I think they only started using the scientist codenames publicly starting from Tesla, but yeah they've used them internally almost since the founding of the company. Early on there was Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin, Rankine and Curie, then the well-known Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, etc.
Oh wow; I did not realize their architecture naming scheme even went back that far. That was their first one. The earliest I remembered hearing them call out the name was Tesla.
For other's reference, nvidia arch's listed on wikipedia as follows in order: