[coverup]

A somewhat related idea: the discovery that light is an electromagnetic wave falls right out of Maxwell's equations in a vacuum. Simply rearranging terms yields two wave equations in 3D - one for the electric field, and one for magnetic. The term in both wave equations representing the speed of propagation (i.e. the speed of light) is a constant. It depends only on the physical properties of the vacuum, which never change as far as we know. That means an observer traveling at any constant velocity with respect to light will always measure the speed of light to be the same. Maxwell died in 1879 at the age of 48. It is not only plausible but likely that he would have come up with special relativity had he lived a bit longer, and also likely that it would have been years before Einstein published his 1905 paper on the subject.

So in addition to the Stigler's law [1] situation with Heaviside, the formulation of special relativity may have been more or less inevitable after all of Maxwell's laws were put in the same room together. Not that Einstein wasn't a once-in-a-generation talent, but the reality of how progress is made in science is often glossed over in favor of assigning glory to particular individuals.

Even Maxwell's laws taken individually are named after different people, but together they all belong to Maxwell. I get that this practice is intended to be a convenient way to put a label on an abstract concept rather than a way to write history, but I still think it has an effect on how we think and talk about the history of science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy