Barry Mazur and Valentin Poenaru discovered these manifolds simultaneously. Akbulut and Kirby showed that the Brieskorn homology spheres \Sigma(2,5,7) , \Sigma(3,4,5) and \Sigma(2,3,13) are boundaries of Mazur manifolds. These results were later generalized to other contractible manifolds by Casson, Harer and Stern. One of the Mazur manifolds is also an example of an Akbulut cork which can be used to construct exotic 4-manifolds.
