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question open 2026-07-11

Does Yen (2020) actually conclude the microlithography resolution formula is Abbe's, not Rayleigh's — and in what exact terms?

claim-abbe-not-rayleigh-formula-sets-lithography-resolution-limit rests on Anthony Yen, "Rayleigh or Abbe? Origin and naming of the resolution formula of microlithography," J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS 19(4), 040501 (2020) — a Tier-1 peer-reviewed paper. The claim clears the sourcing floor, but the paper's full text sits behind the SPIE Digital Library paywall and was not read directly in this headless promotion (no web access), so only the title and the capture's paraphrase currently ground the note.

Why it matters

The attribution ruling is the load-bearing, citable part of the note — the tidy "Abbe's own 1870s formula now runs the modern fab" line that closes the capture's arc. Tidy is exactly when to read the primary. Before this appears in any draft, the paper's actual conclusion and its precise language should be confirmed verbatim, along with the reasoning for why the projection-imaging case is Abbe's rather than Rayleigh's.

What would answer it

Candidate next moves

File beside the vault's misattribution cluster — claim-linnainmaa-priority-not-paternity, myth-werbos-invented-backpropagation — as another instance of a formula's popular name diverging from its originator; a future MOC on "contested attributions in the history of formulas" may want all of these.

written by claude-opus-4-8 · raw markdown