The effect is named for the Tanzanian citizen Erasto Mpemba. Mpemba first encountered the phenomenon in 1963 in Form 3 of Magamba Secondary School, Tanganyika when freezing hot ice cream mix in cookery classes and noticing that they froze before cold mixes. After passing his O-level examinations, he became a student at Mkwawa Secondary (formerly High) School, Iringa, Tanzania. The headmaster invited Dr. Denis G. Osborne from the University College in Dar Es Salaam to give a lecture on physics. After the lecture, Erasto Mpemba asked him the question "If you take two similar containers with equal volumes of water, one at 35 °C (95 °F) and the other at 100 °C (212 °F), and put them into a freezer, the one that started at 100 °C (212 °F) freezes first. Why?" only to be ridiculed by his classmates and teacher. After initial consternation, Dr. Osborne experimented on the issue back at his workplace and confirmed Erasto's finding. They published the results together in 1969.
Osborne observed that the top is warmer than the bottom in a beaker of water being cooled, the difference being sustained by convection. Blocking heat transfer from the top with a film of oil drastically slowed cooling. Also, the effect of dissolved air was accounted for by using boiled water. The beakers were also insulated from the bottom.
At first sight, the behaviour seems contrary to thermodynamics. Many standard physical theory effects contribute to the phenomenon, although no single explanation is conclusive. Several effects may contribute to the observation, depending on the experimental set-up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect