How many of today's artists would be recognized and honoured by the sciences. Take the great Frank Zappa as an example.
"Scientists from various fields have honored Zappa by naming new discoveries after him. In 1967, paleontologist Leo P. Plas, Jr. identified an extinct
mollusc in Nevada and named it
Amaurotoma zappa with the motivation that, "The specific name,
zappa, honors Frank Zappa".
[238] In the 1980s, biologist Ed Murdy named a
genus of
gobiid fishes of New Guinea
Zappa, with a
species named
Zappa confluentus.
[239] Biologist Ferdinando Boero named a Californian
jellyfish Phialella zappai (1987), noting that he had "pleasure in naming this species after the modern music composer".
[240] Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named
Pachygnatha zappa because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache".
[241] A gene of the bacterium
Proteus mirabilis that causes urinary tract infections was in 1995 named
zapA by three biologists from Maryland. In their scientific article, they "especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature".
[242] In the late 1990s, American paleontologists Marc Salak and Halard L. Lescinsky discovered a
metazoan fossil, and named it
Spygori zappania to honor "the late Frank Zappa ... whose mission paralleled that of the earliest paleontologists: to challenge conventional and traditional beliefs when such beliefs lacked roots in logic and reason".
[243]
In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli led the
International Astronomical Union's
Minor Planet Center to name an
asteroid in Zappa's honor:
3834 Zappafrank.
[244] The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer
Ladislav Brozek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... "
Steven
