F. D. C. Willard

F. D. C. Willard is the pen name of a Siamese cat who became, improbably, a published physicist. In 1975, American physicist Jack H. Hetherington wrote a paper on low-temperature physics for the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. A colleague pointed out that Hetherington had used the royal "we" throughout, even though he was the sole author — and the journal's style rules at the time would have rejected it. Rather than retype the entire manuscript (this was the era of the typewriter), Hetherington simply invented a co-author: his cat, Chester, dignified for the occasion as "F. D. C. Willard". The initials stood for "Felis Domesticus, Chester", with "Willard" borrowed from Chester's father. The paper was published and well regarded, and the secret eventually leaked, delighting the physics community. Willard went on to be credited as the sole author of a later French paper, and even received tongue-in-cheek job offers. Decades later the American Physical Society jokingly announced that papers authored by cats would be made open-access — a lasting nod to physics' most famous feline.