It is one of 25 candidate axioms for this property identified by Stephen Wolfram, by enumerating the Sheffer identities of length less or equal to 15 elements (excluding mirror images) that have no noncommutative models with four or fewer variables, and was first proven equivalent by William McCune, Branden Fitelson, and Larry Wos.
[4] McCune et al. also found a longer single axiom for Boolean algebra based on disjunction and negation.
[3] In 1933, Edward Vermilye Huntington identified the axiom as being equivalent to Boolean algebra, when combined with the commutativity of the OR operation,
[5] Herbert Robbins conjectured that Huntington's axiom could be replaced by which requires one fewer use of the logical negation operator
[6][7][8] This proof established that the Robbins axiom, together with associativity and commutativity, form a 3-basis for Boolean algebra.