• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    French’s mustard was made by a man named French. Similar to Caesar salad being Mexican, because the dude’s name was Cesar.

    “It’s named after a guy” causes a lot of this confusion in STEM fields. It’s always a misleading coincidence. Airy discs, the soft concentric rings of diffracted light, were documentary by one Dr. Airy. Dove prisms, resembling a dovetail joint, are pronounced doh-vay, after Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. Radon transforms are crucial to nuclear medicine and 3D imaging, but there’s no radon involved, just one Johann Radon. Metropolis light transport in raytracing has nothing to do with New York City, but everything to do with the Manhattan Project, and one Greek mathematician. Bloom filters, spreading points of data into smooth coverage, have a perfectly fitting name that happens to be surname of their creator… Burton Howard Filter.