Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur Mattuck

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 Delete. Yanksox 05:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arthur Mattuck

From speedy. If he is really a full professor in MIT, I bet he is somehow notable Alex Bakharev 06:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Notability not asserted Akihabara 13:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Simply being a professor at XYZ university doesn't mean that they're notable. Notablity not present here. SkierRMH,01:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment:Wonderful teacher, good with freshmen, but notable I'd say mainly as a teacher rather than as a researcher. He's taught MIT's very influential intro linear algebra course for decades, IIRC; Proftest doesnt take into account people who have influenced a vast number of undergraduates like that. I would think he's encyclopaediac in that practically everybody who's been to MIT has been influenced by him, but others may not. Hornplease 10:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Deciding to vote Strong Keep: following GRBerry's intervention below. WP:PROF clearly states that if the author has published a notable work that is "prescribed as a textbook, a reference work, or required reading in an undergraduate- or graduate- level course; which is not taught, designed, or otherwise overseen by the author; at several independent accredited universities", then the individual is notable. Mattuck's introduction to Analysis is a standard textbook for (difficult-ish) first courses in undergrad analysis. In particular, [1], [2], [3], [4], and literally dozens of others. I cant believe I didnt think of this earlier. This explains why most academics notable as good teachers do eventually meet wp:prof - they tend to write good textbooks that are prescribed. I'd urge the closing admin to note that this realisation comes a little late in the deletion process. Hornplease 04:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Minor nitpicks: I don't know how often that really happens that good teachers end up writing textbooks. Often I don't think they do. Also, your first link shows that Mattuck's book is actually used for the easy analysis class (311), not the "difficult-ish" one, which is 413. --C S (Talk) 05:00, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per Akihabrara FirefoxMan 12:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep this is a candidate for expansion, a quick sweep of google scholar demonstrates passing wp:prof. however, it's a stub now, so expand and cite.--Buridan 13:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unless further information is forthcoming. I don't see anything on Google Scholar establishing notability (Buridan, please be more specific in your claims). He has written 15 papers or so, almost all of them more than 30 years ago but unless any of them is important that's nothing special. As it stands, the article is worthless. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unless expanded, as is not worth keeping Alf photoman 17:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete I suspect that he does meet WP:PROF, but can't see the evidence on Google Scholar. His primary work would be in the pre-Web era, so I don't know how much would be on line. (I remember a line from one of my fellow students - in Math, if you haven't done anything particularly noticable by age 25, you won't, and he was a tenured professor when there were only 100 web servers in the world.) I never had him as a professor, taking the theoretical variants of calculus, while he was a teacher for the applied variant. I thought the book with 256 cites would put him over the top, but that one is by his brother and his name appears as a thank you in the intro. His textbook does appear in 74 libraries, so it may meet the textbook test of WP:PROF, but I can't prove it. [5]. GRBerry 05:41, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: He has done high-quality research early on in his career, much better than many of the mediocre mathematicians put on Wikipedia simply because of some bias like nationality. Unfortunately, if this time around, people are going to apply some kind of stringent requirement to him, he probably fails, as his interests have switched a long time ago to educaation and service rather than purely research. And that kind of thing is harder to document notability in, unless he has won some teaching awards or the like. --C S (Talk) 11:36, 16 December 2006 (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.