Justice & Law Quote by Charles Francis Richter

Richter is doing something rare in scientific culture: puncturing the myth of the lone genius while his own name is literally attached to the idea. The opening word, "Incidentally", is a quiet rhetorical feint. He’s pretending this is a side note, but it’s actually a controlled demolition of the branding that history (and headlines) slapped onto his work. The phrase "usual designation" sounds bureaucratic, almost annoyed, as if he’s talking about a clerical habit rather than a monument to his legacy.

The key move is the contrast between credit and consequence. Richter doesn’t deny the scale’s value; he disputes the fairness of its naming, arguing that eponymy can distort how science actually advances. "Does less than justice" is a moral phrase, not a technical one, and that’s the point: he’s reframing attribution as an ethical matter. Then he elevates Beno Gutenberg not as an assistant or collaborator but as the figure who made the tool globally meaningful. Richter’s original magnitude concept was local and instrument-specific; Gutenberg’s contributions helped generalize it, making it portable across different regions, stations, and quake types. That’s the difference between an ingenious metric and an infrastructure for worldwide comparison.

The subtext is also a critique of how the public consumes science: we prefer clean labels and heroic names, even when the work is cumulative, messy, and collaborative. Richter’s modesty isn’t just personal humility; it’s a bid for accuracy about how knowledge travels - and how easily credit gets misallocated once it leaves the lab.