Scientist Cat Names: Einstein, Curie & a Cat Who Co-Authored a Physics Paper
In 1975 the physicist Jack Hetherington published a peer-reviewed paper in Physical Review Letters co-authored with his cat, listed as F.D.C. Willard, because he had written it using the plural “we” and did not want to retype it. That true story opens this collection of cat names drawn from the history of science. Across physics, chemistry, life science, mathematics, computing and astronomy, you will find grounded picks: Einstein, Schrodinger, Faraday, Maxwell, Kepler and Galileo; element names like Copper, Cobalt and Krypton; Ada and Babbage for computing’s first team; Darwin and Wallace for natural selection; and Sagan, Hubble and Halley for the stars. A spotlight covers women who changed science — Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Hedy Lamarr and Lise Meitner — and a coat-color guide maps names like Onyx, Spark and Calico onto real fur. Bonded-pair ideas honor true research duos such as the Curies and Kepler and Tycho, and famous-cat links include the real F.D.C. Willard and the imaginary Schrödinger.
