I've always suspected that Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm was invented many times before he wrote it down. The algorithm itself is relatively straight forwa

I've always suspected that Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm was invented many times before he wrote it down. The algorithm itself is relatively straight forward and I can imagine that a competent programmer not aware of it could come up with it independently. I mean, even Dijkstra himself came up with it because he needed it for a telecom gig. He can't have been the first one in the world who needed to find the shortest path in a graph. He just also happened to be a scientist, experienced in the whole "how to publish a paper" thing.