G.H. Hardy (1908) and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium

More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track. Fisher 1959, pp. 16-17. On closer examination, however, the hope of finding a first comes to grief because of the historically dynamic character of ideas. If we describe a result with sufficient vagueness, there seems to be an endless sequence of those who had something within the vague specifications. Even plagiarists usually introduce innovations! If we specify the idea or result precisely, it turns out that exact duplications seldom occur, So that every mathematical event is a first, and the priority question becomes trivial.