I can speak from experience, however, in saying that naming a band in this manner has some perils. So if you decide to call your band The Bamford-Stevens Reaction, people will ask which of you is Bamford and which is Stevens.....
The Anderson-Higgs Mechanism:
in particle physics, one of the suggested processes by which elementary
particles acquire mass. This is all part of that esoteric science that the Large Hadron Collider is intended to test, as opposed to the Large Hadrosaur Collider, which is just a bit of fun involving throwing dinosaurs at each other.
A rap about the Large Hadron Collider. Actually kind of cute, and at least as
informative as most mainstream news coverage of the LHC.
The Bamford-Stevens
Reaction: in chemistry, a treatment of tosylhydrazones with a strong base
to yield alkenes. (You may understand this, I don't.)
The Barro-Ricardo
Equivalence: in economics, a theory that consumers internalise government budget
restraint. (Similarly.)
The Fourier-Motzkin
Elimination: in mathematics, an algorithm for eliminating variables from a
system of linear inequalities. (I might have understood this 25 years ago, but the fact that I dropped out of my Mathematics degree suggests otherwise.)
The Mohorovicic
Discontinuity*: in geology, the boundary between the crust and mantle of the
Earth. (1)
The Blalock-Taussig Shunt: in medicine, a surgical procedure to
alleviate cyanotic heart defects.
The Treacher-Collins Syndrome*:
in medicine, a genetic disorder characterised by facial abnormalities.
The Donald-Fothergill
Operation*: in medicine, a procedure to repair uterine prolapse. (2)
The Bekhterev-Mendel
Reflex: in medicine, a clinical sign found in patients with pyramidal tract
lesions.
The Edinger-Westphal
Nucleus: in anatomy, a cranial nerve nucleus associated with the muscles of
the iris.
The Brandt-Daroff
Maneuver: in medicine, a set of exercises to alleviate vertigo.
The Robertson-Walker
Metric: in cosmology, a solution of Einstein’s field equations of general
relativity.
The Salter-Harris
Fracture: in medicine, a fracture of the growth plate of a bone, common in
children.
The Tait-Bryan Angles:
in mathematics, one of the sets of conventions for describing orientation in
3D.
The
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram*: in astronomy, a plot of the relationship
between stellar luminosity and spectral classification (temperature), and which proved very useful in developing an understanding of stellar evolution. The majority of stars, as seen below, are found within a well-defined band known as the Main Sequence.
The H-R Diagram
The Michelson-Morley
Experiment*: in physics, an 1887 attempt to detect the movement of matter
through the aether, whose failure paved the way for special relativity. (3)
The Stefan-Boltzmann
Constant: in physics, a constant found in the equation (the Stefan-Boltzmann Law) defining the relationship
of a black body’s emissive power to its thermodynamic temperature.
The Bose-Einstein
Condensate*: in physics, a non-classical state of matter achievable at very
low temperatures, postulated in 1924 but not demonstrated experimentally till 1995.
The Kennelly-Heaviside
Layer*: in geophysics, a layer of ionised gas around 100km up in Earth’s
ionosphere, which reflects mid-frequency radio waves and thus allows some frequencies to be propogated beyond the horizon.
The Jarque-Bera Test:
in statistics, a goodness-of-fit test.
The Johnson-Nyquist
Noise: in electronics, the noise generated by thermal excitation of the
electrons inside a conductor.
The Landau-Zener
Transition: in physics, a solution of the equations of motion for certain
quantum systems.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis*: in linguistics, the contention that
language determines the speakers’ conception of the world.
The Ochsner-Sherren
Treatment: in medicine, an obsolete non-surgical treatment for
appendicitis.
The Fizeau-Foucault
Apparatus: in physics, an 1850 experiment to measure the speed of light.
There's a couple from non-scientific sources worth mentioning -
The Sykes-Picot Agreement: a secret 1916 treaty between Britain and France concerning the carving up of the Ottoman Empire in the event of its defeat during World War One. The perfidy...
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: the non-aggression pact signed in 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. More perfidy.
The Mueller-Fokker Effect: a 1970 satirical SF novel by John Sladek, now largely remembered for accidentally predicting that Ronald Reagan would become US President.
The Mason-Dixon Line: the solution to an 18th century border dispute which forms part of the boundary between four US states, and which later came to represent a cultural boundary between North and South.
Notes
* These are the terms I would have known anyway, had I not gone through the peculiarly pointless task of trawling Wikipedia for appropriate candidates a couple of years ago. I chanced on my list recently, hence this piece
(1) Not double barrelled, but enough of a mouthful to qualify anyway...
(2) I actually came moderately close to deploying this in reality. When I was with The Charles Dexter Ward Experience, there was another, rather better known, band doing the rounds called Prolapse. For some forgotten reason we took a bit of a dislike to them, and we swore that if we ever appeared on the same bill we would temporarily rename ourselves appropriately. It never happened, however.
(3) A very famous experiment, the LHC of its day, of great importance in the history of physics; it was well designed and painstakingly performed, but utterly failed to detect what it was looking for, demonstrating that the existing physical model based on the luminiferous aether was flawed. (It would require Einstein to put the pieces back together.)
Epstein–Barr Virus?
ReplyDeleteGood one - and since there are no viruses already, it doesn't violate my self-imposed rule against repetition. I'm sure there are plenty of other possibilities....
Delete