of opiate receptors: Candace Pert, Solomon H. Snyder^[20]1971–1975 invention of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): Paul Lauterbur, Peter Mansfield, Raymond Vahan Damadian, and others^[21] (see 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)
• 1983 discovery of HIV: Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier^{[22][23][24][25][26]} (see 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)

Chemistry

• 1604-1777 discovery of oxygen: Joseph Priestley, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier^[27]
• 1864 synthesis dicarboxylic acids from carboxylic acids (diacids from monoacid reactions): Hugo Müller, Hermann Kolbe, Hans Hübner, Friedrich Konrad Beilstein, Maxwell Simpson.^[28]
• 1870–1895 development of the periodic table: Dmitri Mendeleev, Lothar Meyer^[29]
• 1960–1994 Transfermium Wars: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.

Mathematics

• 1550–1557 discovery of solutions to cubic equations: Niccolò Tartaglia, Gerolamo Cardano^[30]
• 1669–1704 discovery of l'Hôpital's rule: Guillaume de l'Hôpital, Johann Bernoulli.^[31]
• 1699–1716 Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy: Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz
• 1949 proof of the prime number theorem: Atle Selberg and/or Paul Erdős^[32][33]
• 2002–2003 proof of the Poincaré conjecture: Grigori Perelman or Shing-Tung Yau^[34]

Physics

• 1739–1740 development of the Bernoulli's principle between Johann Bernoulli and his son Daniel Bernoulli.^[35]
• 1741–1751 development of the stationary-action principle: Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz^[36]
• 1842–1845 discovery of mechanical equivalent of heat: James Prescott Joule, Julius von Mayer^[37]
• 1864–1890 discovery of radio waves: James Clerk Maxwell, Oliver Lodge, Heinrich Hertz, David Edward Hughes^[38]
• 1889–1905 special relativity priority dispute: Albert Einstein, Henri Poincaré, Hendrik Lorentz
• 1915 general relativity priority dispute: Albert Einstein, David Hilbert
• 1930–1935 development of the Chandrasekhar limit: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Edmund Clifton Stoner, Wilhelm Anderson^[39]
• 1961 development of the Eightfold Way: Murray Gell-Mann, Yuval Ne'eman^[40][41]
• 1998 discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe: High-Z Supernova Search Team, Supernova Cosmology Project.^[42]

Technology

• 1671–1673 invention of the watch balance spring: Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens.^[43][44]
• 1876 Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy: Johann Philipp Reis, Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray.
• 1878 invention of the incandescent light bulb: Thomas Edison, Joseph Swan.^[45][46]

• Claims to the first powered flight: Shivkar Bapuji Talpade in the Marutsakhā (1895),^{[47][48][Note 1]} Clément Ader in the Avion III (1897),^[49] Gustave Whitehead in his No's. 21 and 22 aeroplanes (1901–1903),^{[50][51][52][Note 2]} Richard Pearse in his monoplane (1903–1904),^[53][54] Samuel Pierpont Langley's Aerodrome A (1903),^[49] Karl Jatho in Jatho biplane (1903),^[55][56][57] The Wright brothers in the Wright Flyer (1903),^{[52][Note 3]} Alberto Santos-Dumont in the 14 Bis (1906)^[58][59]
• c. 1880–1890 War of the currents: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse

• 1896–1906 invention of radio: Oliver Lodge, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Reginald Fessenden, Guglielmo Marconi, Roberto Landell de Moura, Alexander Popov, Nikola Tesla^{[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]}
• 1927–1939 Invention of electronic television: Philo T. Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworykin^[68]

Notes

1. Claims that Talpade was the first aviator to fly a powered aeroplane have been pushed by Indian nationalists since the early 2000s. In actuality, the aircraft attributed to Talpade was unmanned. Unmanned aircraft had been flown successfully prior to Talpade's birth.
2. Various publications have debunked claims that Whitehead was the first to fly a powered aeroplane, with some even questioning the claims that Whitehead had flown one at all.
3. Historians and researchers generally accept the Wright Brothers as being the first to achieve sustained and controlled flight.

See also

• List of examples of Stigler's law
• List of scientific debates
• Nobel Prize controversies
• List of multiple discoveries

References

1. Serrano, Juan D. (2013-02-01). "Trying Ursus: A Reappraisal of the Tycho-Ursus Priority Dispute". Journal for the History of Astronomy. 44 (1): 17–46. Bibcode:2013JHA....44...17A. doi:10.1177/002182861304400102. S2CID 118331268 – via Sage Publishing.
2. Pasachoff, Jay M. (2015). "Simon Marius's Mundus Iovialis: 400th Anniversary in Galileo's Shadow". Journal for the History of Astronomy. 46 (2): 218–234. Bibcode:2015AAS...22521505P. doi:10.1177/0021828615585493. S2CID 120470649.
3. Carlowicz, Michael J.; López, Ramón (2002). Storms from the Sun: The Emerging Science of Space Weather. Joseph Henry Press. pp. 1–382. ISBN 978-0309076425. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
4. Courtland, Rachel (2008). "Controversial dwarf planet finally named 'Haumea'". New Scientist. Retrieved 2025-01-31.
5. Ambrose, Charles T. (January 2007). "The priority dispute over the function of the lymphatic system and Glisson's ghost (the 18th-century Hunter–Monro Feud)". Cellular Immunology. 245 (1): 7–15. doi:10.1016/j.cellimm.2007.02.015. PMID 17451660.
6. Ambrose, Charles T. (July 2006). "Immunology's first priority dispute—An account of the 17th-century Rudbeck–Bartholin feud". Cellular Immunology. 242 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1016/j.cellimm.2006.09.004. PMID 17083923.
7. Natale, Gianfranco; Bocci, Guido; Ribatti, Domenico (2017-06-14). "Scholars and scientists in the history of the lymphatic system". Journal of Anatomy. 231 (3): 417–429. doi:10.1111/joa.12644. ISSN 0021-8782. PMC 5554832. PMID 28614587.
8. Aubrey, John; Bennett, Kate (2015). Brief lives: with "An apparatus for the lives of our English mathematical writers". Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-968953-8.
9. Jonathan Rée, I See a Voice (1999), pp. 107–8.
10. Elliott, Jane (26 July 2008). "Find could end 350-year science dispute". BBC News. Retrieved 2008-10-19.
11. Hall, A Rupert; Hall, Marie Boas (October 1980). "The first human blood transfusion: priority disputes (Henry Oldenburg)". Medical History. 24 (4): 461–465. doi:10.1017/S0025727300040588. ISSN 0025-7273. PMC 1082682. PMID 6999258.
12. Burdett, Carolyn (2014-05-15). "Darwin and the theory of evolution". British Library. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
13. Weale, Michael E. (August 2015). "Patrick Matthew's law of natural selection: Matthew's Law of Natural Selection". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 115 (4): 785–791. doi:10.1111/bij.12524.
14. Chaudhury, Abhijit (2021). "The forgotten malariologist: Giovanni Battista Grassi (1854–1925)". Tropical Parasitology. 11 (1): 16–18. doi:10.4103/tp.tp_21_21. ISSN 2229-5070. PMC 8213122. PMID 34195055.
15. Cox, Francis EG (2010-02-01). "History of the discovery of the malaria parasites and their vectors". Parasites & Vectors. 3 (1): 5. doi:10.1186/1756-3305-3-5. ISSN 1756-3305. PMC 2825508. PMID 20205846.
16. Capanna, Ernesto (March 2006). "Grassi versus Ross: who solved the riddle of malaria?". International Microbiology. 9 (1): 69–74. ISSN 1139-6709. PMID 16636993.
17. Forsdyke, Donald R.; Mortimer, James R. (May 2000). "Chargaff's Legacy". Gene. 261 (1): 127–137. doi:10.1016/s0378-1119(00)00472-8. PMID 11164044. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
18. Lamm, Ehud; Harman, Oren; Veigl, Sophie Juliane (2020-06-01). "Before Watson and Crick in 1953 Came Friedrich Miescher in 1869". Genetics. 215 (2): 291–296. doi:10.1534/genetics.120.303195. ISSN 1943-2631. PMC 7268995. PMID 32487691.
19. Beckett, Chris (2004-04-01). "For the Record: The Francis Crick Archive at the Wellcome Library". Medical History. 48 (2): 245–260. doi:10.1017/S0025727300007419. ISSN 2048-8343. PMC 546341. PMID 15151106.
20. Cozzens, Susan E. (1989). Social control and multiple discovery science: the opiate receptor case. Suny series in science, technology and society. Albany, N.Y: State Univ. of New York Pr. ISBN 978-0-88706-935-2.
21. Prasad, Amit (2007). "The (Amorphous) Anatomy of an Invention: The Case of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)". Social Studies of Science. 37 (4): 533–560. doi:10.1177/0306312706075334. ISSN 0306-3127. JSTOR 25474534. PMID 18175616. S2CID 24784055.
22. Rawling, Alison (1994). "The AIDS Virus Dispute: Awarding Priority for the Discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)". Science, Technology, & Human Values. 19 (3): 342–360. doi:10.1177/016224399401900305. ISSN 0162-2439. JSTOR 690029. S2CID 144769393.
23. Rawling, Alison (1990-09-22). "Forum: Montagnier, Gallo or both? - On who the scientific community believes discovered HIV". New Scientist. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
24. Rawling, Alison (July 1994). "The AIDS Virus Dispute: Awarding Priority for the Discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV". Science, Technology, & Human Values. 19 (3): 342–360. doi:10.1177/016224399401900305. ISSN 0162-2439. S2CID 144769393.
25. Markel, Howard (2020-03-24). "How the discovery of HIV led to a transatlantic research war". PBS NewsHour. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
26. Bazell, Robert (2008-10-06). "Dispute behind Nobel Prize for HIV research". NBC News. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
27. Matthews, Robert. "Who really discovered oxygen?". BBC Science Focus. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
28. "The Quiet Revolution". publishing.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2025-01-26.
29. van Spronsen, Johannes W. (March 1969). "The priority conflict between Mendeleev and Meyer". Journal of Chemical Education. 46 (3): 136. Bibcode:1969JChEd..46..136V. doi:10.1021/ed046p136. ISSN 0021-9584.
30. Richeson, David S. (2022-06-30). "The Sordid Past of the Cubic Formula". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
31. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (2020-10-06). From the Calculus to Set Theory 1630-1910: An Introductory History. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-21966-0.
32. Joel Spencer, Ronald Graham, The Elementary Proof of the Prime Number Theorem, THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER
33. Rekvenyi, Kamilla (2019-05-04). "Paul Erdős's mathematics as a social activity". British Journal for the History of Mathematics. 34 (2): 134–142. doi:10.1080/26375451.2019.1593036. ISSN 2637-5451.
34. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destiny
35. Garber, Elizabeth (2012-12-06). The Language of Physics: The Calculus and the Development of Theoretical Physics in Europe, 1750–1914. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4612-1766-4.
36. O'Connor, J.J.; Robertson, E. F. (1998). "Samuel König – Biography". MacTutor. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
37. Coopersmith, Jennifer (2015). Energy, the Subtle Concept: The discovery of Feynman's blocks from Leibniz to Einstein. Oxford University Press. pp. 240–257. ISBN 9780198716747.
38. Hong, Sungook (October 1994). "Marconi and the Maxwellians: The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited". Technology and Culture. 35 (4): 717–749. doi:10.2307/3106504. JSTOR 3106504. S2CID 112949474.
39. Virginia Trimble, "Chandrasekhar and the history of astronomy", Fluid Flows to Black Holes, pp. 49–53 (2011)
40. Gell-Mann, M. (15 March 1961). "The Eightfold Way: A theory of strong interaction symmetry". Synchrotron Laboratory. Office of Scientific and Technical Information Technical Report. Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Technology. doi:10.2172/4008239. TID-12608; CTSL-20.
41. Ne'eman, Y. (August 1961). "Derivation of strong interactions from a gauge invariance". Nuclear Physics. 26 (2). Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.: 222–229. Bibcode:1961NucPh..26..222N. doi:10.1016/0029-5582(61)90134-1.
42. Crease, Robert P. (2010). "Priority battles". Physics World. Retrieved 2023-10-18.
43. A. R. Hall, "Horology and criticism: Robert Hooke", Studia Copernicana, XVI, Ossolineum, 1978, 261–81.
44. Gould, Rupert T. (1923). The Marine Chronometer. Its History and Development. London: J. D. Potter. pp. 158–171. ISBN 0-907462-05-7.
45. Ganapati, Priya (2009-12-18). "Dec. 18, 1878: Let There Be Light — Electric Light". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
46. Spear, Brian (2013-03-01). "Let there be light! Sir Joseph Swan and the incandescent light bulb". World Patent Information. 35 (1): 38–41. doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2012.10.001. ISSN 0172-2190.
47. Ganesan, Rajita (2015-01-15). "The aviator?". Business Standard. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
48. Deb, Siddhartha (2015-05-14). "Those Mythological Men and Their Sacred, Supersonic Flying Temples". The New Republic. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
49. Wragg, David W. (1974). Flight Before Flying. Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc.
50. Weissenborn, G.K.; "Did Whitehead fly?", Air Enthusiast 35, Pilot Press (1988), Pages 19-21 and 74-75.
51. Schlenoff, Daniel C. "Scientific American Debunks Claim Gustave Whitehead Was "First in Flight"". Scientific American. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
52. Magazine, Smithsonian; Crouch, Tom. "Yes, the Wright Brothers Really Were the First to Fly". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
53. "Richard Pearse First Flyer" Archived 2014-10-17 at the Wayback Machine NZEdge.com. Retrieved Oct. 13, 2014
54. "Fact Sheet Richard Pearse" Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT). Retrieved Oct. 13, 2014
55. "Karl Jatho". FlyingMachines.org. Carroll Gray. Archived from the original on June 30, 2009. Retrieved November 22, 2021.
56. "Pigs Might Fly: The Gliders & Hoppers". Early Aviation Pioneers. Retrieved October 16, 2014.
57. "First powered flight in the history of aviation". The Karl-Jatho-Project. Retrieved October 16, 2014.
58. "Primeiro avião do mundo", Rank Brasil: 0, 20 July 2012
59. Chavanne, Bettina H. (November 2006). "In the Museum". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
60. "Wireless Telegraphy". Modern Engineering Practice. Vol. VII. American School of Correspondence. 1903. p. 10.
61. Geddes (1920) "The Response of Plants to Wireless Stimulation" (chapter 13), pp. 172–80
62. Fessenden, Reginald (1908) "Wireless Telephony", Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (volume 27, part 1), June 29, 1908, pp. 553–630
63. Bondyopadhyay, Prebir K. (1995) "Guglielmo Marconi – The father of long distance radio communication – An engineer's tribute", 25th European Microwave Conference: Volume 2, pp. 879–85
64. United States Patent Office Correspondence (1901-1902) (landelldemoura.com.br))
65. Borisova, Nina (2019). "Отечественные разногласия о приоритете А.С. Попова в изобретении радио". Terra Linguistica (in Russian). 36 (2): 98–111. doi:10.18721/JHSS.10209.
66. Tesla, N., & Anderson, L. I. (1998). Nikola Tesla: Guided Weapons & Computer Technology. Tesla presents series, pt. 3. Breckenridge, Colo: Twenty-First Century Books.
67. Tesla, N., & Anderson, L. I. (2002). Nikola Tesla on his work with alternating currents and their application to wireless telegraphy, telephony, and transmission of power: an extended interview. Tesla presents series, pt. 1. Breckenridge, Colo: Twenty-First Century Books.
68. Postman, Neil (1999-03-29). "Electrical Engineer PHILO FARNSWORTH". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2023-10-19.