JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 1 what’s who? JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 2 JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 3 New edition, revised and enlarged what’s who? A Dictionary of things named after people and the people they are named after Roger Jones and Mike Ware JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 4 Copyright © 2010 Roger Jones and Mike Ware The moral right of the author has been asserted. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Matador 5 Weir Road Kibworth Beauchamp Leicester LE8 0LQ, UK Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299 Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277 Email: [email protected] Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador ISBN 978 1848765 214 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in 11pt Garamond by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 5 This book is dedicated to all those who believe, with the authors, that there is no such thing as a useless fact. JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 6 JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 7 vii CONTENTS Introduction ix A-Z listing 1 Index of Topics 457 Index of names 461 JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 8 JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 9 ix INTRODUCTION What’s Who? has been planned and written with a dual aim in view: to provide a reliable work of reference and, at the same time, a book that can be read - or at least dipped into - for pleasure. Its subject matter is also two-sided. On the one hand (the What?) it is concerned with the meanings and origins of words and phrases formed on the name of a person; and on the other (the Who?) with the identity and biography, however brief, of the person in question. Eponymy, the naming of things after people, is not a mere linguistic oddity, but a historical record of discoveries, ideas and inventions. It is a verbal memorial to those men and women, both famous and forgotten, who found, imagined or created such innovations, and even, in some cases, to those who bear credit for innovations that were not theirs. A brief glance through this book will suffice to show that virtually every field of human activity has left these nuggets of history embedded in our language. We make no claim, however, to have exhausted our subject. Because the aim has been to produce a book that can be held in the hand for reading (rather than a comprehensive tome requiring a lectern) we have had to be selective, and in some areas the selection has been frankly arbitrary. To rectify our omissions by completing a Massive Tome may well be a task for our successors. Philological note Formally, eponyms can be grouped into two broad categories which we may call Unitary and Compound. In the first case, the name of a person simply becomes the name of a thing as in cardigan, hoover, or zeppelin. In the second case, the name of a person is added to the name of a thing as an adjectival qualifier to distinguish that thing from other things of the same general type. Thus a petri dish is a dish, but it isn’t a pie dish. These formations may be likened to Linnaean binomials (q.v.). We might, in addition, admit of a third, hybrid category in which the person’s name is slightly altered by the addition of a suffix. Examples are, in the case of plant genera, the addition of -ia (Aubrietia, Fuchsia); in other cases, of -ise to make a verb (grangerise, mithridatise), or of an -ism (sadism, lysenkoism), and so on. In compiling What’s Who?, we have regarded all three categories as admissible, together with a fourth category, technically known as antonomasia, by which an individual’s name becomes that of a type figure, as when we refer to someone as a Jezebel, a Scrooge, or a Lothario. JonesPrelims_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:18 Page 10 x Contributors Roger Jones’s entries are unsigned, Mike Ware’s are signed MW. Other expert and very welcome contributions have come from Richard Staszynski (RS), Paul Pignon (PP), Gareth Jones (GJ), Jasna Pignon (JP), Ben Sorgiovanni (BS), Gerry Beswick (GB), and Rob Cameron (RC). Comments, corrections, complaints, and contributions to a possible future Massive Tome can be addressed to us by e-mail at [email protected], or [email protected]. Meanwhile, for all omissions, mistakes, lapses from Political Correctness, mischievous opinions, and assorted infelicities, the authors take full responsibility. Roger Jones Mike Ware JonesLayout(F)_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:16 Page 1 1 A [1] ABBE REFRACTOMETER The bending of a ray of light passing obliquely into a translucent substance is determined by its refractive index. (For an explanation of refraction, see FERMAT’S PRINCIPLE OF LEAST TIME.) Refractive index can be simply measured with great precision thanks to the ABBE REFRACTOMETER, invented in 1869. This is a microscope-like instrument with the substance under investigation smeared on a prism which is rotatable to determine the critical angle beyond which no light is seen to be refracted. The refractive index is then calculated from this angle by SNELL’S LAW. Refractive index is an intrinsic physico-chemical property and has therefore provided a key for identifying substances before the advent of modern spectrometric methods of analysis. With an ABBE REFRACTOMETER, you can tell real butter from margarine, without relying on the taste buds. ERNST KARL ABBE (1840-1905) – his name is often erroneously Gallicised with an acute accent (é) – was a German optical physicist, born in Eisenach, who studied at the Universities of Göttingen and Jena, where he joined the faculty, becoming professor in 1870. In 1866 he was appointed as research director for CARL ZEISS (1816-1888), the optical instrument maker from nearby Wetzlar. In 1876 Abbe was made a partner in the firm and, on Zeiss’s death, inherited it. He proved to be a humane and philanthropic employer. By developing the mathematical theory of lens design with ABBE’S SINE CONDITION, he greatly improved the correction of optical aberrations, which was furthered by a collaboration with Dr Otto Schott, glass-chemist of Jena. The researches of these three men placed the ZEISS OPTICAL WORKS in a league of its own, and Zeiss microscopes, employing the ABBE CONDENSER system of illumination, became a byword for optical excellence. (MW) [2] ABEGG’S RULE It has long since disappeared from the chemistry textbooks, but Abegg and Bodländer’s "Rule of Eight" dating from 1899 still retains a certain usefulness: later known as the Octet Rule, it refers to the "magic number", eight, that governs the length of the second and third rows of MENDELEEV’S PERIODIC TABLE of the elements (the first row has just two members: hydrogen and helium). ABEGG’S RULE states that an element shows a minimum valence* and a maximum valence which sum to 8. E.g. phosphorus in Group Five: 3 and 5; sulphur in Group Six: 2 and 6; chlorine in Group Seven: 1 and 7; etc. We now know that the inert gases which terminate each successive row of the periodic table (neon, argon, krypton, xenon JonesLayout(F)_Layout 1 24/09/2010 10:16 Page 2 2 WHAT’S WHO? and radon) each have eight electrons in their outermost shells (the first, helium, has only two). Eight electrons form a particularly stable arrangement or configuration that atoms of the other elements strive to achieve by sharing their electrons in chemical combination** (to understand why it’s exactly eight, one must take a long journey with Professors SCHRÖDINGER and PAULI). So chemistry is governed by the redistribution and sharing of electrons. An atom of an element in the nth vertical Group of the Periodic Table has n valence electrons in its outer shell, and tends to combine either by losing those n electrons so that it achieves the electron configuration of the previous inert gas, or by gaining (8-n) more electrons giving the configuration of the next inert gas. The sum of the minimum and maximum valencies inevitably is n + (8-n) = 8. Nature ain’t always quite so simple, or chemists would be out of a job. German chemist RICHARD WILHELM EINRICH ABEGG (1869-1910) graduated at Kiel, worked under Hofmann at Berlin, OSTWALD at Leipzig, Nernst at Göttingen, and ARRHENIUS at Stockholm, before becoming professor at Breslau. His colleague Guido Bodländer (1855-1904) was a graduate of Breslau and became professor in Braunschweig. Abegg died young in a ballooning accident before his vision of chemical reactions as exchanges of electrons could be fully appreciated and further developed. (MW) *The valence or valency of an element is a number defining its combining ability – i.e. the number of attachments or bonds it can make to other elements. Hydrogen always has a valence of one, and oxygen two (hence H2O) but most elements are more varied: e.g.