matroid
In 1935, Hassler Whitney published a paper entitled “On the abstract prop- erties of linear dependence”. The same year, Takeo Nakasawa published the first of a series of three papers dealing with similar ideas. Both authors introduced what Whitney called “matroids”. Whereas Whitney became a famous mathemati- cian whose obituary appeared in The New York Times, Nakasawa died in obscurity at the age of 33 and has received only minimal recognition for his contributions