[QUOTE=S485122;373193]some diseases are given the name of the patient on which it was discovered[/QUOTE]

Or the place (Lyme Disease)

[QUOTE=wblipp;373195]Or the place (Lyme Disease)[/QUOTE]Or a non-human species (Green Monkey fever).

[QUOTE=S485122;373193]name of the patient on which it was discovered
[/QUOTE]

or the organisation the patients belonged to (Legionnaires' disease, referring to the American Legion)

[QUOTE=Primeinator;373190]The number of eponyms in medicine. Learning disease names (once you get into triple digits) is a major hassle when a disease is attached to someone's name and not something that is more descriptive. There are some where it is convenient and you never forget (Gilbert, Huntington's, Fabry's, Crigler-Najjar, Goodpasture, Alport, Niemann-Pick, Tay-Sachs, Fanconi's syndrome and Fanconi's anemia, Paget's, Cushing's, Tetrology of Fallot, Alzheimer's, VHL, Bardet-Biedl, Grave's, Lynch, Kaposi, Sheehan, Prader-Willi, Kruckenberg, Hirschsprung, Creutzfeldt-Jakob...) but there are many others where it is far more difficult because they are less common/more obscure/why do so many medical scientists have an ego? It's much easier to remember descriptive names like "hyperammonemia" or "panhypopituitarism" and then remember subtypes.[/QUOTE]

I used to always joke that higher mathematics (and physics) resembled med school for this very reason. Euler-Mascheroni, Radon-Nikodym, Bose-Einstein, Conway-Schneeberger...

Though it is true that (for better or worse) this nomenclature is not generally the discoverer's own doing, but is a "tribute" (or "memoriam" in the case of a patient) often bestowed years or decades after the initial discovery.

Cf. Lou Gehrig's disease. It even has a commonly known name, ALS, but still is best known by (I suppose) its first recorded sufferer.

While we're at it, let's not forget law!

Brady bill
Megan's Law
Hatch Act
Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act
Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act
etc.

All named for a victim previously without the protection of such a law, or the law's legislative sponsor(s).

[QUOTE=NBtarheel_33;373205]I used to always joke that higher mathematics (and physics) resembled med school for this very reason. Euler-Mascheroni, Radon-Nikodym, Bose-Einstein, Conway-Schneeberger...[/QUOTE]Likewise chemistry, especially the organic variant.

[QUOTE=wblipp;373195]Or the place (Lyme Disease)[/QUOTE]

I've only heard that in the US, though it may be used more widely - but in German-soeaking Europe I heard it referred to as 'Borrelia' after the bug's genus name -- sp. Burgdorferi, after the isolator of the bug.

I expect Lou Gehrig's/ALS is similar - what % of folks outside the US know who Lou is, do you think?

[QUOTE=NBtarheel_33;373205]I used to always joke that higher mathematics (and physics) resembled med school for this very reason. Euler-Mascheroni, Radon-Nikodym, Bose-Einstein, Conway-Schneeberger...

Though it is true that (for better or worse) this nomenclature is not generally the discoverer's own doing, but is a "tribute" (or "memoriam" in the case of a patient) often bestowed years or decades after the initial discovery.

Cf. Lou Gehrig's disease. It even has a commonly known name, ALS, but still is best known by (I suppose) its first recorded sufferer.[/QUOTE]

This is true! I only took a few semesters of calculus and ODE so I didn't get much into advanced mathematics. I think I remember a few- Like Stoke's Theorem and a few that had to do with diff eq.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;373222]I've only heard that in the US, though it may be used more widely - but in German-soeaking Europe I heard it referred to as 'Borrelia' after the bug's genus name -- sp. [/QUOTE]Lyme disease is the standard term in the UK.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;373222]I've only heard that in the US, though it may be used more widely - but in German-soeaking Europe I heard it referred to as 'Borrelia' after the bug's genus name -- sp. Burgdorferi, after the isolator of the bug.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=xilman;373233]Lyme disease is the standard term in the UK.[/QUOTE]
In The Netherlands it's the "ziekte van Lyme" too. Maybe it's just German speaking areas which use the bug's genus name.

Examples from astronomy:

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny%27s_Voorwerp"]Hanny's[/URL] [URL="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110210.html"]Voorwerp[/URL], the first [URL="http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.0427"]significant[/URL] discovery by the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Zoo"]Galaxy[/URL] [URL="http://www.galaxyzoo.org/"]Zoo[/URL] [URL="http://www.galaxyzoo.org/#/story"]citizen science[/URL] [URL="http://hannysvoorwerp.zooniverse.org/the-story-so-far/"]project[/URL]. Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel first noticed it and [URL="http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=3802.0"]posted a forum question about it[/URL] less than a month after the project started and only eight days after she had signed up. It turned out to be [URL="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/01/image/d/format/web_print/"]something[/URL] astronomers had never before noticed.

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star"]Barnard's Star[/URL] (Barnard was the first to measure its largest-known proper motion) and other [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_named_after_people#Openly_named_stars"]openly named stars[/URL]

Many comets, asteroids and topographic features on astronomical bodies

- - -

Wikipedia has [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_eponyms]Category:Lists_of_eponyms[/url] which includes all of the named-after-people items here.