Science (especially in our time) is not only a long study of formulas, structures and practical models, a careful study of the microworld with a microscope (or the universe through a telescope).
This is also a serious struggle for scientific laurels. Indeed, large-scale modern research most often requires just teamwork - several laboratories in different parts of the world can work on one project at once. These are hundreds, or even thousands of scientists, and each of them really wants to stand in the list of authors of a scientific discovery closer to the beginning.
In general, such a situation did not exist today, as far back as the 17th century, scientists “butted” for the title of discoverer of a particular phenomenon. Let's look at the most striking examples of cases when in science “not the first one won”.
10. Stardust
Cecilia Payne has become one of the most famous (and productive) astronomers in history. Back in 1925, she successfully determined the composition of stardust (proving that the stars consist mainly of hydrogen and helium, and not of iron, as was thought before) and wrote a dissertation on this.
But, alas, women at that time were not respected in science at all, besides Henry Norris Russell resolutely opposed Cecilia, declaring that the stars consist of the same elements as the Earth.
Time and further studies have shown that Payne is still right. And by the way, many of her colleagues called Cecilia’s work “the most vivid dissertation ever written in astronomy”.
Nevertheless, the title of Professor Payne (then already Payne-Gaposhkina - in 1934 she married a Russian emigrant, also an astronomer) was awarded only in 1956, when Harvard became more loyal to women.
Many of Cecilia's most important works (which were of great importance in astronomy) were published only after her death, but during her lifetime she had to publish in collaboration with men (more often with her husband).
9. Light bulb
We all know the usual incandescent bulb. And most know what American Thomas Alva Edison invented.
But in fact, the first working version of the light bulb was presented to the judgment of fellow scientists in 1879 (8 months before Edison) by inventor Joseph Wilson Swan.
Edison and Swan were well aware of each other's experiences and deliberately competed for victory in the "race for the light bulb."
Outwardly, the Swan lamp was almost no different from Edison's similar invention, but it was less suitable for domestic use: it needed a more powerful electric current, it quickly burned out and gave out a lot of soot, which settled on the glass bulb from the inside and made the lamp useless.
But Edison made the filament thinner and the electrical resistance higher, and his brighter and more durable light bulb brought him the coveted patent and the fame of the discoverer.
And if we approach this issue quite honestly, then the incandescent lamp back in 1872 was invented by the Russian electrical engineer A.N. Lodygin, and he tested his modern version (with a tungsten filament) in the 1890s.
8. Phone
For a century and a quarter, the inventor of the phone was considered Alexander Graham Bell. It was only on June 11, 2002, that the US Congress officially recognized that this invention actually belonged to the Italian immigrant Antonio Meucci, who had applied for a patent as early as 1871 (5 years before Bell), and that Bell, quite possibly, was simply got access to the materials and drawings of Meucci (bought from an Italian for pennies by Western Union, with whom Bell collaborated).
Since Meucci did not have funds for lawyers (and energy to defend his rights in front of a large company), in addition, he did not speak English well, the Italian ended his life in poverty.
And by the way, another inventor of the phone is sometimes called Elisha Gray. Allegedly, he tried to file a patent application on the same day as Bell (February 14, 1876), just Bell was closer to the beginning of the line in the patent office.
7. AIDS
When in the 1970s - early 1980s. AIDS began to spread widely in the world, this caused a real panic, because no one knew what caused it (and many were sure that it spreads through the air).
Therefore, research to search for this most malicious and dangerous virus began in several countries at once. In the end, a situation arose when it became unclear who really belongs to the primacy in detecting the causative agent of the disease.
The fact is that scientists from the USA and France worked closely together, researching different strains of the virus and exchanging fresh scientific information.
As a result, the Frenchman Luc Montagnier (with his assistant Francoise Barre-Sinoussi) and the American Robert Gallo came to almost identical results in 1983, but the French won the Nobel Prize in 2008 without mentioning Gallo.
Naturally, Gallo was very offended and began to accuse Montagnier of scientific plagiarism.
6. The atomic bomb
It is well known that the first “working” atomic bomb, which was the result of a secret Manhattan project that started in 1939 (under the guidance of physicist Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves), was tested in the United States on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo (New Mexico).
But in fact, many German scientists participated in this project, who emigrated from Nazi Germany on time. But the German nuclear program began earlier, already in 1938, Otto Gunn and Fritz Strassman first split the nucleus of the uranium atom, and by February 1942 the first German nuclear reactor was built.
And who knows what ideas and materials Otto Frisch, Hans Bethe and other scientists from Germany brought with them to America? (And what materials on nuclear topics did American intelligence produce in Europe during World War II). Perhaps, if not for the “setbacks” at the front after 1943, the Germans would have created the bomb first.
5. Chromosomal sex determination
Another woman who did not receive timely scientific recognition worthy of her achievements only because she was born “at the wrong” time.
It was Netty Stevens who first discovered the X and Y chromosomes and proved that it is not environmental factors that determine sex. She was one of the first female genetics in the United States, and extremely talented. Nevertheless, male colleagues perceived Stevens exclusively from above, stubbornly ignoring her ideas.
When Natty Stevens was writing a dissertation, she had three managers at once, and each tried to assign a part of her scientific results. Stevens received her doctorate in 1903 and until her (premature) death in 1912 she worked in the field of cytology and embryology, having made many discoveries.
But still, the first chromosome researcher in most biology textbooks is Thomas Morgan (whom Stevens advised to work with Drosophila flies).
4. TV
TV is also an invention that several scientists and engineers have been working on simultaneously. At the moment, the main scientific laurels about the so-beloved “zombie box” have been shared by American Philo Taylor Farnsworth and Vladimir Kozmich Zvorykin who emigrated to the USA in 1919 (due to the Civil War).
VK. Zvorykin received the patent first - back in 1923, he is also considered the author of the original idea. (Although Farnsworth's teacher claimed that Filo, at the age of 14, described in detail to him the device and the principle of operation of what would later be called a television).
Farnsworth’s television transmitter option turned out to be a little more successful, so the American received the first royalty for selling TVs. But later Zvorykin once again finalized the device, and in the 1940s. also made it color.
By the way, Farnsworth and Zvorykin talked great, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of their options for a television device.
3. The telescope
Most of us know that the telescope was invented by Galileo Galilei. In fact, the famous scientist heard about the simplest telescope (one concave and one convex lens in the tube) about 2 years after its invention.
He just slightly improved it literally in one night, and then presented it to the city council of Padua, where he lived and studied astronomy.
The real inventors of this useful tool are several people at once: the glasses manufacturer Johannes Lipersgey, Zachary Jansen and Jacob Metius. All three are Dutch (from different cities), who demonstrated their options for the telescope in 1607.
But, according to some reports, Johannes Kepler mentioned something similar back in 1604, and Leonardo da Vinci - already in 1509. By the way, if the telescopes of Jansen, Metius and Lipersgey increased only 3 times (they could hardly be useful in astronomy), then the Galileo design, called it perspicillum, was already 32 times.
2. Evolution
About the same story with the theory of evolution - everyone is aware that its author was the English naturalist Charles Darwin.
But few people know that he still published his famous book “On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection ...” (1859) (long delaying this moment, mainly because of serious fears for his family - after all, the religious community, naturally, took his ideas with hostility) because he was afraid of competition.
Darwin decided that he could be well ahead of Alfred Russell Wallace, a younger scientist who conducted very similar studies, which led him to almost similar conclusions about the mechanism of natural selection in wildlife and animal evolution.
But, unlike Darwin, Wallace did not further develop his theory, voluntarily leaving priority to a highly respected senior colleague.
By the way, Wallace nevertheless assumed that evolution from apes to humans could not have occurred without the intervention of some higher power (because he could not clearly explain the differences in the intellectual abilities of humans and animals).
1. DNA double helix
The discovery in 1953 of the structure of DNA (the same double helix) was one of the most important breakthroughs in science and predetermined a further qualitative leap in biology. It finally helped to understand how genes interact with each other, and how the genetic code is passed on to the next generation.
In 1962, this work was highly praised by the Nobel Committee, which awarded the award in the category "Physiology and Medicine" to American James Dewey Watson and two Englishmen - Francis Crick and Maurice Frederick Wilkins (who worked on the problem together).
But at the same time, the name Rosalind Franklin, an English biophysicist and radiographer, was never mentioned. And yet, it was her clear X-ray images of DNA macromolecules that set the stage for the discovery of Watson and Crick.
By the way, Maurice Wilkins, who worked with Franklin at King's College, University of London, became the very person who brought Rosalind to work on the structure of DNA.
Alas, she could no longer receive the award (since she died of cancer in 1958), but absolutely did not deserve her name to be completely deleted from the list of authors of one of the best scientific works of the 20th century.