 Because of this analogy, the metric is known in computer science as the earth mover's distance.The name "Wasserstein distance" was coined by R. L. Dobrushin in 1970, after the Russian mathematician Leonid Vaseršteĭn who introduced the concept in 1969.Most English-language publications use the German spelling "Wasserstein" (attributed to the name "Vaseršteĭn" being of German origin).