1 In 1852, William Hamilton wrote about a theory of thinking defined by the following phrase: Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. Identify this widely used principle, named after a 14th-century British logician, used often in modern scientific theory?

2 Fan theories. Which cult ’90s film’s fans speculate about the contents of a briefcase owned by a certain Wallace, with many leaning to the theory that it contains Wallace’s soul?

3 The name of which theory was first used by astronomer Fred Hoyle during a 1949 BBC radio broadcast?

4 What question do the Group Theory, the Oxfordian Theory and the Derbyite Theory attempt to answer?

5 The Fission Theory, Capture Theory, Co-Accretion Theory and Giant Impact Theory are all theories to explain the origin of which body?

6 Still on astronomy. What is the name usually given to the theory that life evolved on earth as the temperature was just right, as compared to Venus which was too hot and Mars which was too cold?

7 In the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972, Philip Merrilees spoke of about a particular incident happening in Brazil that would eventually set off a tornado in Texas. Scientist Edward Lorenz coined a famous term based on this question. What term did he coin?

8 In 1950, who put forward a theory of equilibrium for predicting the outcome of non-cooperative games?

9 Which groundbreaking theory was first proposed in 1905 in a part titled ‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’?

10 Coined by a University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen Stigler, what is Stigler’s Law of Eponymy ?

Answers

1. Occam’s Razor, named after William of Ockham

2. Pulp Fiction. The plot centres around Jules and Vincent going around to retrieve this briefcase

3. The Big Bang Theory, to differentiate it from the ‘Steady State Theory’ of the universe’s expansion

4. Authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. The most popular one says that they were actually written by Francis Bacon

5. The origin of the moon. The Fission Theory says that it broke off from earth, the Capture Theory envisages being a foreign body captured by the earth’s gravity, the Co-Accretion Theory has the earth and moon being created together and the Giant Impact Theory has it that another large body collided with earth and knocked off the moon

6.The Goldilocks Theory. From the fairy tale where Goldilocks wandered into the Bears’ house and tasted their soup

7.The Butterfly Effect. Small causes can have large effects and a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can finally set off a Tornado in Texas.

8. John Nash, one of the founders of Game Theory, and the subject of the film A Beautiful Mind

9. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity

10. It states that no scientific discovery or theory is named after its original discoverer. So, Gresham’s law was actually discovered by Copernicus and Indian mathematicians knew the Fibonacci sequence hundreds of years before him. Fittingly, even Stigler’s Theory follows the rule, being originally stated by Robert Merton

Joy Bhattacharjyais a quizmaster and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup

Follow Joy on Twitter @joybhattacharj

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