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Old Scientist: Nominative determinism through the ages

16 May 2018

nominative — Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images

IT HAS been done to death in 91av since the 1990s, which is why we often insist we will publish no new examples. Then more appear that are almost too good to be true, and we are back in the realms of nominative determinism, a term coined for us by the visual scientist C.R. Cavonius.

But who was the first nominative determinee to appear in 91av? On 5 November 1994, our Feedback column unearthed the book Pole Positions: The polar regions and the future of the planet, by Daniel Snowman, as well as London Under London: A…

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