The history of poisson distribution is an interesting case. It was simultaneously discovered by 2 people. One was Polish Mathematician who tried to explain the incidence of deaths from horse kicks amongst the Prussian military. He did so from his university office, with out the slightest knowledge of German army training

The second person who discovered was a man by name William Gausset , who went by the pen name " Student". He was an employee of a Guinness beer company and came up with statistical methods to enable the quality of brews to be monitored in a cost effective manner. Unknowingly Gausset using his articles, has made a significant contribution to the field of statistics