[andy99]

It's very common in science for people to have had results they didn't understand the significance of that later were popularized by someone else.

There is the whole thing with Damadian claiming to have invented MRI (he didn't) when the Nobel prize went to Mansfield and Lauterbur (see the Nobel prize part of the article). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lauterbur

And I've seen other less prominent examples.

It's a lot like the difference between ideas and execution and people claiming someone "stole" their idea because they made a successful business from it.