List of multiple independent discoveries

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Contents 1 List of multiple independent discoveries 1.1 16th century 1.2 17th century 1.3 18th century 1.4 19th century 1.5 20th century 1.6 21st century 2 References 3 See also

Multiple independent discoveries in science — termed "multiples" by Robert K. Merton — are instances in which similar discoveries are made by scientists working independently of each other.[1]

"Sometimes," Merton writes, "the discoveries are simultaneous or almost so; sometimes a scientist will make a new discovery which, unbeknown to him, somebody else has made years before."^{[citation needed]}

By contrast, a discovery that has been made uniquely by a single scientist or group of scientists working together, is termed a "singleton."

Multiple independent discovery, rather than an exceptional phenomenon, may, as Merton believed, constitute the common pattern in science. In a 1961 paper on "Multiple Discoveries in Science," he presented evidence for "the hypothesis... that all scientific discoveries are in principle multiples, including those that on the surface appear to be singletons." (Merton, On Social Structure and Science, p. 307.)

[edit] List of multiple independent discoveries

[edit] 16th century

[edit] 17th century

• Calculus — Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and others.

[edit] 18th century

• Oxygen — Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestley and others.

[edit] 19th century

• Evolution — Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace.

[edit] 20th century

[edit] 21st century

[edit] References

• 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.
• Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, Free Press, 1979.

[edit] See also

• Historic recurrence