Etymology

Calabi-Yau manifold

Today it means: A kind of manifold having properties, such as Ricci flatness, that yield applications in theoretical physics. Full definition →

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The story

The name was coined by Candelas et al. (1985), named after Italian-born American mathematician Eugenio Calabi (1954, 1957) who first conjectured that such surfaces might exist, and Chinese American mathematician and educator Shing-Tung Yau (1978), who proved the Calabi conjecture.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.