History
The Wiener index is named after Harry Wiener, who introduced it in 1947; at the time, Wiener called it the "path number". It is the oldest topological index related to molecular branching. Based on its success, many other topological indexes of chemical graphs, based on information in the distance matrix of the graph, have been developed subsequently to Wiener's work.
The same quantity has also been studied in pure mathematics, under various names including the gross status, the distance of a graph, and the transmission. The Wiener index is also closely related to the closeness centrality of a vertex in a graph, a quantity inversely proportional to the sum of all distances between the given vertex and all other vertices that has been frequently used in sociometry and the theory of social networks.
Read more about this topic: Wiener Index
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)