In January 1968 Robert K. Merton of Columbia University published “The Matthew Effect in Science” in the journal Science. The name comes from the Gospel of Matthew: “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.” Merton described “the accruing of large increments of peer recognition to scientists of great repute.”
A Nobel laureate in physics put it simply: “the man who’s best known gets more credit, an inordinate amount of credit.”
The biologists R. C. Lewontin and J. L. Hubby described what happened to their joint work. Population geneticists, they wrote, “have consistently regarded Lewontin as the senior member of the team and given him undue credit for what was a completely collaborative work.”