List of scientific priority disputes

This is a list of priority disputes in science and science-related fields (such as mathematics).

Mathematics

 * Rule for solving cubic equations: Niccolò Tartaglia, Gerolamo Cardano
 * Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy: Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz
 * Proof of the Prime number theorem: Atle Selberg and/or Paul Erdős
 * Proof of the Poincaré conjecture: Grigori Perelman or Shing-Tung Yau

Physics

 * Mechanical equivalent of heat: James Prescott Joule, Julius von Mayer
 * Stationary-action principle: Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
 * Radio waves: James Clerk Maxwell, Oliver Lodge, Heinrich Hertz, David Edward Hughes
 * Special relativity priority dispute: Albert Einstein, Henri Poincaré, Hendrik Lorentz
 * General relativity priority dispute: Albert Einstein, David Hilbert
 * Chandrasekhar limit: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Edmund Clifton Stoner, Wilhelm Anderson
 * Eightfold Way: Murray Gell-Mann, Yuval Ne'eman
 * Accelerating expansion of the universe: High-Z Supernova Search Team, Supernova Cosmology Project.

Astronomy

 * Controversy over the discovery of Haumea: José Luis Ortiz Moreno et al., Michael E. Brown et al.
 * Sunspots: Galileo, Christoph Scheiner
 * Geoheliocentric system: Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Raimarus Ursus
 * Galilean moons: Galileo, Simon Marius
 * Prediction of Neptune: Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams

Chemistry

 * Oxygen: Joseph Priestley, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
 * Periodic table: Dmitri Mendeleev, Lothar Meyer

Biology and medicine

 * Evolution: Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Patrick Matthew
 * Opiate receptor: Candace Pert, Solomon H. Snyder
 * DNA structure: Francis Crick, James D. Watson, Rosalind Franklin, Erwin Chargaff, Oswald Avery
 * Lymphatic system: Olof Rudbeck, Thomas Bartholin
 * Blood transfusion: Richard Lower, Henry Oldenburg, Jean-Baptiste Denis
 * Life cycle of malarial parasite: Giovanni Battista Grassi, Ronald Ross
 * Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): Paul Lauterbur, Peter Mansfield, Raymond Vahan Damadian, and others (see 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)
 * HIV: Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier    (see 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)
 * Teaching a deaf-mute person to speak: John Wallis, William Holder

Technology

 * Watch balance spring: Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens
 * Light bulb: Joseph Swan, Thomas Edison
 * Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy: Johann Philipp Reis, Antonio Meucci, Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray
 * Incandescent light bulb: Thomas Edison, Joseph Swan
 * Radio: Oliver Lodge, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Reginald Fessenden, Guglielmo Marconi, Roberto Landell de Moura, Alexander Popov, Nikola Tesla    (see invention of radio)
 * Electronic television: Philo T. Farnsworth, Vladimir Zworykin (see history of television)
 * Claims to the first powered flight: Shivkar Bapuji Talpade in the Marutsakhā (1895), Clément Ader in the Avion III (1897), Gustave Whitehead in his No's. 21 and 22 aeroplanes (1901–1903),  Richard Pearse in his monoplane (1903–1904),  Samuel Pierpont Langley's Aerodrome A (1903), Karl Jatho in Jatho biplane (1903),  The Wright brothers in the Wright Flyer (1903), Alberto Santos-Dumont in the 14 Bis (1906)