Fictional Characters that Impacted Science

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Kenny McCormick, tribbles, Ken and Barbie

SpongeBob SquarePants

Sonic the Hedgehog

Pikachu

Sherlock Holmes had a very huge impact on forensic science. In fact, he was pretty much the sole inspiration of the person who created the basis of the forensics we know today.

Probably the only example of a fictional character influencing science. Though many anticipated scientific discoveries- like Captain Nemo and his submarine, and Captain Kirk using cell phone like devices.

Pacman frogs
Pacman dysplasia

Naming something after a popular fictional character means that the fictional character influenced science?

How do you figure that?

Alright, I guess a fictional character lending a name to some scientific discovery doesn't mean that said fictional character actually impacted science in some way. Still, these characters were influential for professional scientists to name something after them, so that's got to mean something, right?

I've also thought of a few more examples:
The element mercury was named after the Roman god Mercury.
Uranium was named after the planet Uranus, itself named after Greek god of the sky, Uranus.
Neptunium was named after the planet Neptune, itself named after Roman god of the sea, Neptune.
Plutonium was named after the dwarf planet Pluto, itself named after classical god of the underworld, Pluto.

Come to think of it, a good number of astronomical objects were named after gods and goddesses.

It's time for more elements that were named after mythological figures, because science is magic!
cadmium - Cadmus, thorium - Thor, iridium - Iris, vanadium - Vanadis, tantalum - Tantalus, cerium - Ceres, titanium - Titans, promethium - Prometheus, phosphorus - Phosphorus

And as a bonus, I've found a list of chemical compounds that were named after fictional characters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ch ... characters

Commander Spock, of course--along with Kirk, Uhuru, McCoy, Sulu, Checkov and the rest.

There have been many, many public testimonials by Nasa scientists, astronauts and astronomers and others in scientific fields about the lasting and deep influence of Star Trek on their lives and careers.

And, if only briefly TV characters: All hail minor planet Xena, Warrior Princess!, now known as Eris... because the IAU is somewhat stuffy and conservative and generally killjoys...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_%28dwarf_planet%29

By way, tribbles did not originate with Star Trek. Robert Heinlein had the same thing but known as "Martian flatcats" in The Rolling Stones. Whoever added those to the script had clearly read about the from Heinlein's work.

Agatha Heterodyne and Florence Ambrose, each female lead of their respective webcomic, have each given us a corollary to Clarkes Third Law.

"'Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!' - Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius

"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it." - Florence Ambrose, Freefall

Perhaps more influenced Sci-Fi, but still.

"Thagomizer" was coined by Gary Larson in a Far Side strip, in which cavemen in a lecture are taught by their professor that the spikes on a Stegosaur tail are named after "the late Thag Simmons".
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer

Also, I've found this list of organisms named after fictional characters:
http://www.curioustaxonomy.net/etym/fiction.html

The space shuttle Enterprise was named after Star Trek's iconic starship, as is the first commercial spacecraft.
Walkman was partially named after Superman.
Finnegan's Wake was the source of the nonce word "quark".
William Gibson coined "cyberspace".

Aerodactylus (named after a Pokémon)
Hua Mulan, crater on Venus (named after a Chinese myth)
Pinocchio frog (named after fairy tale)
Dragon curve (named after mythological creature)
Pikmin flower (named after video game)
Robotnikinin (named after video game character)
Venus flytrap (named after Roman goddess)
Titan, Saturn's moon (named after Greek gods)

In Greek mythology there was a cute little boy in ancient Troy who was seized by an Eagle and taken to Mount Olympus, to serve as a "cup barer" for the gods. And to server as a...[cough] ahem..."companion" to Zeus. IE to be Zeus's partner in a then socially acceptable sexual relationship. Yuck!

Fast forward three thousand years from the Trojan War to Sixteenth Century Italy.

Galileo is the first person to use a telescope to seriously look at the heavens and he is astonished at the things he sees.

One of these discoveries is that Earth is not the only planet with a moon.He notices that the Planet Jupiter has a ...little campanion!

"What should I name this little campanion of Jupiter/Zeus?" he wonders. Ofcourse he picks "Ganymede". What else would you call it?

Later he discovers four other moons of Jupiter: "the five Galilean Satellites" of Jupiter. All five in the same weight class as the Earth's moon or bigger. But Ganymede is the largest satellite of any planet in the solar system, and at 3200 miles across it is not only larger than the Earth's Moon, it is even larger (though less massive) than the planet Mercury.

We now know that Jupiter has several dozen moons.

Le Voyage dans la Lune 1902 voyage to the Moon.

Murray Leinster’s 1945 novella First Contact included instant universal translators.

John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider invented the computer virus

Edward Bellamy 1887 "Looking Backward" predicted Gov't benefits pre-paid debit cards & coined them "credit cards"

Possible literary sources/influences for modern robots:
(Artificial 'living' beings)
Three-legged self-navigating tables created by the god Hephaestus in the Iliad
Jewish legend of the golem created like Adam from clay
'Leonardo's Robot' (da Vinci)
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
The term robotics as a field of study was coined by Asimov
Asimov's Three Laws (four, really if you include the 'zeroeth' law)

I'm sure Gibson's Neuromancer impacted science - or at least the people selling it ("Cyberspace, cyberspace, everybody loves cyberspace..."...was it AOL or AT&T's ad?)

Jules Verne's Captain Nemo inspired the invention & design of modern submarines
Verne's Clipper of the Clouds inspired Igor Sikorsky to make helicopters
Verne's "In the Year 2889" had the phonotelephote which was Skype / videoconferencing

Robert H. Goddard claimed H.G. Well's War of the Worlds as his inspiration
Physicist Leo Szilard was inspired to figure out chain reactions by Well's The World Set Free

"Martin Cooper, the director of research and development at Motorola, credited the “Star Trek” communicator as his inspiration for the design of the first mobile phone in the early 1970s. “That was not fantasy to us,” Cooper said, “that was an objective.”

NASA physicist Jack Cover invented the “Taser” which is an acronym for one of Tom Swift’s fictional inventions, the “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.”

"Apple scientist Steve Perlman says that he got the idea for the groundbreaking multimedia program QuickTime after watching an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” wherein one of the characters is listening to multiple music tracks on his computer"
(If I recall that was Data listening to a dozen symphonies at once in his quarters)

Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash describes a fully immersive online “Metaverse” where people interact with one another through representations called “avatars.” Philip Rosedale, the inventor of the once popular online community Second Life, had been toying with the idea of virtual worlds since college, but credits Snow Crash for painting “a compelling picture of what such a virtual world could look like in the near future, and I found that inspiring.”

Geostationary satellites - Arthur C. Clarke: not fiction at all but a serious proposal
However, Tim Berners Lee has credited Arthur C Clarke's 'Dial F for Frankenstein' for his inspiration for the Internet

Tablet computers btw were not from Space Oddessy 2001 nor STNG: they were actually invented by Alan Kay as the Dynabook in the 1960's.

Oh, heck. In trying to remember who created the Dynabook I came across the mother of all literary inventions list:
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/ctnlistPubDate.asp