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:
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)