Mathematical fame can reward errors and mediocrity

Evidence

Nor need he fear very seriously that the future will be unjust to him. Immortality is often ridiculous or cruel: few of us would have chosen to be Og or Ananias or Gallio. Even in mathematics, history sometimes plays strange tricks; Rolle figures in the text-books of elementary calculus as if he had been a mathematician like Newton; Farey is immortal because he failed to understand a theorem which Haros had proved perfectly fourteen years before; the names of five worthy Norwegians still stand in Abel’s Life, just for one act of conscientious imbecility, dutifully performed at the expense of their country’s greatest man. — G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, 163

Categorization

• SEED: The Farey-Haros, Rolle, and Norwegian anecdotes are compact essay material on how scientific credit is misallocated.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, 163
• XREF: connects to: Fame is treated as an earned given, not a legitimate goal — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 404