This list of eponymous laws provides links to articles on laws, adages, and other succinct observations or predictions named after a person. In some cases the person named has coined the law — such as Parkinson's law. In others, the work or publications of the individual have led to the law being so named — as is the case with Moore's law. There are also laws ascribed to individuals by others, such as Murphy's law; or given eponymous names despite the absence of the named person.
A
- Amara's law — "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
- Amdahl's law — Used to find out the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only a part of it is improved. Named after Gene Amdahl (born 1922).
- Ampère's law — In physics, it relates the circulating magnetic field in a closed loop to the electric current passing through the loop. Discovered by André-Marie Ampère.
- Archie's law — In petrophysics, relates the in-situ electrical conductivity of sedimentary rock to its porosity and brine saturation. Named for Gus Archie (1907–1978).
- Asimov's three laws of robotics — Also called, more simply, the Three Laws of Robotics or just the Three Laws, a set of rules which the fictional robots appearing in the writings of Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) must obey. There were eventually four Laws when the Zeroeth was added.
- Avogadro's law — In chemistry and physics, one of the gas laws, relating to the volume and molarity of a gas.
B–D
- Beer-Lambert law — In optics, the empirical relationship of the absorption of light to the properties of the material through which the light is traveling. Independently discovered (in various forms) by Pierre Bouguer in 1729, Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1760 and August Beer in 1852.
- Benford's law — In any collection of statistics, a given statistic has roughly a 30% chance of starting with the digit 1.
- Biot-Savart law — Describes the magnetic field set up by a steady current density. Named for Jean-Baptiste Biot and Félix Savart.
- Birch's Law — In geophysics, establishes a linear relation of the compressional wave velocity of rocks and minerals of a constant average atomic weight. Named after Francis Birch.
- Boyle's law — In physics, one of the gas laws, relating the volume and pressure of an ideal gas held at a constant temperature. Discovered by and named after Robert Boyle (1627–1691).
- Bradford's law — a pattern described by Samuel C. Bradford in 1934 that estimates the exponentially diminishing returns of extending a library search.
- Bremermann's limit — Named after Hans-Joachim Bremermann, is the maximum computational speed of a self-contained system in the material universe.
- Brooks' law — "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." Named after Fred Brooks, author of the well known book on Project Management, The Mythical Man-Month .
- Buys Ballot's law — Concerned with the notion that the wind travels counterclockwise around low pressure zones in the Northern Hemisphere. Named for C.H.D. Buys Ballot, who published an empirical validation of an existing theory, in 1857.
- Byerlee's law — Gives the stress circumstances in the Earth's crust at which fracturing along a geological fault takes place.
- Charles's law — States that at constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of a gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature (in kelvins) increases or decreases. Named for Jacques Charles.
- Clarke's three laws — Formulated by Arthur C. Clarke. Several corollaries to these laws have also been proposed.
- First law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- Second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Classen's law — Theo Classen's "Logarithmic Law of Usefulness" - 'usefulness=log(technology)'.
- Conway's Law — Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it. Named for Melvin Conway.
- Cooper's law — The number of radio frequency conversations which can be concurrently conducted in a given area doubles every 30 months.
- Coulomb's law — An inverse-square law indicating the magnitude and direction of electrostatic force that one stationary, electrically charged object of small dimensions (ideally, a point source) exerts on another. It is named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.
- Dale's principle — In neuroscience, states that a neuron is capable of producing and secreting only one neurotransmitter from its axon terminals. Named after Henry Hallett Dale but more recent data suggests it to be false.
- Dalton's law — In chemistry and physics, states that the total pressure exerted by a gaseous mixture is equal to the sum of the partial pressures of each individual component in a gas mixture. Also called Dalton's law of partial pressure, and related to the ideal gas laws, this empirical law was observed by John Dalton in 1801.
- De Morgan's laws — Apply to formal logic regarding the negation of pairs of logical operators.
- Dermott's Law — The sidereal period of major satellites tends to follow a geometric series. Named after Stanley Dermott.
- Dilbert Principle — Coined by Scott Adams as a variation of the Peter Principle of employee advancement. Named after Adams' Dilbert comic strip, it proposes that "the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management."
- Dollo's Law — "An organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors." Simply put this law states that evolution is not reversible.
- Dulong–Petit law — States the classical expression for the specific heat capacity of a crystal due to its lattice vibrations. Named for Pierre Louis Dulong and Alexis Thérèse Petit.
- Duverger's law — After Maurice Duverger. Winner-take-all (or first-past-the-post) electoral systems tend to create a 2 party system, while proportional representation tends to create a multiple party system.
E–G
- Faraday's law of induction — States that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force. Named for Michael Faraday, based on his work in 1831.
- Faraday's law of electrolysis — States that the mass of a substance produced at an electrode during electrolysis is proportional to the number of moles of electrons transferred at that electrode; again named for Michael Faraday.
- Fick's laws of diffusion — Describe diffusion, and define the diffusion coefficient D . Derived by Adolf Fick in the year 1855.
- Finagle's law — Generalized version of Murphy's law, fully named Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives and usually rendered, "Anything that can go wrong, will," or, "If something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible moment." Not strictly eponymous, since there was no Finagle.
- Fitts' law — A principle of human movement published in 1954 by Paul Fitts which predicts the time required to move from a starting position to a final target area. Fitts' law is used to model the act of pointing, both in the real world, e.g. with a hand or finger, and on a computer, e.g. with a mouse.
- Fourier's law, also known as the Law of Heat Conduction, states that the time rate of heat flow Q through a slab (or a portion of a perfectly insulated wire) is proportional to the gradient of temperature difference; named for Joseph Fourier.
- Gall's law — "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."
- Gauss's law — In physics, gives the relation between the electric flux flowing out a closed surface and the charge enclosed in the surface. It was formulated by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
- Gay-Lussac's law — "The pressure of a fixed mass and fixed volume of a gas is directly proportional to the gas's temperature."
- Ginsberg's Theorem — A set of adages based on the Laws of thermodynamics.
- Godwin's law — An adage in Internet culture that states, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Coined by Mike Godwin in 1990.
- Goodhart's law — When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
- Graham's law — In physics, a gas law which states that the average kinetic energy of the molecules of two samples of different gases at the same temperature is identical. It is named for Thomas Graham (1805–1869), who formulated it.
- Greenspun's Tenth Rule — Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. Coined by Philip Greenspun.
- Gresham's law — "Bad money drives good money out of circulation". Coined in 1858 by British economist Henry Dunning Macleod, and named for Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–1579). The principle had been stated before Gresham by others, including Nicolaus Copernicus.
- Grimm's law — Explains correspondence between some consonants in Germanic languages and those in other Indo-European languages. Discovered by Jacob Grimm, (1785–1863), Ger
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