Sir
The history of science contains many examples of the subtitle of your recent leading article, “Authorship of a scientific paper is a privilege that is all too easily abused”1. The consequences can be far-reaching for later honour and glory.
The salmonellae were named in 1900 undeservedly after the US veterinarian Daniel Elmer Salmon (1850-1914), director of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the US Department of Agriculture.
These pathogenic germs should in fairness be called smithellae, because their first member, called today Salmonella choleraesuis, was discovered by the greatest American pioneer of microbiology, Theobald Smith2,3 (1859-1934), who later (in 1893) also found the microbe that causes Texas cattle fever. But the first author of the paper “The bacterium of swine-plague”4 was Salmon, who had not taken part in the research at all and was only the superior of Smith, who was named as the second author. Unfortunately the designation Salmonella is so firmly rooted that it would be impossible to change it.
References
Nature 387, 831 (1997).
Dolman, C. E., Theobald Smith, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Ed. Gillespie, C. C.) 12, 480-486 (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1980).
Bibel, D. J. Milestones in Immunology, 31–32 (Springer, Berlin, 1988).
Amer. Monthly Microsc. J. 7, 204–205 (1886).
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Katscher, F. Salmonella or Smithella?. Nature 388, 320 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/40962
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/40962
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