Mayer–Norton theorem
Teorema de Mayer-Norton
- Date
- 1926 · confidence high
- Place
- Bell Telephone Laboratories, New York City, United States
- Credited to
- Hans Ferdinand Mayer (Siemens & Halske) and Edward Lawry Norton (Bell Labs), independently
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
In 1926, without knowing of each other, Mayer in Germany and Norton in the United States separately reached the same conclusion: any circuit of resistances with voltage and current sources can be replaced by a single equivalent current source in parallel with an equivalent resistance.
This is a clear case of simultaneous independent discovery: Mayer published in the German journal Telegraphen- und Fernsprech-Technik and Norton in an internal Bell Labs technical memo; English-language literature settled on Norton's name, though it is sometimes cited as the Mayer–Norton theorem.
What it led to
- Standard simplification of electrical circuit analysis
- Symmetric counterpart to Thévenin's theorem in electronics education