List of eponymous laws

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This list of eponymous laws provides links to articles on laws, adages, and other succinct observations or predictions named after a person. In some cases the person named has coined the law — such as Parkinson's law. In others, the work or publications of the individual have led to the law being so named — as is the case with Moore's law. There are also laws ascribed to individuals by others, such as Murphy's law; or given eponymous names despite the absence of the named person.

Contents

[edit] A

  • Amara's law — "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run". Proposed by Roy Amara.
  • Amdahl's law — Used to find out the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only a part of it is improved. Named after Gene Amdahl (born 1922)
  • Ampère's law — In physics, it relates the circulating magnetic field in a closed loop to the electric current passing through the loop. Discovered by André-Marie Ampère.
  • Archie's law — In petrophysics, relates the in-situ electrical conductivity of sedimentary rock to its porosity and brine saturation. Named for Gus Archie (1907 – 1978)
  • Asimov's three laws of robotics — also called, more simply, the Three Rules of Robotics, a set of rules which the fictional robots appearing in the writings of Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) must obey.
    • First law: A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    • Second law: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    • Third law: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Subsequently, a Zeroth Law was added to precede these three: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

[edit] B–D

[edit] E–G

[edit] H–K

  • Hanlon's razor — A corollary of Finagle's law, normally taking the form "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.". As with Finagle, possibly not strictly eponymous. Alternately, "Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence."
  • Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle — States that one cannot measure values (with arbitrary precision) of certain conjugate quantities, which are pairs of observables of a single elementary particle. The most familiar of these pairs is the position and momentum.
  • Henry's law — The mass of a gas that dissolves in a definite volume of liquid is directly proportional to the pressure of the gas provided the gas does not react with the solvent.
  • Hofstadter's law — "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." It was created by Douglas Hofstadter in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
  • Hooke's law — The tension on a spring or other elastic object is proportional to the displacement from the equilibrium. Named after Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
  • Hotelling's law in economics — Under some conditions, it is rational for competitors to make their products as nearly identical as possible.
  • Hubble's law — Galaxies recede from an observer at a rate proportional to their distance to that observer. Formulated by Edwin Hubble in 1929.
  • Hutber's law — "Improvement means deterioration". Coined by financial journalist Patrick Hutber.
  • Hume's Law — In meta-ethics, the assertion that normative statements cannot be deduced exclusively from descriptive statements.
  • Kepler's laws of planetary motion — govern the motion of the planets around the sun, and were first discovered by Johannes Kepler
  • Kerckhoffs' law on secure cryptography by Auguste Kerckhoffs a cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge
  • Keynes' Law — Demand creates its own supply
  • Kirchhoff's laws — one law in thermodynamics and two about electrical circuits, named after Gustav Kirchhoff.

[edit] L–M

  • Leibniz's law — a principle in metaphysics also known as the Identity of Indiscernibles. It states: If two objects have all their properties in common, then they are one and the same object.
  • Linus's law — named for Linus Torvalds, states "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". This law is, incidentally, the only one on this list to use the forename rather than the family name.
  • Little's law, in queueing theory, says The average number of customers in a stable system (over some time interval) is equal to their average arrival rate, multiplied by their average time in the system. The law was named for John Little from results of experiments in 1961.
  • Littlewood's law — States that individuals can expect miracles to happen to them, at the rate of about one per month. Coined by Professor J E Littlewood, (1885–1977)
  • Macfarlane's law — You can talk faster than you can type, but you can read faster than you can listen. [late 1970s]
  • Meadow's law is a precept, now discredited, that since cot deaths are so rare, "One is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder, until proved otherwise." It was named for Sir Roy Meadow, a discredited paediatrician prominent in the United Kingdom in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
  • Metcalfe's law — In communications and network theory, states that the value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system. Framed by Robert Metcalfe in the context of the ethernet.
  • Moore's law — An empirical observation stating that the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 24 months. Outlined in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel
  • Moynihan's law — "The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country." Coined by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003).
  • Murphy's law — Most commonly formulated as "if anything can go wrong, it will", less commonly "If it can happen, it will happen". Ascribed to Edward A. Murphy, Jr.

[edit] N–Q

  • Newton's laws of motion — In physics, three scientific laws concerning the behaviour of moving bodies, which are fundamental to classical mechanics (and since Einstein, which are valid only within inertial reference frames). Discovered and stated by Isaac Newton (1643– 1727).
    • First law: A body remains at rest, or moves in a straight line (at a constant velocity), unless acted upon by a net outside force.
    • Second law: The acceleration of an object of constant mass is proportional to the force acting upon it.
    • Third law: Whenever one body exerts force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body.
  • Newton's law of cooling — the rate of cooling (or heating) of a body due to convection is proportional to the difference between the body temperature and the ambient temperature.
  • Occam's razor — States that explanations should never multiply causes without necessity. When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable. Named after William of Ockham (ca.1285–1349)
  • Ohm's law — In physics, states that the ratio of the potential difference (or voltage drop) between the ends of a conductor (and resistor) to the current flowing through it is a constant, provided the temperature doesn't change. Discovered and named after Georg Simon Ohm (1789–1854).
  • Parkinson's law — "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". Coined by C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)
  • Pareto principle — States that for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, but framed by management thinker Joseph M. Juran.
  • Peckham's Law - Beauty times brains equals a constant.
  • Peter principle — "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence". Coined by Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990)
  • Poisson's Law of Large Numbers — For independent random variables with a common distribution, the average value for a sample tends to the mean as sample size increases. Named after Siméon-Denis Poisson (1781–1840) and derived from "Recherches sur la probabilité des jugements en matière criminelle et en matière civile" (1837; "Research on the Probability of Criminal and Civil Verdicts").

[edit] R–T

[edit] U–Z

  • Verner's law — Stated by Karl Verner in 1875, Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless fricatives *f, *þ, *s and *x, when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing and became respectively *b, *d, *z and *g.
  • Weber-Fechner law — This law named after Ernst Heinrich Weber and Gustav Theodor Fechner attempts to describe the human perception of various physical stimuli. In most cases, Stevens' power law gives a more accurate description.
  • Wirth's law — Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
  • Zawinski's Law — Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
  • Zipf's law — in linguistics, the observation that the frequency of use of the nth-most-frequently-used word in any natural language is approximately inversely proportional to n, or, more simply, that a few words are used very often, but many or most are used rarely. Named after George Kingsley Zipf (1902–1950), whose statistical work research led to the observation. More generally, the term Zipf's law refers to the probability distributions involved, which are applied by statisticians not only to linguistics but also to fields remote from that.

[edit] See also

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