This is nothing like failing to recognize that Laplace did most of the work in Bayesian Probability. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#Historical_tim

This is nothing like failing to recognize that Laplace did most of the work in Bayesian Probability. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#Historical_timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#Historical_timeline. The subject did not suddenly explode from nascent form to real subject due to Williams' efforts. Summary: Without the theoretical foundation of Chua people would have gone on for much longer finding the same concept in different guises without realizing that these were really just aspects of the same phenomenon. In addition, there are those who claim priority on HP's underlying tech and there is even a paper publishing similar experimental results as far back as the late 60s which the HP team did not cite. Again, if this was due to mere ignorance then the unifying power of theory to carve a template so that experiments did not continue to be repeated blindly strengthens the value of Chua's work. There is also criticism for the currently liberal labeling of what constitutes memristive behavior and HP is implicated in trying to do a patent landgrab. If one person's work had to be picked as the inflection point then it would have to be Chua.