Boyle's Law, aka Hooke's, Boyle's, and Mariotte's Law (Neal Stephenson)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

What follows is not an explanation of Boyle's Law, but rather a little footnote about where it came from.

The French have their own claimant, named Edme Mariotte, who published work on this topic as early as 1676. And so the full name of the thing is the Boyle-Marriotte Law.

Vladimir Igorevich Arnol'd, in his amazing 1990 book Huygens & Barrow, Newton & Hooke: pioneers in mathematical analysis and catastrophe theory from evolvents to quasicrystals flatly states that this principle was discovered by Robert Hooke. He states that when Boyle published it in 1660, he credited Hooke with its invention and did not even pretend to be its discoverer. The reference cited by Arnol'd is as follows:

I.B. Cohen. Newton, Hooke, and "Boyle's Law" discovered by Power and Towneley. Nature 204 (1964) 618-621.