Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep.--Fuhghettaboutit 01:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shmuk (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Not notable enough. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment, Speedy Keep An entry in the Soviet Encyclopedia (even if I can only puzzle out parts of the entry) certainly suggests notability. I am still uncertain if he was a Stalin Prize winner. Perhaps editors fluent in Russian might be able to shed more light on the issue. Bigdaddy1981 17:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. At first I thought "Schmuck, yeah right", but it turns out this guy existed and was a renowned biochemist who, according to this excerpt from the Soviet Encyclopedia, won a "National Prize" in 1942. I don't know what the National Prize is supposed to represent, and reading Russian gives me a headache, so I'll abstain from voting until someone with a decent command of the language explains whether this prize confers any real notability. --Targeman 17:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per all subsequent input. --Targeman 23:10, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

• Speedy keep. Real person, notable at least in the context of Soviet Union (the research on Nicotiana rustica, Stalin's prize in 1942), at least one of his works translated to English. Pavel Vozenilek 18:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment from nominator: There is only 1 Google for his English name (the "Did you mean..." link takes you to a page of irrelevant results), 91 Googles for his Russian name, and 202 Googles for A A Shmuk. A fairly modern person like him should not have so few Googles. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:31, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment I don't know that having or not having many google hits is the best judge of notability for a soviet biochemist who died more than 60 years ago. The Stalin Prize was one of the highest awards a scientific figure could receive in the USSR at that time (see list of other laureates) and his place in the Soviet Encyclopedia which was the standard reference book in the USSR rather seals the deal for me.

• Weakest of all Deletes -- unless there's some more about what he did to earn the Stalin Prize and any good info on his life and career after winning the prize, this bumps up uncomfortably with WP:HOLE. Pat Payne 21:36, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment please review the article, I have made some additions to it that I believe address your concerns. Bigdaddy1981 21:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per WP:CSB, obviously a notable scientist of his time and place. GHITS is the wrong metric for this sort of material. The Soviet scientific community was divorced from the world scientific community by the Cold War and material would be limited in any case. --Dhartung | Talk 23:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep I think the Stalin prize is enough to confer notability Corpx 05:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Actually the year he got the Stalin Prize makes his notability questionable, as this was the year before, I'm pretty sure, Lysenko cemented his power by purging his number one enemy, and Lysenko was deeply buried in it in 1942. I don't know if this is notable enough or not. Another comment, the name is a modern transliteration, and research translated to English, possibly from the German, would contain an old-style transliteration of the name, Alexander Alexandrovich, probably Schmuk. Regardless, this is not information to be found on the web, because of the timing and his field, agricultural sciences in Lysenko Soviet era is limited. KP Botany 06:42, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

You are right his name most likely was at some point transliterated into cyrillic from the roman alphabet (he is most likely of jewish or volga german origin so the german or yiddish spelling of his name would be Schmuck) and then transliterated back to roman. You raise an interesting point re Lysenko but I would be hestitant to damn all Soviet scientists involved with plant science of that era based on Lysenko tomfoolery and politicking. Indeed Shmuk may not be involved at all - given a good part of his work was earlier than the Lysenko era and (specially) because he was a biochemist not a geneticist. Bigdaddy1981 16:19, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Right that we can't dismiss him solely because of the era, but the timing of the Stalin Prize means we have to be more careful, was my point. If he was a geneticist, I think I would vote to dismiss until solid references are put up. Still, the article probably requires more care than other Soviet scientists, because he would have fallen under agriculture, and I would like to see some solid off-web references included. I'm not sure about deleting or not, though. Yes, you're right, Schmuck, not Schmuk. Oh, see note below about where Shmuk was working! KP Botany 19:27, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The current transliteration is somehow unusual but not against the conventions, if one can label the few Web references as conventions. (See not very helpful Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian.) According to Nikolai Vavilov, Shmuk/Schmuck was working in a laboratory he headed [1] (page 115, page 5 in the document) in 1939 and this makes him rather unlike Lysenkoist. Pavel Vozenilek 19:21, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not that the transliteration is against conventions or unusual, it's that editors researching him on the web should know that his name might not be spelled consistently, particularly not as Shmuk, in many older scientific references, and should broaden their searches accordingly. So, he worked in Vavilov's laboratory? That really turns the politics on its head!!! Thanks for the information. KP Botany 19:27, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. —David Eppstein 17:10, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Based upon the reference provided by Pavel, although it seems to be saying he worked closely with the geneticists. I suspect that there will be enough information about this scientist, and there may be some politics attached to it that make him more notable than initially apparent. There's no need to delete this right now.
• Keep. The Stalin prize appears to meet WP:PROF. Espresso Addict 16:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, this satisfies WP:PROF based on the references cited within this discussion. Yamaguchi先生 01:45, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, per WP:SNOW. Also, notability is only a guideline, and is not in and of itself grounds for deletion. MrPrada 01:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I doubt his work was contaminated by politics, though practical chemical studies of this sort would normally be compatible with even the Lysenkoist line. And even if it were ,it wouldnt make him un-notable. DGG (talk) 21:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.