How do people get scientific theories and units named after them?

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For example, I doubt Georg Ohm declared V = IR shall be known as Ohm’s law and that the unit of resistance will be named after himself in his scientific journal publications. How does the scientific community decide and agree on naming things after people and how long after the particular concept/discovery is made is a formal name given?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There are a lot of areas of science that have their own particular set of things that need names – particles in physics, chemicals in chemistry, species in biology, etc. These fields all have their own traditions, and some have an organised body to regulate names, such as IUPAC for chemistry and the IAU for astronomy. Generally the person who discovers something gets a big say over how it’s named – a fun example is the J/psi meson, a particle which was discovered independently by two groups at about the same time, one of which decided to call it the J meson and the other the psi meson before they became aware of each other’s work.

Units of measure tend to be named after a famous dead scientist who did some important work that’s relevant to the unit. Ohm’s law was developed by Ohm himself, but I think the unit was first defined after his death?

But scientific theories tend to go through a lengthy period of refinement, discussion and experimental testing, and they often go through multiple names before people settle on one.

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