Tadpole diagrams were first used in the 1960s. An early example was published by Abdus Salam in 1961, though he did not take credit for the name. Physicists Sidney Coleman and Sheldon Glashow made an influential use of tadpole diagrams to explain symmetry breaking in the strong interaction in 1964. In 1985 Coleman stated (perhaps as a joke) that Physical Review’s editors rejected the originally proposed name "spermion".