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I have been reading through the history of the Havel-Hakimi Theorem, and I was somewhat surprised to learn that Hakimi's characterization of the degree sequence in undirected graphs came over half a decade after Havel's.

Therefore, I am interested in what Hakimi's characterization provided that Havel's original characterization did not provide. The proofs that I've found of the Havel-Hakimi Theorem do not appear to make any distinction about who made which contributions.

nmagerko
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  • About this phenomenon, see my answer in http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/671534/mathematicians-names-in-structures. – Martín-Blas Pérez Pinilla Mar 22 '15 at 16:46
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    Everything in math is named after the wrong person. I don't know about this particular situation, but it seems likely that people were using Hakimi then found out that Havel was first, and no one would understand if they just said Havel's theorem, so they have to keep the Hakimi in for people to understand. Like the Chevalley-Monk formula in Schubert calculus, which most just call "Monk's formula." – Matt Samuel Mar 22 '15 at 16:47
  • I didn't really realize that this was the case. Interesting – nmagerko Mar 22 '15 at 18:59

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