The story
After Russian-born American mathematician Oscar Zariski (1899—1986), regarded as one of the most influential algebraic geometers of the 20th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Zariski topology
Today it means: Originally, a topology applicable to algebraic varieties, such that the closed sets are the variety's algebraic subvarieties; later, a generalisation in which the topological space is the set of prime ideals of a commutative ring and is called the spectrum of the ring. Full definition →