Talk:List of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society

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This article was nominated for deletion on October 20, 2005. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

— JIP | Talk 18:31, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Articles for Deletion debate 2 Back door attempt at deletion 3 Addition of tag 3.1 List or category? 4 {{fact}} tag rather than commenting out names 5 {{Totally disputed}} tag 6 William Feller 7 Citation problems 8 More weak citations

[edit] Articles for Deletion debate

This article survived an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. -Splash^talk 18:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I've reverted the movement of this page that was redirected to "List of Fellows of the Royal Society ".--Bonaparte talk 16:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Back door attempt at deletion

User:Antidote has twice tried to delete this list by the back door, by renaming it List of Fellows of the Royal Society and adding names to it. If he wants to create a List of Fellows of the Royal Society, he is of course free to do so (although it rather duplicates Category:Fellows of the Royal Society), and if he wants to copy information from this list, of course he can. - Poetlister 20:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This list duplicates both of those - do you not see? It is also in violation of several standards and is frankly, extraneous, and can only be used as a target as no other nationality or ethnicity bothers to make it. Antidote 21:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

No, it doesn't duplicate it, any more than a list of British physicists duplicates a list of physicists - it's a selection. And how does a nationality or an ethnicity do anything? If there is an insinuation that this list was started by members of an ethnic minority for some sinister purpose, this is utterly false. In fact, this list was started by a Methodist with English born ancestors going back several generations, someone even Antidote would have to concede is English. - Poetlister 21:14, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Who cares who started it - it is all in all, WAY too specific and unprecedented. Wikipedia does have unwritten standards that it goes by - for that reason we do not expect List of Buddhist Fellows of the Royal Society or List of German Fellows of the Royal Society to be started because they are essentially pointless. Now a List of Fellows of the Royal Society exists - of which I started by popular demand (or at least it seemed that way). Why single out Jews and not other groups? Clearly this list is not popular, as evidenced by the AFD votes - so why strike controversy pointlessly? Antidote 21:28, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, this does seem to be a back door attempt at deletion. This survived an AfD. There was no suggestion there that it should become a redirect.

But a further thing: Poetlister, I see from your notes that you are going through and verifying. I assume that you are doing this by going through some set of references. It would be very useful if you would at least indicate what references you are using; if you could tie each name to a reference, that would be even better. See, for example, what we did at List of entertainers known to have performed in blackface. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't even know what a back-door deletion means, but all I can say is this that I initially assumed this list was created because the main article didn't exist -- then later when I saw the very strange adament keeps presented on AFDs I figured it was made ' on a whim' and that people are voting delete because it's on a touchy subject - now I'm just not sure what to assume as not even mentioning a person is Jewish on the main list is sufficient for people like User:Poetlister and others. It makes me suspicious of people's intentions. There's a reason more broadly present fellows like Scots don't have their separate lists such as List of Scottish Fellows of the Royal Society -- certainly, otherwise it would have been made long before List of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society. Antidote 23:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Addition of tag

When people like Vladimir Prelog are/were present on this list .......reforms need to be made. Antidote 04:21, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Antidote deleted Ugo Fano, although he was Jewish - [1] (I have restored him). How reliable is Antidote's other information? At best, he has found one error; that is scarcely enough to condemn an article of this length. - 20.138.246.89 13:17, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Ugo Fano is said to have fled Italy for several reasons - some are intertwined with the assumption that he was Jewish and frankly, have slim terms of SOLID proof except jinfo - which I hate to say (and am positive will have support here) is not necessarily the greatest source of peoples with jewish descent - even if the site DOES check its sources you have to be cautious of sites with mission statements like it's.

See the wording in this article that may have caused a snowball effect Resistance sympathizers (and suspected sympathizers) as well as a Hitler mandated brain-drain of any scientists and engineers he deemed useful to the Axis war machine caused Fano to flee to America. [2]

I would love to keep lists as inclusive as possible - trust me - but the default here is obviously exclusion (something that jinfo doens't necessarily profess). Antidote 21:10, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Some sources say Prelog was Jewish: [3]. He fled the Nazis as soon as they invaded Yugoslavia, so maybe he was part-Jewish or his wife was Jewish. Thus, if his inclusion was a mistake, it's an understandable one. However, he isn't included in the List of Jewish Nobel Prize winners so I won't restore him. - 81.153.41.72 20:31, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Some sources also say Enrico Fermi, Isaac Newton, and Columbus were Jews - the Internet is full of these sites. Antidote 21:10, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

---

I believe that the online source given for Prelog is probably wrong. There is nothing else online to indicate that he is Jewish, which is unusual for a Nobel Prize winner. Also, p108 of "The Road to Stockholm: Nobel Prizes, Science and Scientists" by Istvan Hargittai, ISBN 019850912X says:

His father was a Croat from Croatia. The Croats were Catholic and as a child Prelog never played with a Moslem child, never played with an Orthodox (Serbian) child, and did not even play with Croatian children whose families were originally Bosnian.

Hope it's ok to delete him. 82.35.45.214 22:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

---

Also I'm sick and tired of this page being the only one on wikipedia that's not allowing tags. If further removals take place I will have to ask for aid. Antidote 21:10, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Lastly, you can't say "O, a few errors isn't a big deal" - when clearly if a single jewish fellow would be left out I'm sure the editors here would see it as a big deal. There are also tons of unverified red links. I tried to search for a few randomly and found almost no sources indicating judaism or life information for that matter. This list is another 'whim' creation that desparately needs maintenance - too much maintenance for little point or purpose. Antidote

Use the right tag, such as clean-up. You have not challenged the neutrality of this article and you have made little substantive claim to error. Therefore, the totallydisputed template is not warranted. Furthermore, one of your claims has already been proven wrong. So who is acting on a whim? Also threats are not very constructive. -- JJay 21:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Um - not they haven't...and a factual accuracy tab is a perfectly adequate addition to a list that has met its fair share of disputes in previous edits. How about finding something more productive to do than impedeing the process to better or completely change around a very controversial article? Thanks. Antidote 21:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I see nothing controversial about this list. Please explain the problem with neutrality, or remove the tag. Why is the clean-up tag not adequate? Also, be very careful about accusations of vandalism. -- JJay 21:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The tag is doubled for both factual accuracy and/or neutrality - a cleanup tag does not specify that there might be factual accuracy disputes. If you want to stretch it then this article might not be neutral because its page creator may have been too inclusive. I know you're not a vandal but why you wont allow a tag on this list I don't understand - it's not like it's another AFD. 72.144.183.135 21:55, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Oops - got logged out. Antidote 21:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

You don't really mean that the page creator may have been too inclusive, do you? You haven't queried any of the names she put in. - RachelBrown 17:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I would really like to see this page get unprotected. I take it that the protection is solely because of disagreement over the tags Antidote wants to place on the top of the page. May I make one suggestion to each side (plus one little bonus suggestion to all concerned):

• Antidote, if you are going to place a "disputed" tag on the article, please note here (preferably concisely, in a bullet list) exactly what you believe is false; if you are going to place an NPOV tag, please note here (similarly) what you believe is POV; etc.
• The others: how about letting the article get unprotected and letting his tags sit for a week, addressing on the talk page and/or by editing the article any specific issues he raises, so you can get on with editing rather than waste time in fighting. The tags issue can be dealt with later.
• All: I assume that it is uncontroversial that these are all Fellows of the Royal Society, so presumably the factual dispute is over whether they are Jewish. Two suggestions:
  1. As I remarked above, please be explicit about citation, it will save effort next time this is disputed.
  2. If (as I suspect) some people on the list are practicing Jews, others merely secular ethnic Jews, and yet others are (for example) of partial Jewish ancestry on their father's side, it would be good to be as specific about this as possible. I would suggest that whatever is most common (I'd guess secular ethnic) be the default, but everything else be noted explicitly.

Jmabel | Talk 06:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Rachel/Poestlister have been asked elsewhere to start supplying sources for their edits, as required by policy. There doesn't seem to be a consistent definition of "Jewish" being used (on another of these lists, there were people listed who had one Jewish great grandparent), and no sources at all are being cited on the page. If they could start editing in accordance with the policies, these disputes would more or less disappear. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:58, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

In addition to that, there seems to be a case of listmania. I don't really understand if these editors actually expect there to be a list made for every single possible ethnicity, nationality, religious adherence, political adherence, or sexual preference for something as specific as an Honor Society. Where's List of notable Gay Mensa Members!? I'm TRULY surprised List of notable Jewish Mensa Members hasn't been made yet - since it is completely equivalent to this list in scope and specificity. I think the main reason this list survived (regardless of the fact that almost all other society lists by ethnicity or religious adherence were deleted long ago) is because there are many more editors from Britania here than say Sweden and hence more people that care personally about such lists/articles. I have also noticed many of these specific Honor Society lists have been only made for Jews - some of which were derived from jinfo.org (which the webmaster claims he doesn't appreciate - he himself has said before that those lists dont belong on Wikipedia) - and this seems to be just blatant targetting. I don't believe that if I made a List of Atheist Members of the Royal Society - it would be taken with no controversy. This list is even overflowing as a category. I can't imagine Category: Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society as being rather popular.

Anyway, I have attempted to find a way to make both sides happy by making a list of Fellows of the Royal Society (even though I see that as a farflung list too) and perhaps moving the reds from here onto that list (I unfortunately wasnt given time to do this). The reds would have been accounted for and normally this would solve the problem. However, the editors here demand that the List of Fellows of the Royal Society be divided between lists of race, religious preference, MAYBE even sexual preference! Well, if they want it then please, make all the other lists that indubitably have people of that affiliation in the big list:

• List of Gay Fellows of the Royal Society
• List of Anglican Fellows of the Royal Society
• List of Welsh Fellows of the Royal Society Antidote 20:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree about the listmania. It has reached an absurd level. The best way to keep it in check is to insist on a reliable source for every name that is added. At least that way we know we're not spreading nonsense. Also, there shouldn't be names here unless they have a Wikipedia article, in my view. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, I agree with your view as well although in my opinion these separate lists shouldnt exist AT ALL! They are completely extraneous and 99% of the people listed on them with articles already exist on Jewish lists by country. The red names can easily be transferred to the country lists. Can't see why anyone would disagree with that. Antidote 22:02, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

In general, I agree about there being too many lists on Wikipedia. That said, this passed AfD. At that point, we should be trying to turn it into a good article. Slim, if only names with a Wikipedia article were to be included, we might as well use a category. But the criteria for this list are reasonably well defined. It is nearly trivial to verify whether someone was a member of the Royal Society and in most cases should be possible to say whether they are Jewish; as I've remarked above, the trickiest question here would seem to be that "Jewish" is a somewhat ambiguous word, and in the ambiguous cases the qualifications should be there. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:20, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List or category?

There seems little doubt that a list is more appropriate than a category in this case. The set of people to be included is well defined (subject to the odd argument about Who is a Jew?). Everyone on the list is or was a very distinguished person who probably deserves at least a stub article.

Further, with a list, it is very easy to see whether a name has been added or deleted. With a category, this is much more laborious. You can monitor every article in the category (though that won't spot additions) or save a snapshot then compare it with a later snapshot, but obviously that's far more difficult than just using history on a list. - Newport 18:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• • I disagree. I think that lists like this, which could be better represented as categories, should not be included in Wikipedia. The definition of who is a Jew is extremely controversial (ethnicity, religion and cultural reasons) and hence this is better described as a category in individual articls. Whilst I do not object to lists that cannot be categories, I personally am of the view that a list such as this should be deleted. However, as it passed AFD, we are stuck with it, and those who are interested in the topic must work through the list to work out a good way to handle it. I have proposed below some civility guidelines which I think should help. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 14:27, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] {{fact}} tag rather than commenting out names

It would be more productive if people who dispute inclusion used the ((fact)) tag next to the disputed entry rather than unilaterally removing it. It is better to be constructive than disruptive. I would just like to encourage everyone to do that in future. There is no reason to remove a name unless there is proof that they are not a Jew. If we don't know either way, then use the fact tag. This is the Wikipedian way. I think that if we'd all done this, then this whole problem wouldn't have ended up getting this bad. Also it'd help if people abided civility rules a bit more too. See WP:CIVIL for some guidelines. Nasty edit summaries are generally regarded as worse than putting in a nasty entry in a talk page. Try discussing it with a person on their talk page if there is a serious dispute. Thank you. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 10:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] {{Totally disputed}} tag

Can we get rid of this tag yet? There is still no evidence of any bias in this article (unless you believe that lists of Jews should not exist on Wikipedia). Three alleged errors have been found, but two have turned out to be false. One error, now corrected, scarcely justified a dispute. I propose to remove the tag if nobody objects. - Newport 19:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

There are still almost no citations. I don't feel that my issues have been addressed at all. - Jmabel | Talk 04:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

In the spirit of Wikipedia, please feel free to help remedy any defects you find in articles. If you have doubts about whether any entry should be there, please add a {{fact}} tag, preferably with a comment here. - Newport 18:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Now looks good to me in this respect. I have no more problem with removing the tag. I think the references could be done more cleanly (maybe using cite.php), but that is a quibble. I'll try to follow up that aspect myself. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:01, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] William Feller

We already have two sources that say he was Jewish; this is also confirmed by www.jinfo.org. No source says he wasn't Jewish. There is one that says his mother was Catholic; that doesn't mean that he was. (it may mean that he wasn't Jewish according to some definitions, but that's original research. Wikipedia only reports what the sources say.

Whether he was christened is irrelevant; so was Benjamin Disraeli.--20.138.246.89 10:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

And the edit comment says "He's not necessary here anyway"; what does that mean? --20.138.246.89 10:47, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citation problems

Three people are cited to Wolf Prize Recipients in Mathematics, Jewish Virtual Library. I cleaned the citations, but I don't see how they demonstrate the people belonging on this page.

• As far as I can tell, Konrad Bloch is not even mentioned on the cited page.
• Nothing on the page indicates that either Vladimir Arnold or Raoul Bott is Jewish.
• Since Kunihiko Kodaira and Kiyoshi Ito are among the recipients of this prize, I venture to say that merely having won it is not a citation for Arnold or Bott being Jewish.

- Jmabel | Talk 23:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

New refs --Brownlee 14:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Emanuel Mendes da Costa: the PDF link given doesn't work. I even registered on the site in question and still can't access it. I tried searching his name on the site, got a lot of hits, none of which seem to make any reference to his being Jewish. I don't doubt he was, but the citation needs to be replaced with an actual citation for his being Jewish. - Jmabel | Talk 06:24, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

He is in the Jewish Encyclopedia; I shall add the link.--Brownlee 14:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

In general, I would prefer that you simply write that you have dealt with my issues, rather than striking my comments. No one should be striking someone else's signed comments. - Jmabel | Talk 20:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, as it happens, you did not fully deal with these. You added blind URL links with no indication of what they are or when they were accessed. I'll clean this up, but please, folks, it's not like I'm the only person who can competently add a citation, thousands of people do it all the time. I barely care about this article - I got pulled into it in an effort to resolve a dispute - and I've put probably at least 10 hours into it so far. - Jmabel | Talk 21:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, the new citation for Vladimir Arnold is very weak: an unsigned article on a rather odd personal site. I don't doubt that Arnold is Jewish, but this is roughly the "some guy with a website" level of citation. - Jmabel | Talk 21:12, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

A better one has now been added; would everyone be OK with removing the weak one? - Jmabel | Talk 04:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Willem Einthoven: the citation we have does not seem to say anything about his being Jewish. Yes, the article is in Jewish World Review, but it also mentions James Watson, Francis Crick, Andre Gide, Pablo Neruda, Luigi Pirandello, Boris Pasternak, and (I kid you not) Yasser Arafat, so it is clearly not a list of Jewish Nobelists. I don't know much about Einthoven, but (unlike the above, which simply needed better citations) I have no particular reason to think he is Jewish. - Jmabel | Talk 04:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

"Willem Einthoven (1926), whose name appears on several Jewish lists, had a Jewish paternal grandfather, but ... it appears unlikely that any of his other grandparents were Jewish."[4] Obviously a good faith addition, but maybe he should be deleted. As to Vladimir Arnold, any harm in retaining both refs?--20.138.246.89 08:37, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I've deleted Einthoven per above. I'm not fussed about the Arnold ref; indeed no harm in keeping it.--Brownlee 11:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

On an unrelated matter - as there are two alphabetical sequences here, is it possible to have two compact lists of contents?--Brownlee 11:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Israel Gelfand (more precisely, Israil Moiseevic Gelfand): previously cited http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Israil+Gelfand but that is just a copy of our own article. Given his name, I'd be truly, truly astounded if he were not Jewish, but this is effectively uncited. But none of the citations given in that article mention him being Jewish, including http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Gelfand.html, from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland, which often does mention ethnicity. Anyway, I'm not removing this from the article, but it does need a citation. - Jmabel | Talk 05:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

jewprom.50webs.com lists him as a Jewish member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a Jewish foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. I'll note this, but I can't find how to give a link to a particular page on that site. The site is not a Wikipedia mirror, as it disagrees with Wikipedia in a few cases.--20.138.246.89 09:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks to me like a really weak citation. Not affiliated with any organization, no indication who works on it, nothing. The fact that they aren't a mirror of us is not enough to make them a reliable source. And the weird construction of their site (where if you try to deep-link it takes you to an ad instead) is not at all encouraging.

Also, by the way, please don't write dates in the form 5/10/06, which means entirely different things in different places in the English-speaking world. - Jmabel | Talk 23:35, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, found him in the Encyclopaedia Judaica. I'd missed it before due to different spelling of name! Sorry about the date format.--20.138.246.89 09:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.

As far as I can see, the reference given for Leopold Kronecker (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Kronecker.html) makes absolutely no mention of him being Jewish. - Jmabel | Talk 05:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

You click on the reference, then on the link that says "Full MacTutor biography", and it says "Leopold Kronecker's parents were well off, his father, Isidor Kronecker, being a successful business man while his mother was Johanna Prausnitzer who also came from a wealthy family. The families were Jewish, the religion that Kronecker kept until a year before his death when he became a convert to Christianity."--20.138.246.89 09:16, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Then that's the page that should be linked. - Jmabel | Talk 03:55, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Done - Jmabel | Talk 06:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More weak citations

Edwin Land: http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v09n1p16.htm. Creationism.org? At least it's a philo-semitic Christian article, but it's still a pretty weird citation.

Tullio Levi-Civita: http://www.yahoodi.com/famous/philo1.html is just a redirect to a page http://famous.heebz.com/philo1.html. And all that contains about him is a link to Amazon. Do we have something more solid than this? I have to say, "heebz.com" doesn't exactly scream "reliable": it's home page says people vote on who is Jewish. That seems to be a step down from citing another Wikipedia article.

- Jmabel | Talk 06:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I've substituted this site: [5] Seems sound, as there is a list of good references, though unfortunately they don't say which reference was used to source each name.--20.138.246.89 09:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Edward Witten: frugalfun.com is pretty weak, if anyone has a better citation. - Jmabel | Talk 23:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

There's already a ref to Jinfo; shall we just delete the frugalfun one?--20.138.246.89 13:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Fine by me. - Jmabel | Talk 03:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

In any case, I've now gone through the whole darn thing. The only ones that are formatted differently than the others are the JYB citations; I think that's just as well.

Anyway, my work here is basically done. - Jmabel | Talk 03:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)