🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec14.223229.22348@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu
(John C. Baez) writes: 

   I quote DeMers:

   For Kolmogorov Complexity in general, the best place to
   start would be with
   an introduction to the notions of Kolmogorov Complexity and
   its application to a number of different problems which can
   be found in:

   Li, M.  and Paul Vitanyi, Kolmogorov Complexity and Its
   Applications, in
   Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, (J. van Leeuwen, Ed.)
   North-Holland, 1989.

I might add that Li and Vitanyi do a meticulous job recounting the history
of the subject (about as tangled as usual).  If you want to know who proved
what when, this is the place to look.  Besides Solomonoff, Kolmorgorov,
Chaitin, and Martin-Loef, already mentioned in this thread, Leonid Levin,
Peter Gacs, and Robert Solovay also made important contributions.

According to Li and Vitanyi, priority for the concept of algorithmic
entropy (or information) should go to Solomonoff, with independent
rediscovery by Kolmorgorov and by Chaitin.  Somewhat ironically they use
the term Kolmogorov complexity throughout!  (I used the term
Chaitin entropy in my last post.)  Probably the best term is "algorithmic
entropy" or "algorithmic information content", which Zurek uses.

Oh well.  The cubic formula was discovered by Scipio del Ferro,
independently rediscovered by Tartaglia, and first published by Cardano who
gave credit to Tartaglia (I don't remember if he also credited del Ferro).
So of course it is almost universally referred to as Cardano's formula.
(Look up the history of L'Hospital's rule sometime...)