Reflection: Buchanan, Mark. “Lost in Translation”. Nature. Volume 7. October 28, 2011. Page 667 Bergh, Sidney. “The Curious Case of Lemaitre’s Equation No. 24”. Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Volume 105. August 2011. Page 151. Block, David. “Georges Lemaitre and Stigler’s Law of Eponymy”. In Holder, Rodney and Mitton, Simon. Georges Lemaitre: Life, Science and Legacy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, Volume 395. October 4, 2012. Pages 89-96. Bieri, Lydia and Nussbaumer, Harry. “Who Discovered the Expansion of the Universe?” The Observatory. Volume 131. December 2011. Pages 394-398.

• Why does the Stigler’s Law of Eponymy appear of relevance in the context of this particular investigation?

The Law of Eponymy was first proposed by University of Chicago Department of Statistics Ernest DeWitt burton Distinguished Service Professor of Statistics Stephen Stigler in his article entitled “Stigler’s Law of Eponymy” in the April 1980 Volume 39 Issue 1 of the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences. Sigler’s Law states:

“No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.”

As a means of fulfilling his own law, Stinger calls his own book in which he establishes his law a “festerschrift” [a book honoring a respected person] to Columbia University Professor of Sociology Robert Merton. In his 1968 book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton coined what he called his “Matthew Effect of Accumulated Advantage” [named after the Parable of the Talents in Chapter 25 of the New Testament Biblical Book of Matthew]. Merton coined the term to describe how eminent scientists often get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher.

The law named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble states that the Doppler shift [named after University of Miskolc Professor of Mathematics, Mechanics and Physics Christian Doppler], interpretable as relative velocity away from Earth, of various galaxies receding from Earth is approximately proportional to their distance from Earth. As University of Witwatersrand School of Computation and Applied Mathematics Professor David Block documents in a 2012 book by Simon Mitton of the Cambridge University Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Rodney holder of the Saint Edmunds College Faraday Institute, University of Louvain Professor of Physics Georges Lemaitre published an article in the April 1927 Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels entitled “A Homogeneous Universe of Constant Mass and Growing Radius Accounting for the Radial Velocity of Extragalactic Nebulae”. In it, according to Professor Block, Lemaitre “derive[d] a linear relationship between the radial velocity of galaxies and their distances”.

Two years later, Hubble published his article, entitled “A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae” in the March 15, 1929 Volume 15 Issue 3 of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

• According to the documents presented by the authors of the articles, do you think there was indeed deliberate censorship involved when republishing the work of Lemaitre in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society?

Professor Block cites University of Michigan Department of Mathematics Associate Professor Lydia Bieri and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Department of Physics Professor Harry Nussbaumer in their 2009 book Discovering the Expanding Universe. Bieiri and Nussbaumer write that, when the English translation of Lemaitre’s article [originally entitled “Un Unnivers Homogene de Masse Constante et de Rayon Croissant Rendant Compte de la Vitesse Radiale des Nebuleuses Extragalactiques”] was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in March 1931, Lemaitre equation 24, in which he formulated the relation of linear velocity to distance, was “suppressed”. Professor Block cites as further evidence of this University of Toronto David Dunlap Observatory Professor of Astronomy Sidney van den Bergh’s independent study entitled “The Curious Case of Lemaitre’s Equation No. 24” in the August 2011 Volume 105 of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Startlingly, according to Aarhus University Department of Science Studies Professor of History of Science and Technology Helge Kragh and University of Alberta history and Classics Department Professor Robert Smith in their article entitled “Who Discovered the Expanding Universe?” in the June 1, 2003 Volume 41, Issue 2 of the journal History of Science, the man who translated Lemaitre’s 1927 article into English for the Royal Astronomical Society in 1931 was George Lemaitre himself. “Lemaitre was;” Professor Block writes; “Through his own actions, robbed of being attributed with one of the greatest discoveries in astronomy of all time.”

~ by Judgian12365 on April 25, 2017.