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Nationalities

The very first sentence clearly needs cleanup. It now says: Einstein "was a German-born Jewish-American Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist". What kind of spin doctor wrote this sentence that is misleading in so many ways? Einstein's Nobel Prize certificate mentions only Germany and Switzerland, where he did all his important scientific work. He did not conduct any important science in the US. So the association "American Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist" seems funny indeed. True, he got American citizenship when he was an old man, but even then he remained Swiss. In fact, he held Swiss nationality longer than any other (oddly, Switzerland is not even mentioned in the introduction). Similarly, why call him Jewish-American but not Jewish-German, Swiss-Jewish etc? Mixing up religions and nations is making things even worse, IMHO, and although he was Jewish-born, he was not a practising Jew. Since Einstein despised patriotism, I suggest to remove all the nationalities etc. from the first paragraph. There is a reasonable section on citizenships further down. But if for some reason this proposal does not get accepted, then we will have to correct the list of nationalities by extending it. For example, it would not be wrong but cumbersome to write that Einstein was a German-born (1878), Jewish, German (1878-96, 1914-33), stateless (1896-1901), Swiss (1901-55), American (1940-55) theoretical physicist who won a physics Nobel Prize in 1921. Physicists 17:22, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

We went through this at some length in the now-archived sections of this talk page Opening Line: Jewish-German-Swiss-American scientist? and Jewishness. The consensus (if I read it correctly) was that he should be labeled as “German-born” (or perhaps as “German-born American” or “German-American”) for consistency with other Wikipedia bios and that he should not be labeled as “Jewish” or “Swiss.” The text that you found was not the work of any one editor but rather the result of editing drift. (BTW it’s customary to start a new topic at the bottom of the talk page.) --teb728 21:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
But what kind of "consensus" or "consistency" could possibly have led to the deletion of the nationality that he held until his death and longer than any other? He was Swiss during his last 55 years. He was Swiss and American during his final 15 years (but did not produce any important science during this time). Clearly his "Swissness" totally dominates the additional "Americanness" of the retirement years. Your answer seems to indicate this kind of "consistency" is distorting other Wikipedia articles as well - but then let's correct them as quickly as possible! I understand that many nations want to claim a share of Einstein, but Wikipedia is not the place to warp reality through patriotism or something. I sincerely hope this was not some sort of 40:1 majority "consensus" reflecting the fact that the Americans outnuber the Swiss 40:1! Let facts be our guide, not wishful thinking. Physicists 19:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
That opening sentence was getting so silly that I felt obliged to clean it up. There is already a Citizenship section later in the article. "German-born" is relevant for explaining why the German pronunciation of the name (seen just before the subject sentence) is relevant. The parenthetical birth year after "German-born" was not needed, as it had just been given in the text immediately preceding. — DAGwyn 21:01, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree. And with regard to Einstein's Swiss-ness: User:Physicists seems to confuse nationality with citizenship. As Gordon Freeman said in the archive I cited above, “he certainly did not identify with the Swiss land, its people, nor its culture and customs to the extent which would equally qualify it worth of a mention.” (If he had, he could have safely spent his last ten years in Switzerland.) --teb728 21:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
In some countries there may be subtle differences between nationality and citizenship, but not in Switzerland. What makes you think he did not identify with it? Here is a graphical overview of his nationalities by einstein-website.de: http://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/variousthings.html#national Since Einstein despised patriotism, the present intro seems ok though. Physicists 15:32, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Funny Spin-Doctored Microsoft Encarta Article

I think I found the source of the misleading statements discussed above - it is the Encarta Encyclopedia of Microsoft! See [1]. I couldn't help smiling when I read its first sentence: "Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American physicist and Nobel laureate." They simply ignored that his Nobel Prize mentions only Germany and Switzerland [2], that he was Swiss for most of his life, that he was an old man when he added the US citizenship to the Swiss one, and that he did not do any important physics in the US. Alas, the pride of nations! I wonder whether other Microsoft Encarta articles are similarly spin-doctored. Fortunately, in Wikipedia such reality distortions can be undone, illustrating the superiority of Wikipedia's approach to fact finding. Physicists 20:05, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

IQ

And his IQ was? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.48.226.60 (talk • contribs).

Dunno - did he take a test? I doubt it. Otherwise we'd just be guessing. And guesses don't make this page or any other. He would likely have scored very highly in certain tests though not necessarily have done very well (comparatively) on general IQ tests which often stress linguistic skills as highly as reason and mental manipulation. It would also have depended when he took his test. He would likely have scored better as a young man. In addition, accurate IQ testing is a notoriously tricky. --LiamE 22:41, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I recall long ago seeing somebody's estimate that it was around 200, but there are several things wrong with that; unless a reliable measurement of Einstein's IQ is cited, it shouldn't be inserted into the article. IQ isn't much of a measure of anything relevant anyway, especially in the "tails" of the distribution. — DAGwyn 00:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Weasel words

Kasparov added to the header that Einstein is “widely regarded as the most important scientist of the 20th century and one of the greatest physicists of all time,” with the comment “I don't think this information even needs a reference.” On the contrary I doubt that any reference would be adequate. The issue is not so much with his importance as with the phrase “widely regarded.” (IMHO that phrase has no place in Wikipedia except in examples in the article on weasel words.) Who regards him as the most important scientist; and how did they decide he was more important than Madame Curie, Feynman, Fleming, Hubble, Pauling, and Watson and Crick, for example; and what is their qualification to judge? If you want to keep the assessment of his importance—with an explanation of who “they” are, move it to the “Popularity and cultural impact” section; let’s keep it out of the header. --teb728 01:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

We've been over this before. A google for "einstein greatest scientist" gives 11 million hits. Google book search gives 7080 hits. "Widely regarded" isn't a weasel word in this case; it's true. "is the greatest scientist" would need a specific reference to someone who's an authority on measuring scientists' stature, and would be a magnet for all the Einstein-bashers that regularly make maintaining this article such a pain in the posterior.
If you want a place to put "widely held beliefs about Einstein" (the other common one is that his name has become a synonym for "genius"), feel free to start typing in those 7000+ references - but NOT in the Einstein article, please. --Alvestrand 06:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not looking for all the attributed references—the best one or two will do. I just don't want any (unattributed) “widely held beliefs.” As I now see, an attributed reference already exists in the “Popularity and cultural impact” section: It is attributed to Michael H. Hart and says virtually the same thing as the new text. With that there I see no need for duplicate text in the header. --teb728 08:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I tried what you suggested and googled "the most important scientist of the 20th century" [3] and got 171 hits. I looked at the first 10 and at least half the links were either to Wikipedia or clearly quoted from Wikipedia. Also, notice what you are saying, you want to convey the meaning that Einstein was the most important scientist, but you want to evade taking responsibility for those words. That’s precisely what weasel words do. --teb728 01:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

And now a timeline?

I thought the infobox was ugly, but I wasn't prepared for this:


Is there any reason to include an ugly and cumbersome timeline at the bottom of the page? I don't think it helps the article out one bit. It is unbearably foul looking (nothing like poorly kerned Helvetica to ruin a page), and most of the dates added are unbearably dull (all of the ones of note are already well known and well-discussed in the article; some of them are down-right pointless, like when he was in grade school and when he stuck his tongue out for a camera—the most interesting thing about the latter is not the year in which it took place).

Just because one can do something with a computer does not mean that one should, and while timelines may have their place in other articles where it is actually useful to plot out ten different things relevant to each other, it certainly does little good here. A sure-sign that a timeline is useless is when it looks like a descending staircase; it fails at its only benefit, which is to show concurrent events, when the events follow in a linear fashion (as they usually do with someone's life, time-travellers excepted).

In the end I don't think one gains any greater insight from it, and it is, I do repeat, unbearably ugly (the fault of the software, mind you, not whoever made it, who I'm sure had good intentions). I'm going to remove it unless there is a provocative argument for its staying here. --Fastfission 18:34, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and it is far too wide for a low res screen - chop it. Vsmith 11:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I am a postdoctoral theoretical physicist and I found the timeline helpful, though it should clearly exclude the "tongue" photo and include marriages, divorce, children born, emigration to USA, and declining of the presidency of Israel. If it's formatted badly, why not improve it rather than binning it, eg by putting the years along the top rather than the botom? [NB To Fastfission: I've greatly appreciated your fine contributions to Wikipedia.] - AG, Stockport, UK.

Nobel image

Can we move the glaring Nobel template image somewhere other than before the first line? To me it is quite distracting and doesn't belong up front. Vsmith 11:34, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

It’s apparently someone’s bright idea to mark the beginning of all articles on Nobel laureates (copied from the same practice on Czech Wikipedia). It probably doesn’t belong at the beginning, but I doubt it belongs better anywhere else. --teb728 23:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps it could go into the honors section. Q0 03:42, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't like it in the beginning either. I think it is pretty silly. Also I have some misgivings on the copyright status. --Fastfission 03:44, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Einstein's brain

I'm a bit confused, as the section talking about the autopsy reports significant differences in the make-up of Einstein's brain and a normal brain, yet under "Speculation and controversy" it says that no significant differences have ever been found. Can one or the other be cited, and the other removed? 69.175.66.113 12:29, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

This may be moot now, but I believe that the "Speculation and controversy" section mentions the lack of brain differences in connection to his mental health. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I am fairly sure from my elementary knowledge that the lobe irregularity is interesting since Einstein was a brilliant mathematician, and that part of his brain was enlarged. And the higher number of glial cells has an effect on fundamental brain chemistry as a sort of helper cell to the neurons. Regardless, neither of these irregular aspects of Einstein's brain can be connected to a specific disorder, such as those listed in that section. Perhaps the article could say that better, but I'm not comfortable adding to an excellent featured article with information that is implied. I'm not sticking around to watch if someone else does, either. Cheers, 69.19.14.15 22:14, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, Einstein wasn't "a brilliant mathematician" but a brilliant physicist. A friend of his had to help him with the complex mathematics he needed. Maxt 08:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

French

I added that Einstein received poor grades in history, languages, and geography. I noticed that someone else changed "languages" to "French". However, the reference I used says languages, it does not say French. Does anyone have a reference that says it was French, and not other languages, that he received poor grades in? I can't help but wonder if "languages" is a reference to study of foreign languages, or if it a reference to the study of literature and composition of his native language. Q0 09:32, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I did find this source [4] that said "He studied for the entrance exam, which he took and failed. His downfall was French, chemistry, and biology, subjects he had neglected through lack of interest (Brian, 1996, 8)." Q0 07:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Einstein was a excelent student, this was a wrong interpretation of his grades. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 189.136.82.190 (talk) 16:16, 4 October 2006.

My understanding is that the only grades that were misinterpretted were his math grades, and that it is true that he still received poor grades in other subjects. Q0 22:04, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Squeaky Science

I know that this site is not supposed to be used as a forum, but I thought that this was the only place that I might be able to find adaquate answers. I was wondering if anyone besides myself has ever heard anything about squeaky science and what it relates to in Einsteins field of expertiece.--Reedaltman 12:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

tweaks made to "generalized theory of gravitation" section

In light of the recent expanded discussion of Einstein's work in this area in the classical unified field theories article, I updated the subject section (now titled "Unified field theory"). I also integrated the small remaining bit from the "Institute for Advanced Studies" section into the earlier mention of the IAS. DAGwyn 21:24, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

NY Times ad

The segment dealing with Einstein's participation in the December 2nd, 1948 NYT ad regarding Menachem Begin's Freedom Party is highly misleading as it currently stands:


He also purchased a full-page ad in the New York Times condemning early Zionists for their treatment of the indigenous Arabs, especially at Deir Yassin (New York Times ad).


For one, Einstein didn't purchase the ad; he just signed it, along with many other notables of the time, including Hannah Arendt and Rabbi Cardozo. Moreover, it's quite overly broad to suggest that the petitioners condemned the early Zionists as a whole for their supposed mistreatment of the indigenous popuation, since the text of the letter makes quite clear that its animus is specifically directed at Begin and the Freedom Party.

In fact, it also discusses the dangers the paramilitary groups which were the party's predecessors posed to the Jewish community in Palestine as well:


During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.


There's no evidence the authors of the ad believed the early Zionists were abusing the local Arab populations on a general basis.

Kamandi 22:41 16 August 2006

Is this what you wanted? “He also signed an open letter to the New York Times condemning Revisionist Zionists for their treatment of the indigenous Arabs, especially at Deir Yassin .”
BTW if you wanted your second block quote to be all italics, leave out the line breaks. If you wanted quotation marks instead of italics, use quotation marks instead of double apostrophes. (Double apostrophes are wikicode for italics.) --teb728 06:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe that "Revisionist Zionists" would also be too inclusive, as the letter denounced the IZL, Stern Gang, and Begin specifically, not Jabotinsky, for example. Thanks for the tip. :-) Kamandi 17 August 2006

OK, how about? “He also signed an open letter to the New York Times condemning Menachem Begin and his nationalistic Herut party, especially for the treatment of the indigenous Arabs at Deir Yassin by Herut’s predecessor Irgun.” --teb728 05:54, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Brandeis naming

The Brandeis article says he had his name dropped befoe cutting ties with the University. I'm confused. --Gbleem 18:57, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Misquote / typo

This has to be misquoted or a typo, it doesn't make any sense unless you change the but to an and after the first comma.

"I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."[43]

Re-Misquote / typo

What I hear being said is; if there is going to be a world war 3, how unimaginable as it would be regarding how intelligent we are, but if it must be; it also is unimaginable how we will carry this out. Although (but) as to say, may I but in and say: It would be wise to pay attention to 2000 years of lessons, knowing this, and with all the technology at our hands, why are we continuing this course. Handle this thought and realize; it dose not have to be, and whoever understands this also understands we are not just talking anymore.Kisida 06:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Run that past me again.... --LiamE 22:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Crank magnet articles

I am looking for information from experience WP editors on the problem of keeping good editors on Wiki. See the page here User:Dbuckner/Expert rebellion

This is no more than a list of people who have left Wikipedia, or thinking of leaving, or generally cheesed off, for the reason (1) what I will unpolitely call 'cranks', i.e. people engaged in a persistenta and determined campaign to portray their highly idiosyncratic (and dubious) personal opinion as well-established mainstream scientific or historical fact, or 'crank subculture' i.e. fairly sizeable subcultures which adhere strongly to various anti-scientific conspiracy theories (e.g. Free energy suppression) or anti-scientific political movements (e.g. Intelligent design) masquerading as "scholarship". (2) the problem of edit creep, i.e. the tendency of piecemeal editing to make articles worse over time, rather than better.

If you are in this category, leave a link to your user page there. If you can, put something on your user page that indicates reason for discontent.

There is a more general discussion of this issue on Lina Mishima's page. User:LinaMishima/Experts Problem Note I am not in agreement with her title as it is not in my view a problem about experts, but more of adherence to scholarly standards, ability to put polished and balanced articles together. But her idea is good.

I'm putting this message on the Einstein page because I know there are all sorts of, well, cranky theories on the man (I noted the 'speculation and controversy' section, but this doesn't really mention the mad stuff). As I don't know the first thing about physics, would be grateful for a list of any other physics subjects that are 'crank magnets'. Even better, cut and paste this message on those pages. I'm going round the obvious places like intelligent design, Goedel, Cantor and so forth, but there must be many such. Dbuckner 14:50, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

"Theories of everything" abound in crank physics literature; in "Fads & Fallacies: in the Name of Science" Martin Gardner described several, including one based on "energy vortices". Usually these are full of neologisms and short on precise definitions or formulas that could be used to test the predictions. Another perpetual favorite for cranks is perpetual motion. — DAGwyn 21:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Reverted without comment

 Why was I reverted without comment ?
 The quotes I used were nearly the same as 
 what was already there... only the intros changed.
 Jeff Relf 05:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Frankly Jeff it's more of the same thing you've been trying to add for some time now, with your same fairly irrelevant citations. I'm not sure how many comments were needed since they would be essentially what was said before. It's not the same thing as the original text at all, but you're so embedded in your own personal way of reading Einstein that you can't see it. Personally I think the whole section needs to be scrapped — a list of quotes is not helpful, and nobody seems to be willing to do an honest synthesis of secondary literature. The entire section—both yours and the one before it—is unclear, is full of junk, and is not encycopedic. --Fastfission 13:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Fastfission,  I don't think it's junk.
     Einstein's views on universal causality and
 quantum mechanics is a fascinating topic which is
 much dicussed everywhere.
      Your critique of what I wrote is too vague
 for me to address, please be more specific.
 How, exactly, was what I wrote 
 not in agreement with what Einstein thought ?
 Jeff Relf 18:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
See previous discussions of the matter. You're a crank. We know it, you don't. Please go away. --Michael C. Price talk 20:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Mr. Price,  Please stick to the topic.
 The question is,
 " Where, exactly, did I submit something that was 
 contrary to Einstein's philosophy ? "
     Please provide as many quotes from Einstein
 as you can and cite quality articles from
 major science magazines, as I have.
 Jeff Relf 21:04, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Nice try, but the question really is "why do you continue to push your neologisms and terminology onto Wikpedia?" -- as has been extensively discussed previously. --Michael C. Price talk 23:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Mr. Price,  Universal causation was a topic
 dear to Einstein's heart, he talked about it
 on many occations throughout his life.
     So I hope you will make room for it.
 The wording I used was very simple,
 and has plenty of quotes from Einstein
 and others to support it.
     Now, if you'd be so kind as to do the same,
 I'd like quotes from Einstein and others
 which indicate I've somehow misrepresented him.
 Jeff Relf 01:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

You are a master at not listening. Find a quote from Einstein where he uses the phrase "block time". --Michael C. Price talk 11:28, 6 September 2006 (UTC) 

 Hi  Mr. Price,  
 What's wrong with referencing Block_Time ?
 Einstein said his belief in " universal causation "
 ( which, by the way, is shared by people like 
   Stephen Hawking )
 means the future is just as fixed as the past.
     Where do you think the term Block_Time
 came from, if not from descriptions of
 the field equations of General_Relativity ?
 Stephen Hawking wrote:
     In relativity,  
 there is no real distinction between
 the space and time coordinates, just as there is
 no difference between two space coordinates.
 ...
 In summary, the title of this essay was a question:
   Is_Everything_Determined ?
 The answer is yes, it is.  
 But it might as well not be, because
 we can never know what is determined.
 ...
 The boundary condition of the universe is that
 it has no boundary.
 The universe would be completely self-contained 
 and not affected by anything outside itself.
      It would neither be created nor destroyed.
 It would just _Be_. 
 What place, then, for a creator ?
 Jeff Relf 21:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Please stop inserting your special-interest point of view into the Einstein article. I am quite familiar with what Einstein's technical writings — and he did not mention "block time" nor "pseudorandomness" (which term you are misapplying, by the way, as others have told you). While you might think you know ideas from other sources that Einstein would agree with, an encyclopedia article about Einstein's ideas needs to limit itself to what Einstein verifiably said himself. Further, the place where you inserted the block-time note (re. determinism) disrupted the flow of the surrounding context. It brought in a bunch of ideas "out of the blue" and thereby raised more questions than it provided answers. — DAGwyn 22:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  DAGwyn,
 Why are references to spatial time,
 spacetime, Block time, 4D time,
 ( whatever you want to call it )
 unmentionable ? not even in 3 lines ?
     Do you also have a problem with evolution ?
 " universal causality "  was central to
 Einstein's religious and scientific philosophy.
 Jeff Relf 23:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

"Where do you think the term Block_Time came from" Certainly not Einstein. You just don't get it, do you? See WP:OR

Moreover, articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published arguments, concepts, data, ideas, or statements that serves to advance a position.

That includes neologisms: see Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms. --Michael C. Price talk 22:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC) 

 Hi  Mr. Price,  Relativity and 
 Einstein's philosophies behind it are
 over a hundred years old.
    Why is this such a hot potato for you ?
 Do you have issues with evolution as well ?
 I loath to keep begging you like this,
 but I don't see why you can't find
 three lines to reference Block time articles.
 Jeff Relf 23:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

You have amply demonstrated your crank credentials. There's no point continuing. --Michael C. Price talk 00:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC) 

 Hi  Mr. Price,  As you won't answer my questions,
 I can only assume that it's your own personal
 religious philosophies that are making you revert
 the links I added to back up Einstein's views on
 the spatial nature of time and universal causality.
 Jeff Relf 05:49, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
The reasons have been explained to you, Jeff. Until you understand them, you should not even think about reinserting the text that so many others are objecting to — is it not clear to you that that text is your point of view, and has not been shown to be Einstein's? It's certainly clear to us. Note that some of us have worked in this technical area and do not agree that your addition is either correct or helpful to the general reader of the article. Why it is a "hot potato" is that it damages the article, which is too important to allow that to happen. — DAGwyn 00:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  DAGwyn,  As you won't answer my questions,
 I can only assume that it's your own personal
 religious philosophies that are making you revert
 the links I added to back up Einstein's views on
 the spatial nature of time and universal causality.
 Jeff Relf 05:49, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
IMHO it is a mistake to try to reason with Jeff: See the latest archive of this talk page for previous attempts to do so. But thanks for your help in reverting his nonsense. Oh, and Jeff, thanks for your moratorium from 10 July to 4 September on entering the nonsense. --teb728 01:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  TEB728,  You're welcome, of course.
 There's nothing I hate more than begging hordes of
 mystical-magical, anti-relativity folks like you.
     But I'll likely keep up the fight anyways,
 just because it's such a simple idea to explain,
 it's a lot like teaching evolution to 
 newly discovered tribes in the Amazon.
 Jeff Relf 05:49, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Your addition to the Einstein article is a fraud, because you claim that it is Einstein's point of view without any documentary evidence to back up that specific claim. And being merely somebody else's ideas about space-time or randomness, it certainly does not belong in the article about Einstein. It also damages the coherence of the discussion about determinism to insert a bunch of alien references and neologisms there. Further, we have answered your legitimate questions several times; we didn't respond to the query about evolution because it was based on false premises and is not relevant to the matter at hand. I would match my intelligence, rationality, credentials, and depth of understanding of (and support for) relativity theory against yours any day. What you need to do, but seem uninclined to do, is to critically examine your own motives in repeatedly vandalizing the Einstein article. If you think it is about promoting truth or enhancing the value of the Wikipedia, think again. — DAGwyn 19:47, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  DAGwyn,  Prima facie,
 the small intro ( with three footnotes ) 
 that I wrote agrees with its quote from Einstein.
     Why you think otherwise is beyond me.
 The only thing I can think of is that you have
 some far out, anti-causal philosophy which
 involves some sort of primeval " logic ".
 Jeff Relf 20:37, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Obviously several other editors disagree with you on the appropriateness of the change you keep trying to make. Since there is no consensus for the change, and no pressing need for any change in that area, the appropriate default action is to leave the previous text the way it is. It isn't even important to debate the truth of the insertion, just to understand that this particular change is not acceptable. You especially should not try to guess about our motivations (which you're getting completely wrong), which we have explained already but which really don't matter when it comes to the advisability of the editing. If the editing made something (which was relevant and undisputed by other experts) clearer to the general reader, then it would be a good idea and we would presumably be all for it. Your attempt did not satisfy that criterion. — DAGwyn 18:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  DAGwyn,  Unlike you, 
 my objective is to provide better content,
 not lowest-common-demoninator (mis)information.
     Universal_Causality and spatial-time are
 metaphysical philosophies ( logical positivism ),
 ...and, as such, have _Nothing_ to do with 
 experimental uncertainties
 ( such as the uncertainty principle ).
 Einstein knew that, Hawking knows that,
 you and your yokel friends do not,
 ...I aim to set the record straight.
 Jeff Relf 23:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted your last edit Jeff, as you seem unable to achieve consensus here for your version. The blatant personal attacks you are using here do your arguement no service and may earn you another block if you persist with the incivilities. Vsmith 00:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC) 

 Hi  Vsmith,  Please argue the topic
 instead of just flamming me all the time.
 For you, WikiPedia is about consensus ( right ? ),
 for me it's about setting the record straight.
 Jeff Relf 01:54, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Jeff, Wikipedia's content is determined by the consensus of editors. Individual editors who persist on "setting the record straight" against the will of others are highly frowned upon. We have a few core content policies which govern what can appear on pages, one of the clearest is that no original research or analysis is allowed. What you are doing is putting a highly idiosyncratic and personalized interpretation of Einstein's views into the article, and this is against our policies. Either start citing some sources which actually purport to discuss Einstein's philosophical views (and not in passing, but directly) or you might as well take your one-man Einstein show back to Usenet. --Fastfission 20:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Indent citations

In other articles, it has been noted that citations to webpages should be expanded as footnotes that include the author/group, title, and date of a reference, so in case the webpage expires in a few months, the reference can still be hunted by title or author, perhaps found on other webpages or in print journals. The problem caused by expanding most citations to have author/title/date is that the citations can become huge within a sentence and clutter the text of the article, unless formatted to avoid the "mass-of-text" appearance. I have found that ref-tag footnotes can be indented (with restrictions), similar to a block-structured programming language, to improve readability of all the added details, without totally obscuring the original sentence with a "mass of text" about the cited author/webpage/publication. The following is an example of an indented ref-tag (where "ref-tag" will be "ref" in the actual citation):

<ref-tag>

John Authore, "Title of Topic Story," MyOrganization, May 10, 2006,
webpage: [http: //www.sourcewebsite.org XXX-Story].

</ref>

The main restriction is to never split a bracketed link "[xx yy]" across 2 lines using a carriage-return newline (or the link could appear as unlinked text); however, each separate text line (after carriage-return) can be indented (such as by 5 spaces), similar to a computer programming language where each line has a carriage-return. Also, the lead ref-tag cannot be separated by a blank line from the prior sentence phrase, or the Wiki-formatted line will split. There is no reason to impose a standard indentation: it could vary, throughout an article, such as indenting the author name by 5 spaces, or 7, with no strict limit. Indented ref-tags can make it bearable to have a dozen footnotes in a paragraph without appearing, internally, as a complex mass of text. -Wikid77 06:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

vegetarian?

Why is he under category: vegitarians. I am well within my right to ask for a reference. Thanks.nids(♂) 18:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I added a short description about his vegetarianism to the article with a reference [5]. It appears that Einstein was a vegetarian for the last 18 months of his life but that he might have been a non-practicing supporter of of vegetarianism for a while before that. Q0 01:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Whether he is in a category for it or not, it is not important enough an aspect of his life to warrant an entire section in the article. --Fastfission 03:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
But how is the article going to provide a reference that Einstein belongs in the vegetarianism categories? Even if Einstein's vegetarianism does not deserve an entire section, doesn't it at least deserve a sentence or two? Q0 03:23, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Inasmuch as nids seems to have doubted he was a vegetarian, it was appropriate to provide a reference on this talk page. But I see no need to provide a reference for every category in the article. Similarly the fact that someone added Einstein to the Fellows of Christ Church, Oxford category doesn’t necessitate a description of that detail of his life. --teb728 07:36, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
People have asked for a reference for Einstein's vegetarianism before. After this talk page is archived, I expect someone else to ask again for a reference. The vegetarian category has a tendancy to get challenged a lot on articles in general and then it gets removed and added like a yo-yo. It seems like there should be a perminant place to keep a reference so that people don't have to keep asking about it. Q0 10:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, i guess it will be correct to keep the reference on the article. And if he was an ardent supporter of the vegetarianism, this can also be mentioned on the article. Just like it has been done on Hitler's article.nids(♂) 10:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
He was not an ardent supporter of vegetarianism — he mentioned it once or twice in a few letters at the end of his life. In any case there are ways we can indicate his vegetarianism with an HTML comment which are less obtrusive. --Fastfission 13:31, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
It is a bit more than that. I recall a letter from 1930 where Einstein expressed support of a vegetarian diet but said that external circumstances prevented him from practicing an entirely vegetarian diet. Q0 10:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I didn't think that intention made someone a vegetarian, if they still ate meat. ;-) --Fastfission 12:40, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I did not mean to argue that Einstein was a vegetarian in 1930. I meant that his support of vegetarianism appears to be more than at the last 18 months of his life. Q0 13:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I second the opinion that this should be briefly mentioned in the current article.nids(♂) 10:44, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

His work is contrversial

Many physicists detest his work as not proven. Gianni

  • There are detractors to every major theory in science. However as far as deeming Einstein's work "controversial" in a scientific sense, that's about as reliable as saying that Darwin's work is "controversial" in a scientific sense. It is not "controversial" like string theory is controversial, where there are indeed many mainstream practitioners who have their doubts over it. --Fastfission 23:20, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually Einstein's work is not really controversial among professional physicists. Special relativity is part of the working toolkit of particle physics and quantum field theory. The only widely accepted theory of gravitation is still Einstein's, and modern cosmology depends on it. There is a general consensus that Einstein's efforts toward a unified field theory were unfruitful and that his criticism of the incompleteness of quantum physics was puzzling, yet work proceeds today even in those areas, albeit from a somewhat different perspective. —DAGwyn 06:22, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The predictions of his relativity theories accord with the observations to great (and increasing) accuracy. Though all theories are in some sense provisional (or physics would stop), this accord is what is colloquially meant by "proven" in physics. Because his theories come into their own at speeds and gravitational field strengths far greater than those in which human intuition is schooled, his work probably will always be controversial. For instance it is not easy to accept that a clock flown round the world in a fast jet will return showing very slightly behind one kept stationary with which it had been synchronised. It is no coincidence that the cleverest anti-relativity arguments are by engineers, who have the best developed Newtonian intuition of all. (I mean this as a compliment!) But their arguments always somewhere involve a subtle Newtonian assumption. There are also differences of viewpoint; Einstein worked out general relativity as a theory of curved space, but it can also be derived from gauging considerations as a flat-space theory with a different interpretation. Since no testable predictions differ, this is a matter of taste. What counts is that the equations accurately predict values measured in the experiments, and no other set of equations does. To derive those equations for the first time was one of the greatest feats in theoretical physics, perhaps the greatest. The equations work, and whether people like or detest them tells you more about their own outlook. As for his unified field investigations, he would be the first to agree they are not proven, because they did not really get as far as generating clear predictions. This work is not detested but ignored today, because physicists prefer other lines of attack. - AG, Stockport, UK.
As to the unified field theory work, much of it wasn't done with the expectation of producing new predicted physical behavior, but was rather an attempt to derive the already accepted "laws" from a single unifying principle. Einstein and Infeld did manage to show that trajectories of singularities of their (circa 1950) theory were consistent with particle trajectories known from conventional physics, although the significance of that is arguable. The main reason for general lack of interest in such work is that it didn't seem likely to incorporate quantum principles, which most physicists believe to be fundamental. — DAGwyn 20:10, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
The aim of unification is not merely aesthetic, but to improve prediction. Quantum effects are ignored - which must lead to inaccurate prediction - in general relativity, and vice-versa. I agree that you can't hope to ignore quantum when attempting unification. - AG, Stockport, UK.

WikiProject Biography assessment/suggestions

Hello Einstein editors! First, congratulations on putting together such a well-written article! Just wanted to let you know that I have assessed this article for WikiProject Biography. My assessment is that the article is still Featured Article quality. I have left a couple of suggestion for you on the comments page. Keep up the good work! Kaldari 20:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to make things easier, here are the comments that I left for this article: Article is nearly 100K. The See Also and External Links sections could probably be trimmed. I would also suggest moving Works by Albert Einstein to a separate article and listing a handful of selected works here rather than his entire catalog. Kaldari 23:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I haven't had time to prune the external links yet, but I tried to do the other two tasks. I just removed the "see also" section, because it was a collection of three sorts of things:
  • Things that were already linked in the main text, or should be.
  • Things that are named after Einstein &ndash if this is really that important, make an article called "List of things named after Einstein."
  • Kurt Gödel
–Joke 13:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I have now pruned the external links as well. The most important one is probably the first one, the Albert Einstein archives. –Joke 15:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Works missing from Works by Albert Einstein

Is there a reason that "On the Quantum Mechanics of Radiation" ("Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung," Physkalische Zeitschrift 18) is not included in Works by Albert Einstein? Kaldari 23:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

It looks like there are many other works missing from the list, most notably several of the non-scientific books that Einstein wrote. Can someone proof this list, and add the works that are missing? Kaldari 00:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Good Theories

Although he maintained that the only source of knowledge is experience, he also believed that scientific theories are the free creations of a finely tuned physical intuition and that the premises on which theories are based cannot be connected logically to experiment. A good theory, therefore, is one in which a minimum number of postulates is required to account for the physical evidence. This sparseness of postulates, a feature of all Einstein’s work, was what made his work so difficult for colleagues to comprehend, let alone support. [6] Perhaps someone could add this information to the section on his scientific philosophy. --68.224.247.234 21:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Although that's a nice paragraph, unfortunately it is taken from Encarta and presumably cannot be used in the Wikipedia due to copyright considerations. — DAGwyn 00:31, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Putting "Jewish" back in the opening sentence.

I know this topic has been discussed at a pretty good length, but I'd like to revisit it for a bit because I don't think any the following arguments have been made. Initially I made these comments in one of the talk page archives, I'm afraid, so I'm reproducing them here and expanding on them a bit. (Thanks to TEB728 for pointing out my error.)

I would argue that his Jewish ancestry is on a level in significance with his being German-born, and that noting his German origin without mentioning his Jewish ancestry is confusing. We cannot quantify the affect either of those things had on his actual work. After all, despite the misguided characterization of Einstein's work as "Jewish physics" as is noted in the article, physics has neither nationality nor religion. However, when it comes to the way his work was accepted, the circumstance of his life and his own personal attitudes towards faith they are very significant.

Not to delve too deeply into a Turtledove line of reasoning here, but let's imagine for a moment that he had been born a non-observant Christian, and stayed in Germany through WWII. I sincerely doubt he would have joined the Nazis but surely his work would have been more acceptable to scientists working under the Reich, and they would have made further inroads into nuclear research, drastically changing the 20th century paradigm. By way of comparison, imagine that Werner von Braun (whose wikipedia introduction, BTW, takes pains to note both his German and American background) was born a Jew. That's not to say that von Braun was to rocket science what Einstein was to physics (von Braun is probably more aptly compared to Openheimer) but it does illustrate that simply noting that the man who originated much of the science that molded his century was "German-born" leaves one wondering why his ideas didn't wind up as the payload of a V-2 rocket. The rest of the article does address the issue, but the acknowledgement of his ancestry does much to address the issue at very little cost at the beginning of the article. Indeed, I would argue that it is definitive of the nature of his contribution to world history--at least as much as his German birth, and that the circumstances of his birth are incomplete without noting both sides of the issue.

As for his "German-Swiss-American" status those things are largely trumped by his being Jewish, for he would likely never have become the second or third if he weren't born a Jew. Indeed, identifying him as "German-born" without noting he was Jewish is something of a muddle. Where Charles Darwin can simply be described as English, Linus Pauling as American, and Henri Poincaré "one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science" in their wikipedia articles without noting that Einstein was Jewish his "German-born" status is confused. If he were not a Jew he'd simply be "German" rather than "German-born" so "German-born Jew" explains his itinerant nationality better than would a hyphenated list of the nations in which he had/took citizenship, introduces the text on his life, and gives a reader at first glance an idea of the implications of such an origin that are addressed later in the article.

Einstein himself, of course, noted that "If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will say I am a man of the world. If it's proven wrong, France will say I am a German and Germany will say I am a Jew." I would suggest, however, that describing him as a "German-born physicist of Jewish ancestry" or words to that effect elegantly and accurately addresses both sides of the issue. It indicates that he was nominally both but not really either. --Geeman 10:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see Einstein's Jewish ancestry as being notable enough to include in the intro. Einstein was not especially known for being Jewish. Obviously the fact that he was of Jewish ancestry affected his life in many ways, but it doesn't seem to be significantly connected to his notability. By way of comparison, neither the Encyclopædia Britannica nor Encarta mention Einstein being Jewish in their intros. Indeed, Encarta's biography doesn't mention it whatsoever. Kaldari 17:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Is his German background any more notable? More importantly, "German-born" by itself is inadequate. Why not say he was a physicist and ignore his nationality and ethnic background entirely in the opening sentence? My argument is that saying he was "German-born" without saying he was also jewish creates a muddle for the reasons described above.
I don't think we should put too much stock in how this particular issue is handled in other encyclopedia's, but since you mentioned those two it should be noted that MSN Encarta's opening sentence calls Einstein a "German-born American physicist" (http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761562147/Einstein_Albert.html) while the rhapsodic EB says "German-American physicist" (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9106018/Albert-Einstein). My point being that "German-born" alone would appear to be inadequate if we are going to use those two as a guideline.
That said, I would argue that Einstein was famous for being a Zionist, and this it was a significant part of his identity. He did, after all, pen a book on the subject and was widely recognized for his stance on the issue. The rest of this article, however, is peppered with his participation in Jewish causes, so I think it contradicts your assessment that he was not known for being Jewish. His Jewish background relates directly to his early participation in politics, and continued throughout his life. I think a more accurate assessment would be that much of the world did not embrace his being Jewish.... That does not, however, vitiate the reality of his background nor address the nature of his background.
The Big Picture here, however, is that "German-born" is not a particularly accurate or well-considered way of describing his background. It differs from the norm for other wikipedia articles (already cited) the articles on Einstein in other encyclopedias and is vague.
--Geeman 08:56, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that so many groups want to lay claim to Einstein that when we let them all into the intro it ends up looking ridiculous. The only reason I left "German-born" in the intro when I simplified it was that it ties to the preceding German sound snippet, an easy way of indicating why the German pronunciation matters. Of course, other nationalities, Judaism, vegetarianism, etc. should be (and are) discussed within the body of the article. Speaking of which, this article is way too long, containing myriad details that would be considered irrelevant for most biographical articles. — DAGwyn 20:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
It definitely is problematic.... I do think saying he was "German-born" rather than just "German" is important, given his history, politics and the nature of his character. It's a fairly elegant way of dealing with that particular aspect his background, and introduces that he gave up that citizenship, which will later be described in the article. That alone, however, does not tell the whole story, and in the brief introductory sentence a few more words (IMO "of Jewish ancestry") would be the most meaningful (though, admittedly, probably not the most politically correct) way of conveying information in as short a manner as possible. As has been argued in the past "-Swiss-American vegetarian" might be (and occasionally have been) added as well, but catalogueing the list of his citizenship or later affiliations is not a particularly accurate way to describe the nature of that transition or what motivated it. Saying that he has a Jewish background implies that he was not himself an observant Jew, but that it did inform his personality, and influence the way his background influenced others. I can't speak to whether he was or was not a vegetarian, let alone whether he would have been one or not had he been Jewish :) but would he have been "-Swiss-American" were he not born a Jew? Would he have supported Zionism, written a book on the subject and been offered Israeli political posts were that not part of his background?
"German-American" as other encyclopedias describe him does give a hint as to his background and political shifts, but it is a vague term, and innaccurate in this case. As I'm sure everyone is aware, such phrases can as easily mean "American-born of German ancestry" rather than expatriated German. It is, perhaps, a smidge more accurate than just saying "German-born" because it indicates that he moved from one to another, and expresses the beginning and end of that process, which is why it is better than the polyglottal German-Swiss-American. But as you note it opens up the issue to those who want to lay claim to Einstein for their own reasons--whatever those might be. I suggest "of Jewish ancestry" rather than just "Jewish" because it parallels "German-born" in that it reflects his tepid attitude towards the faith, that he was a Zionist on an intellectual level, but didn't actually "pull the trigger" as it were when it came to the nitty-gritty of creating Israel or participating in its government. It shows how the circumstances of his birth were an influence on his life and personality, but doesn't actually ally him with that origin.
In any case, I'm not going to make this particular change until/unless there is some sort of support for it because I expect it would be reverted pretty quickly, and what's the point in that? However, I would suggest that if accuracy is the goal here--if some sort of truthful assessment of his background and personality is what we want in the introduction--and we can adopt a little language that implies details to be more fully described in the body of the article (which is what I think a good intro does) then the addition of those three words would be the way to go, just as "German-born" is more accurate than "German" alone. I suspect people might be a bit too sensitive on this particular issue even if it might be the most "truthful" way of expressing his origins, and that is understandable. It touches upon things that people seem to find unsettling: the whole religion and science thing, let alone issues of religion to begin with.... I think "of Jewish ancestry" skirts that topic in a manner similar to the way "German-born" does, but I do realize the casual reader may not recognize that distinction. Nonetheless, if we're interested in being true to Einstein's character then I think it's the way to go. Other ways of describing him really seem to fall victim to the most insidious trap of biography: expressing the POV of the author(s) rather than summing up the person. — Geeman 13:39, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

one of the greatest physicists of all time

The opening paragraph states that Einstein "is widely regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all time". I believe this does not accurately convey the situation. That sentence could be applied to six or seven people, whereas Einstein stood alone in the modern era. Better would be "He is widely regarded as the greatest physicist of all time" (the only rival is Newton, and they are so far apart that it is difficult to compare); or "He is universally regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all time". Pedantically, "of all time" includes the unknown future, and the alternative "yet" is understated; I prefer "there has ever been" - AG, Stockport, UK.

Seems a little pedantic to me. You certainly wouldn't get away with "universally regarded as one of the greatest...", as he has many detractors (whether they're right in criticising him is a moot point). --Oscarthecat 17:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Shorn of peripherals, I'm saying that the present statement significantly understates the opinion of Einstein's work held by both laymen and physicists, and I suggest it be changed accordingly. - AG, Stockport, UK.
I think the existing wording is as close to an expression of consensus as we are likely to attain. Elsewhere in the article are such facts as Einstein's being TIME's "Person of the Century", which conveys pretty well the general level of esteem he has been accorded. — DAGwyn 20:47, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

interesting additions

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Einstein [7] This quotes source should be at the bottom under External Links.

Einstein slept ten hours a night.

Speculation and controversy: Einstein's parents thought he was retarded when he was young, because he was so occupied with thinking, that he didn't take care of his hair, hygiene, etc. As he grew up, it became clear he was a genius. Even as an adult, he would forget to pull up his pants and would walk out of the bathroom with his pants around his ankles. He was not interested in the mundane, everyday things. His mind was usually elsewhere. He would often ignore the immediate reality around him.

I found this in commented out text

[[:IMAGE:Einstein Memorial.jpg|thumb|right|215px|The Albert Einstein Memorial, Washington DC (more photos)at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.]] //Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 15:46, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

And the Greatest was?

Einstein? Newton? Galileo? Archimedes? Someone else? The intro of the article on Isaac Newton says: The mathematician and mathematical physicist Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) often said that Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and once added "and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." Well, Lagrange didn't know Einstein, and of course one can always find a famous guy saying something positive about another famous guy. For symmetry reasons, similar praise by more recent luminaries could be added to the Einstein intro. For example, this Einstein site [8] of Jürgen Schmidhuber quotes Nobel laureates Paul Dirac and Max Born: The former called General Relativity "probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made". The latter called it the "greatest feat of human thinking about nature". IMO these statements could nicely round off the Einstein intro in a way similar to Newton's. Physicists 16:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I added this right before the statement about popular culture. Physicists 16:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Remove Dubious Honor

The list of honors presently starts with a rather dubious one: "In 1992, he was ranked #10 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history." On further inspection it turns out that this strange and biased list (how did it possibly make it into Wikipedia?) places Newton in second place. I say: by Einstein's standards, any rank below Newton is not an honor. Let's remove this. (In fact, the entire list should be deleted, being an extreme case of POV that does not meet the goals and standards of Wikipedia.) Other lists such as the BBC list of greatest physicists [9] (topped by Einstein) are more appropriate for an article on Einstein. Physicists 19:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Can we see if we can get an infobox inclusion consensus here?

Infobox Scientist has just undergone a revamp, by consensus, (see [10]) and so now is a good time to consider if it is wanted in this article or not. Here is a proposed infobox. Please record Keep or Delete with a short description of your viewpoint...and let's see how the fortune cookie crumbles :-) SureFire 00:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Albert Einstein
Photographed by Oren J. Turner (1947)
BornMarch 14, 1879
Ulm, Württemberg, Germany
DiedApril 18, 1955
Princeton, New Jersey
NationalityDual US -Swiss
Alma materETH Zurich
Known forBrownian motion
Photoelectric effect
Special relativity
General relativity
AwardsNobel Prize in Physics (1921)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Zurich (1909-1910)

Karl Ferdinand University (1911)
ETH Zurich (1912-1913)
University of Berlin (1914-1931)

IAS (1932-1955)
Doctoral advisorAlfred Kleiner
Doctoral studentsHans Tanner
Notes
Note that the residence and nationality fields are a snapshot of Einstein's life. See article for expanded details.
  • Keep. The infobox is handy for people who want a quick executive summary, without scanning the article. It also assists those who want to quickly compare key facts between different biographies. It also nicely populates some of the glaring the white space at the beginning of the article.SureFire 00:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Useful summary. Tyrenius 01:14, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I still don't see the point. It doesn't really "summarize" anything — almost none of that information (the exception being what he is "known for", but a stale list doesn't really cover that) is what I would include in a summary of Einstein's life, as knowing it does not really tell you anything about Einstein at all (alma mater? work institution? doctoral advisor? doctoral students? who cares? these are not the essence of Einstein; any of these could have been changed by chance and he'd still be Einstein. You can't say that about the rest of the fields, at the very least). I don't really think it has much functional benefit. Aesthetics are obviously going to differ from person to person, and I'm against it, but that's another question anyway. In any case, I think that the religion field should be jettisoned whatever the case; his religious beliefs are too individual and too complicated to fit into a simple field and it is not worth even trying to do so. --Fastfission 01:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Comment.I agree that the religion field is inappropriate for Einstein. No religous synopsis is possible. --Michael C. Price talk 18:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep -- It's a huge improvemnet on the previous bloated version. It's harmless and I do find it useful for quick comparison of scientists. Aethetics look good to me too. SuperGirl 05:29, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep – a nice, concise summary, except maybe for the religion: it should not be a quote, and what it contains is more puzzling than informative for the reader. I'd suggest removing it altogether. Schutz 06:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Maybe an infobox is useful for some scientists, but it is pretty worthless for Einstein. At least the Residence, Nationality and Institution fields should be deleted: They refer to a time after he did his useful science. Likewise the Alma Mater, Doctoral Advisor and Doctoral Students fields: These are not important things to know about Einstein; the advisor and student is not worth mentioning even in the details of the article. And above all the Religion field should be deleted: His religion cannot be summarized in a few words. What’s left (other that the Born and Died fields) is a repetition of what’s already in the lead paragraph, which would stand right next to the infobox. --teb728 07:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC) (By the way, I don't recall seeing previous contributions to this article from SureFire, Tyrenius, LW77, Avi, or SuperGirl. Their sudden interest in our infobox is curious. --teb728 08:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC))
  • Reply. I can't speak for everyone. But my personal interest (and possibly that of others) has been spurred by the recent revamping of the infobox (and many people are now propagating it--some >200 scientific biographies now have it). I have been doing some of the work in placing it in other articles, then when I came around to doing the Einstein one I noticed there is a warning not to add an infobox unless it is discussed first. Well...here I am :-) Now to answer your questions: (a) regarding your point about repetition and the importance of the fields, these have all been discussed here [11] at some length in a consentual debate about the infobox. The answers are there. A little repetition isn't necessarily bad thing, especially as many readers go directly to the infobox as a first pass. (b) The doctoral advisor/student idea is important because it is part of his academic genealogy ...if you follow the external links in that article you will see there is intense interest in this. You may well become fascinated yourself :-) Also if you read the article on Alfred Kleiner, you'll see that he was one of the influences on the young Einstein. I'm surprised the Einstein article doesn't mention him. (c) Take a look at the footnote field that warns the reader to refer to the article for expansion. As you rightly pointed out that Einstein is a colorful case, the footnote is appropriate. This covers your other objections. (d) Regarding your point about his "time after useful science," my take is that a biography includes the person as well as the science. As a person, that's where his life ended up. The reader then goes to the main article for expansion. (e) Regarding the religion issue, the Spinoza quote nicely sums up his position in adulthood...the footnote again directs the reader to the article for expansion. (f) Remember a summary by nature is a form of lossy compression of facts, in the same way that the wiki article itself is a lossy compression of what could be said in a book about Einstein. Our lives revolve around summarizing things. Scientists have to summarise a whole journal article into a tiny Abstract. Summary is an art that can and is done. So let us collaborate together and take on the challenge of how to best present Einstein in summary. I believe the foonote takes care of the problems you raise but am open to other creative ideas. Any suggestions? SureFire 11:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. I disagree strongly on the religion issue. Firstly, as I wrote above, an infobox is not the place to put a quote (except in rare cases, such as a motto in a country infobox). Secondly: while most of the other fields are self-explanatory and useful, even if in some cases (such as citizenship) reading the text is required to get the full story, this indication of religion is absolutely useless to any reader who has not read the full article (except your goal is to get curious people to read it...). Even after reading the page, I see a difference between reading Einstein's (interesting) quote in a telegram, and generalising it to "His religion was ...". As you say, a summary is a compression of facts; "I believe in Spinoza's God" is not a fact about Einstein's religious belief even if the word God is part of it. Schutz 13:15, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. This is much, much better. I am not 100% sure if I would call Spinozism a religion (this word does not even appear in the article itself, expect in the infobox), and I worry that attributing it to Einstein may be borderline on original research, but at least the infobox is understandable and useful. Thanks ! Schutz 14:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. My pleasure. Moreover, we are using the word "religion" in its broadest sense to include philosophical systems about God. Given that Einstein is quoted as identifying himself with that philosophy, I don't see how your "original research" argument holds. SureFire 14:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment.. Well, the only source, as far as I know, is this 25-words telegram. Given the context, the fact that the recipient was a religious man, and other kind of letters I have seen from Einstein, I would not be surprised if he was more trying to make a point rather that expressing a real religious feeling. Inferring his "religion" from this anecdotical piece of evidence is what I call borderline to original research; I would much prefer seeing a reference to a secondary source, e.g. a biography where it is shown that this "religious belief" was more or less consistently (and several times !) expressed (maybe it exists and I have missed it). Hope this clarifies my thoughts. Schutz 19:24, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. I don’t see why you think you have to put something in every available field no matter how inapplicable to Einstein. Take Nationality for example: If you read this talk page you will see that the question of how to summarize his nationality is a very contentious matter. If there must be an entry for Nationality, it should be “German-born” or “German” and/or “Jewish” – certainly neither Swiss nor American – those were his citizenships not his nationality. And certainly there should be no flag: Einstein was anti-nationalist. If there must be an entry for Institution, it should be the Swiss patent office and the University of Berlin – certainly not the Institute for Advanced Study, where he did no notable science. As for Religion: Why put anything?! --teb728 00:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response. I agree with teb728 to remove relgion; though a note saying "see main article" in the religion field works for me too. Actually that is not a bad idea...readers who are unfamiliar with the details of Einstein's life will see that statement in the "religion field" and it will pique their interest to go and read the main article. Now that's not a bad strategy. I disagree, however, with mixing up Einstein's anti-nationalist sentiments with wanting to remove flags from the infobox. Flags are in there as standard. Just because some scientists may have hated computers, doesn't mean we respect their sentiments and exclude them from computer-based online encyclopedias :-) Spread the wiki-love. SuperGirl 23:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment.Somebody spammed me on my talk page, but anyway, as a very active member of WPBIO: I can understand reservations about this particular infobox (it's a bit unweildy) but the standard by consensus now is for bios to have infoboxes. This one looked naked without an infobox. You might want to use a smaller box, perhaps just with birth, death and profession details. I don't think, though, that having no infobox at all is a reasonable solution. Many people like to get this biographical information at a glance, before reading the article in depth (I know I do). --kingboyk 12:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC) PS Consensus is clear that the infobox should be in this article, so I restored it. I suggest taking SureFire#'s advice and refocussing on how to best present Einstein in summary. --kingboyk 12:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Action. My, that was bold! But I guess that's the policy :-) However, it seems that the concensus is saying to delete the religion field. I have therefore gone ahead and commented that out to respect the consensus. Does anyone want to suggest other modifications? Do people want all his work institutions in, for eample? (I think there are only 4-5, and there is still some white space to use up. SureFire 13:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I reject the assertion that there is a consensus in favor of Keep. Votes obtained through the controversial practice of votestacking should not be given the same value as those of the resident editors. --teb728 21:39, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong keep - There are many readers who are satisfied by reading just an infobox. They may not have time to read some parts of the article. The infobox is a resume and i believe that the "residence" issue is solved by inserting the footnote below. -- Szvest 12:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC) Wiki me up ®
  • Snide Comment Frankly, I don't think Wikipedia should pander to the sort of reader who goes to the Einstein bio just to read the infobox (unless it is to look up some bit of trivia). –Joke 17:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Unsnide comment Well, the purpose is also to learn. (Note that I made an exception above for looking up trivia – this is something I myself often use Wikipedia for.) I was just against the notion that people who want to really learn something but "don't have the time to read the article" could really glean an iota of meaningful knowledge from the infobox. –Joke 21:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Even unsnider comment - Guys, we offer a wider scope when we add an infobox. A lot of info are packed in a small jukebox.
  • Comment. I see one thing being rational when we talk about the removal of the box. I agree that info sush religion affiliation not relevant. He wasn't a preacher of Spinoza thoughts anyway. -- Szvest 21:57, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, but wouldn't it be more useful to make the "Residence" and "Institution" fields "Residence(s)" and "Institution(s)", that way multiple significant residences and institutions could be listed? Also, was Einstein's Institution of record really Princeton University or was it just the Institute for Advanced Study (which was in Princeton, New Jersey but was not affiliated with the university)? Robert K S13:52, 17 October 2006
  • NO! I think it is absurd to put a celebrity infobox like this here. I would be happy to have the infobox if it contains only the following information: Born, Died and perhaps something about him being a physicist and a Nobel laureate. But, c'mon, this is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a baseball card collection. –Joke 14:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. I think the "baseball card collection" argument is somewhat redundant as the horse has bolted and there are thousands of bio infoboxes on wikipedia. As per kingboyk, above, it's now the consensus standard to have infoboxes for bios. If you go to WPBIO: here [12] you'll see infoboxes are part of the instructions for creating a biography. SureFire 14:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response Yes, but that doesn't mean we can't be reasonable in keeping the size of the infobox down. I mean, the box as it is doesn't provide any particularly useful information about Einstein, and I can't imagine that it ever will. Why not limit it to information that is amenable to the box format: that that can be stated clearly and unambiguously in one line. In this case, that is Birth, Death, Field, his Nobel prize (although there is already a template for that at the bottom of the page) and (if necessary) his Alma Mater and doctoral advisor. –Joke 17:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Since the weight of consensus seems to be against me, can we at least delete the silly religion, nationality and residence fields? If something is too subtle to put in an infobox, then don't put it in the damn box! –Joke 14:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. If you see the actual box on the main page, I did already delete the "religion" field. The consensus for nationality & residence is rather too strong to delete at present. Anybody want to comment? SureFire 14:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete — The selection of fields for the box makes it look stupid. Why is his thesis advisor more important than any of dozens of other factoids about Einstein? Or for that matter, why is the "nationality" worthy of mention, especially when it is artificial? If somebody needs a quick summary, the article's introduction already provides that. DAGwyn 20:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, apart of some details as sketched above: in particular alma_mater, few readers will understand that latin term (I don't for starters). To keep religion or not is debatable, but I found that information on Newton rather interesting after all. Harald88 21:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Too bad for your concensus then - with several people here disagreeing with that term the concensus is gone, obviously. And I notice that your "concensus"there wasn't one really, with for example "Delete. If kept then Rename to a more international name.". Harald88 21:22, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The Next Step. The consensus to remove the "religion" field for Einstein is now loud and clear. Remember I did already delete it from the main page. In the above example I've put "See main article" as an experiment to see if you all like it. The next step is to decide if we want the slightly shorter version that is on the main page or the slightly longer one in the above example. My opinion is that there is still white space on the main page that could be nicely taken up by the longer version. Any comments?SureFire 22:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Reply. I'm not clear on your motivation for shortening. If you see the main Einstein page, you'll see there is still plenty of white space. The doctoral advisor/student idea is important because it is part of his academic genealogy ...if you follow the external links in that article you will see there is intense interest in this. Also if you read the article on Einstein's supervisor Alfred Kleiner, you'll see that it is not uninteresting. It's handy for the reader to get an easy link to find the academic genealogy. SureFire 22:27, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Einstein was cremated and his ashes scattered, I believe. Perhaps you mean: "place where his brain sits in a jar" ? –Joke 00:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. I actually did the ones mentioned by teb728. I did them in the good faith that it was only a dozen just to get the debate kick started. I only requested comment in a neutral fashion. I did not suggest a particular position. They are a mixture of random people picked from "history" of the Einstein page and random ones from other biographies to add a little new blood. As can be seen from the responses, very few voters support the infobox for Einstein without modification; so there was no "vote rigging." I deplore what happened in Florida, and would perish the thought of that happening here :-) SureFire 14:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Vote tally so far:
  • Keep 11: Michael C. Price, Schutz, Harald88, bunix, SureFire, Avi, SuperGirl, Szvest, Kaldari, SquidSK, Howard the Duck
  • Delete 5: Fastfission, teb728, Joke, DAGwyn, Pjacobi
  • Votes apparently resulting from votestacking 8: SureFire, Tyrenius, LW77, Avi, SuperGirl, Bender235, bunix, kingboyk, Szvest, Robert K S, Kaldari, Billlion, Bejnar, SquidSK, Steiger
So by my count the vote is 11 to 5 for Keep. --teb728 02:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC) updated --teb728 22:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. teb728 you are a darling. I do confirm I wasn't spammed and thank you for correcting my vote. Barnstars and hugs for you. People do watchlist pages without necessarily contributing, as yet, y'know! Question: should Fastfission and Kingboyk be totally removed from the above tally? My reasoning is that neither committed to a "keep" or "delete" position. It seemed both were stating comments, whilst abstaining from voting. Kisses, SuperGirl 22:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Thank bunix for suggesting that I move your vote. Thank you for pointing out the omission of Steiger. To you and anyone else who say the fact that some “Keep” voters favor the omission of some fields proves their neutrality: The issue in this poll is the insertion of any infobox; a previous infobox was removed which contained only the name, picture, and Born and Died fields. (BTW, I second SureFire’s comments on wiki-kisses.) --teb728 01:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Another observation. I've just noticed that all you guys forgot to include Steiger's vote. Also, I personally wouldn't list Billlion and RobertKS as votestackees, because they spoke their own minds and called for some deletions. It seems that only Tyrenius, Bender235, and LW77 were SureFire's sock-friend lapdogs. A count of three is pretty harmless. Wiki-kisses and wiki-love to everyone. SuperGirl 23:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. SuperGirl, that was a bit out-of-line to suggest they were SockPuppets. I have no connection to them. Calling then "lapdogs" was rather insulting. Whilst I'm no heterophobe, please keep your WikiKisses to yourself. SureFire 23:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I wasn't spammed. (And if I was I didn't look :-) I'm investigating the other claims. Still checking. However, my initial observation is that Fastfission was spammed too!!! So why are you including his/her vote? Isn't that a little naughty? Also many of the respondents above are voting to remove various fields especially the religion one. This tells me that the solicitation was done without favor. Therefore is valid IMHO. bunix 06:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment.You’re right; you weren't spammed: My appologies. I included on the Votestacking list those whom I did not recognise as contributers to the article. Even though I knew Fastfission, Michael C. Price, and Harald88 were spammed, I included them in the Keep and Delete lists because I recognised them as contributers, and thus they almost certainly have the article on their watch lists. I see now that you contributed to the article back in July; so you should have be on the Keep list too—again my appologies. But I think my conclusion is still valid. --teb728 08:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment.I've made 8 edits to this article just in the past month and started two of the discussion sections on this talk page. Just because you don't happen to recognize my name doesn't mean I'm not a "contributor". Honestly, I didn't pay any attention to Surefire's post on my talk page. I came here to vote because I saw all the activity on my watchlist. Kaldari 21:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment.Thank you for your gracious and civil apology. I've completed my inquisition and here are my conclusions: (1) It's all pretty unbiassed, as most people are asking to delete the religion field. As I said before: this suggests it was done in a neutral way. (2) Avi and SuperGirl were not spammed if you check the histories on their talk pages. (3) You can't exclude SureFire...how can someone spam themself? Your logic is questionable :-) He/she started this thing, so should be in the vote. (4) Your argument that both I and Fastfission were prior contributors, also applies to Kaldari who contributed on 24 Sep 2006 and SquidSK who contributed 13 Oct 2006. and Schulz who contributed on 16 Oct 2006. (5) You appear to have totally missed Schulz in your count. (6) Also Szvest contributed on 18 May 2006 under his primary name: FayssalF. (7) In view of these observations, please can you re-tally? bunix 11:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Username is Schutz, with a t instead of an l, and I am correctly listed in the 'Keep' list... or are you talking about another user that I missed ? Schutz 13:11, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Thank you for your research. I certainly agree that SureFire and Kaldari belong on the Keep list (if only because their contributions to this section show interest in the article). I’ll include the others you mention (although I have the sense that some were just visiting to vote). --teb728 22:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment.Not so fast! The spam lists appear to be composed of people who expressed an interest in Template:Infobox Scientist, and thus is hardly neutral. Fastfission in particular responded to the TfD in a manner consistent with keeping the reduced version of the template. --teb728 08:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep: Even the longest infobox is still a nice way of getting quickie information on a subject, and though this one is longer than average it's still not so long as to ruin its effectiveness as a way of conveying data. However, as others have noted I would take out the "Religion" category. It's not because that information is irrelevant or unnecessary--as seems to be the opinion expressed by some folks--but because describing Einstein as Jewish is so overly simplistic as to be misleading. --Geeman 09:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Please add: oc:Albert Einstein

Thanks.

Done; sorry that the page is semi-protected right now; there has been quite a bit of vandalism here today... Schutz 12:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Cultural depictions of Albert Einstein

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 15:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

There is certainly the material for such an article in Einstein's case. Shall I begin migration of the relevant material? -Fsotrain09 01:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Infobox fields

The infobox poll is getting quite long, and comments on the fields are spread throughout. So I think it useful to consolidate comments on the fields and their content in this section. For each field vote Keep or Delete, optionally with a reason and/or proposed content (if different from the proposal). --teb728 00:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Born

Died

Residence

  • Delete. He’s dead; he doesn’t have a residence. --teb728 00:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. The intention (according to the guidelines for this template) is to only list the main countries of domicile, where the scientist once lived. I think just putting USA (as that's where he ended up), and letting the footnote point the reader to the main article is the most compact solution. Another tolerable solution would be just to list the top 2-3 countries where he lived for the longest duration. Anyone know which they are? SuperGirl 02:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Include the places where he resided for five years or more.--Howard the Duck 12:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. As per Howard the Duck. I like the idea of limiting to all countries where he lived to those >=5yrs. bunix 12:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. I support and laugh at teb728's comment. Well, apart from agreeing w/ their comment i must say that the below nationality field with "born" field are quite enough to let the user know that this guy was born in Germany and got 3 citizenships! Any other info would be redundant. -- Szvest 13:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete Makes no sense to summarize this in an infobox. We're left with the choice of putting all the countries he lived in or the one he died in? The former takes up a lot of space and isn't particularly informative, the latter is downright misleading. Better to have this information in the text. –Joke 15:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
    Comment. This is exactly the reason we need it in the infobox. It's there so the reader does not have to trawl to get the key biographical facts. It's only 4 places Einstein lived in: Germany, Switzerland, Prague, and USA. Why not put them all in? If there is a space problem, then toss out Prague as he was only there for 1 year. He was in the other 3 places for >=10years each and therefore this is significant.SuperGirl 21:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Nationality

  • Strong Delete. As one can see on this talk page, the question of how to summarize his nationality is a very contentious matter. If there must be an entry for Nationality, it should be “German-born” and/or “Jewish” – certainly neither Swiss nor American – those were his citizenships not his nationality. And certainly there should be no flag: Einstein was anti-nationalist, and flags imply nationalism to many people. --teb728 00:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Whilst I see teb728's point, I would keep it simply because it would make this template look rather strange compared to the >200 others on the wikipedia. I think the intention of this template field is to treat Nationality/Citizenship in the broad sense. They are often broadly used to mean the same thing. They are only different in legal detail to do with political voting rights (see nationality). The template uses the label in the broad sense, not the narrow legal sense. Thus, Swiss-US is fine, so long as the footnote is used to point the reader to the main article. I am hesistant to include "Jewish" as that is more to do with ethnicity rather than nationality. SuperGirl 02:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. To me “Nationality” refers to one’s nation or ethnicity and has no necessary connection to a state in which one may have citizenship. (IMHO the first part of the article on nationality is very confused on this issue.) If there were a “Citizenship” field, I would say delete it because it would tell you nothing of more importance about Einstein than his Erdos number. --teb728 07:53, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Your phrase 'to me' confirms you realise you are being POV. Let's get encyclopedic here. I just checked "nationality" on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online and it says nationality is: "the status of being a citizen or subject of a particular state." Bingo. The same as what the wiki article on nationality says. Case closed.SuperGirl 08:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Response. See reply in separate subsection below. --teb728 07:47, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Listing American and not Swiss would probably be POV, since he has never been American without being Swiss (and he was particularly keen on keeping Swiss citizenship), and had been Swiss for much longer. Schutz 06:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Can't see the point of renaming "Nationality." However, if "Citizenship" is a more understandable term for the masses, then I may be swayed. Keep the flags in...don't care if Einstein turns in his grave...it's what all the other scientist infoboxes have. Need to keep some semblance of standardization. Einstein is dead, no need to pander to him. bunix 12:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Conditional support. Only in case the "residence" field is removed. (see my comment above). -- Szvest 13:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete Makes no sense to summarize this in an infobox – it is not even really possible since his citizenship changed. –Joke 15:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. True, but my concern is that this is a very standard part of the infobox and it will look strange to the reader if it is missing. It is better to just put his last nationality in (Swiss-American) and then let the footnote take care of it, as we have in the present working example. It's not broke, why fix it? SuperGirl 21:21, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. It will only "look strange to the reader" if the reader only reads Wikipedia infoboxes. I am not sure that is our audience here. If the reader wanted to know more details they could, per chance, actually read the article. --Fastfission 01:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response. Disagree. There are many ways an infobox gets used. Here are just five examples (1) As a navigational tool before reading the main article, (2) As an appetite whetter before deciding whether or not to read the main article, (3) By someone who's read the main article some time ago, forgotten a detail and then wants to go back and quickly find a fact, (4) By people who scan several biographies wanting to quickly compare trivia between them, (5) By school children who print the articles out, cut out the infoboxes and collect them like baseball cards. SuperGirl 20:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC) PS: Now let's not get too precious about the fifth point because as a scientist, myself, I know one of our big problems is in inspiring the younger generations. It's just not fair that baseballers get infoboxes, and scientists (till now) were subject to some misplaced honor of being "above that."
  • Comment. I think point (2) above is notable in the case of Einstein...people will see the infobox...they will then read footnote that points out the difficulties in summarising Einstein, which then points them to the main article. I think this will result in more readers getting curious and actually then taking the effort to read the main article, instead of just scanning the infobox. Isn't a bigger audience what the resident editors of this page would like? It's a win-win. Surely? SuperGirl 20:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, but as per Howard the Duck. Harald88 21:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Rename, as per Howard the Duck. -- Avi 00:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, all of them. As per bunix — Einstein not being nationalist has no influence whatsoever on our decision to put flags in the infobox or not. This is an encyclopedia article, not an hommage. Schutz 06:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Keep all flags as per Schutz...this is an encylopedia, not a shrine to Einstein's idiosyncrasies. Keep all nationalities. If too long, then just keep the last one, with appropriate caveat inserted in the footnote. SureFire 22:43, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep I think most folks can get the distinction between nation+citizenship=nationality and nationalism, and in the context of a blurb we can't really worry about what people might read into such a thing. Those unable to know or grasp the difference are unlikely to be swayed even by a fuller explanation in the body of the article.... Geeman 02:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep as per Howard the Duck and bunix. Trebor 00:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. I still don’t like the Nationality field for Einstein, or including citizenship in Nationality if present. (I think both his Jewishness and his Germanness are far more notable than his citizenships.) But I seem to be outnumbered on both counts. Perhaps the solution is an inclusive list with both ethnic identity and citizenship. That might also reduce the likelyhood of edit wars over his nationality (which we have seen in the past). Maybe like this:
Ethnic identify:
  • Jewish
  • German
Citizenship:
  • Swiss (1901-death)
  • Prussian (1914-1933)
  • American (1940-death)
I’m not sure “Ethnic identity” is the right label. What I am trying to express by it is the cultural group one identifies with or is identified with. --teb728 06:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. OK teb728, I'm beginning to appreciate the way you think. Sorry for being slow :-) What you are saying is looking good. I think put the Swiss, Prussian, and Anerican items in the Nationality field of the infobox. Then let the Footnote field take care of the ethnicity. I would recommend not to bother with flags for the ethnicity. If you make up an example infobox in this talk page, we can all take a look and perhaps collaborate on fine-tuning the wording. SuperGirl 09:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Sorry I am coming late to the discussion (but basically agree with SuperGirl's comment just above); just one question/comment. If we include the Prussian citizenship, why not add also the German one he held between 1879 and 1896 ? Schutz 09:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. My 7-line example above was intended as a fragment of a proposed infobox; imagine the caption Nationality to the left of it. If part of it were relegated to the footnote, it should be the citizenship, for the notable thing about Einstein’s nationality is his ethnic identity not his citizenship. It’s like the Hamilton example you brought up in the side thread below: Hamilton’s Irish ethnic identity is listed as his nationality, and his British citizenship is not even mentioned. Since you suggest using the footnote, how about listing his nationality as “German-Jewish”? (with no flag?) And say in the footnote, “Although his nationality was German-Jewish, he held Swiss and American citizenships at the time of his death.” (On Einstein’s citizenship prior to 1896, I don’t know what it was: Württemberger, Bavarian, both? The article doesn’t find it important enough to discuss.) --teb728 07:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Side thread on Nationality

I feel obliged to reply to SuperGirl’s accusation of POV. But to avoid breaking the flow of the Nationality section with what may be a longish side thread, I put this reply in a separate subsection: In reply to my comment, “To me “Nationality” refers to one’s nation or ethnicity and has no necessary connection to a state in which one may have citizenship,” she wrote:

  • Reply. Your phrase 'to me' confirms you realise you are being POV. Let's get encyclopedic here. I just checked "nationality" on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online and it says nationality is: "the status of being a citizen or subject of a particular state." Bingo. The same as what the wiki article on nationality says. Case closed.SuperGirl 08:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Well no, the phrase “to me” means I prefer one of two accepted meanings. If you look more closely at the article on Nationality, you will see that it includes my preferred meaning as an “Alternate usage.” I simply regard this “alternate” meaning as the more basic. (I hope you don’t regard it POV to think an article could be improved.)
My understanding is that ethnic affiliation was the original meaning of “nationality,” but that in a nation-state it is natural to extend this meaning to include state affiliation. Inasmuch as most states these days are nation-states, this extension has come for many people to dominate the understood meaning. The extension, however, is really proper only in a nation-state.
To demonstrate that consider: Einstein was born a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg . I’m pretty sure that did not make him directly a subject of the German Empire . (In any case, Württembergers could not have been German Empire subjects prior to 1871.) The point is that I doubt anyone would claim the “nationality” of Württembergers then was Württemberger rather than German.
So, there are two meanings of “nationality”; some people think more in terms of one, and some the other. This difference has led editors to change Einstein’s nationality label—sometimes quite insistently. --teb728 07:47, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response. Dear teb728, wow, I'm really impressed by your research. I like you because you dig up stuff and back yourself up rather than shooting from the hip like many 'pedia editors out there in wiki-land. So you have my respect. You are right that there are alternative interpretations of 'nationality.' However, what I've been trying to get at is that the intention of the template guidelines appears to go more for the citizenship angle, and to steer clear of the ethnicity angle. Ethinicity is a can of worms and we should try avoid getting into its evil trap ...Citizenship is a clean well-defined status that can be backed-up by historical documentation and paperwork. Ethnicity on the other hand is a grey concept...for example what if a given scientist has mixed grandparentage from different countries? What if the grandmother cheated with the Mexican milkman? What do we say the ethnicity is? There is no paper trail back-up for ethnicity and there is even no sure-fire DNA test for ethnicity either. So we can't even go to Einstein's preserved brain samples and test them. So let's keep it encyclopedic, and stick with the more legal citizenship interpretation of the word "Nationality" as orginally intended by the template. Dare I blow you a wiki-kiss? SuperGirl 09:36, 21 October 2006 (UTC) PS: If people feel "citizenship" is a more clearer term than "nationality" for describing the legal national status (as opposed to ethnicity) then I am for supporting a change to the template master.
    Comment. This may be a good fit for many modern states, but breaks down in a lot of other cases. "Roman citizenship" was not extended to all Roman nationals, but it was over time extended to a lot of non-Romans. For a more modern example: Were slaves considered citizens in the pre-civil war US? Were blacks considered citizens in apartheid South Africa? --Stephan Schulz 11:17, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
    Comment. One can cross that bridge in such articles on Romans and South Africans, should you need to write one. Our mission here is to focus on Einstein. I am pointing out the general principle that it's much safer to stick to citizenship (and steer clear of ethnicity) for modern "western" scientists such as Einstein. Ethnicity is too much of a hot potato. For modern western biographies there is a clear paper-trail of documentation to verify citizenship. Ethnicity is always open to some uncertainty. For example, take the mathematician Hamilton, (as in Hamiltonians). Was he Scottish or was he Irish? He was an Irish national and born there, but his family came from Scotland. It's much cleaner to put him down as Irish as that was his legal status and his upbringing. He identified with being Irish. It would be silly to list him as a Scottish scientist...even though his ethnicity was clearly Scottish. SuperGirl 12:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Oh. Once again we are tripping over varying meanings of words. By nationality (and ethnicity) I refer to the people (the singular noun—not the plural of person) that one identifies with or that one is identified with—a social meaning, related to culture and not particularly to genetics. I am sorry if I wasn’t clear about that before. So as far as I am concerned, Hamilton was Irish because he is associated with the Irish people, and he was not Scots because is not identified with the Scots people. By your OED definition, however, he should be regarded as British because he was a British subject. Applying this to Einstein: He was Jewish because throughout his life he identified with the Jewish people. His Jewish identity was far more significant in his life than his Swiss or American citizenships. --teb728 21:33, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. See how it is handled in Hamilton. It says "Irish" and there is an Irish flag. However, there is a qualifier there saying he is of Scottish descent. Notice there is no Scottish flag. So the same applies to Einstein. I have no objections with a qualifier saying he is from a Jewish family, but I object to an Israeli flag...because Einstein was not an Israeli. It would be as silly as putting a Scottish flag there for Hamilton. (An aside: the reason why the British flag is not there for Hamilton is that he was not from Northern Ireland...only Northern Ireland came part of the UK in 1801).SuperGirl 22:10, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. That’s not what it says in the article United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It says there that Northern Ireland was not split off until the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Are those articles wrong? If not, shouldn’t you change Hamilton’s nationality to British to be consistent with what you are advocating here? I don’t see why Hamilton’s “Scottish descent” is noted at all; that’s even dumber than stuff some people are trying to insert here: his nationality was not Scots at all. Einstein, in contrast, was Jewish not because of his Jewish descent but because of his Jewish identity. He was Jewish for the same reason Hamilton was Irish. --teb728 01:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Dear teb728, I have to reluctantly admit you are swaying me with your smooth talk:-) I am honestly uncertain now. OK, now the discussion has settled down, why don't you put together an example template on this talk page so we can see what your overall vision looks like? If u get it started, I can help prettify it if you need a hand. Let's collaborate! Wiki-kisses, SuperGirl 21:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC) PS: As it would only be an example for discussion it would be kinda fun to stick our necks out a little and put religion in, just to test the reaction. If you can think up something half sensible to put in the religion field, people may ending up liking it. Why deny them this avenue of pleasure? :-)

Field

Institution

  • KeepNeutral. List the Swiss Patent Office and the University of Berlin but perhaps not the University of Zurich, Karl Ferdinand University, or ETH —and certainly not the Institute for Advanced Study, where he did no notable science. --teb728 00:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC) modified --teb728 22:42, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. There is not going to be an answer here which makes sense as a "summary", same as the nationality issue. --Fastfission 00:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. As per teb728. I am happy with putting in as many of his institutions he worked at that help to fill up white space on the page. I have no problem with the IAS...his critique of QM leading to EPR discussions is notable.SuperGirl 02:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
    Comment. Why not list his pets, if you just want to fill up whitespace? I thought there were supposed to be intellectual reasons for having these "summaries". --Fastfission 17:58, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
    Reply. Pets?....giggle. Getting a job in Princeton is a pretty damn good acheivement. He was there for 23 years which is about a third of his whole life. Therefore from a historial biographical viewpoint the IAS needs to be listed. Otherwise the reader will think, "well, where was he for 23 years?" Also his critique of QM was very influential; it is untrue to say his acheivements then were zero. Critiquing things is part of the scientific process. His modus operandi simply changed when he went to the USA. He took a risk that simply didn't pay off as much as his previous work. But I call that still a success, not a failure. SuperGirl 21:29, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
    Comment. Are we pandering to the "reader" who reads only the infobox, now? Listing the IAS (which is not part of Princeton University) as his "institution" will not tell this hypothetical reader anything about how long he stayed there, where he was before then, or when or where he did his most important work. It tells you a single fact and one which isolated from all explanation is worthless. And most of Einstein's critiques of QM were developed and published well before he went to IAS (EPR was published two years after he arrived at IAS, though Einstein didn't actually write that one, but that's a bit pedantic to point out). --Fastfission 01:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
    Reply. I agree with your details but not your sentiment. The fact is that Einstein was at the IAS for a long time. So it's part of his biographical record. Yes, his work there was not as significant as his prior work, but you are plain wrong to say his IAS years are not noteworthy. The infobox is a navigational tool and it quickly shows the reader where Einstein was working. SuperGirl 01:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. --Howard the Duck 12:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. As per SuperGirl. Just list as many that use up the space. If too bloated, then delete the ones where he spent the shortest time.bunix 12:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Too much info for little value. -- Szvest 13:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete Makes no sense to summarize this in an infobox. He didn't even do his best work at any of these institutions! –Joke 15:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
    Reply. We are making a historical record here. We are an encylopedia and not here to judge where he did his best work or not. (That's inherently POV.) To be true to the historical record we list all the places he worked. If it is too long, we then just put 2-3 where he spent the most time and let the footnote take care of the rest. bunix 10:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, makes perfect sense to summarize this in an infobox. Robert K S 15:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Kaldari 16:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, including IAS. -- Avi 00:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Neutral. Schutz 06:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep all. This is a classic example of the usefulness of an infobox. A chronological list of where he worked saves a lot of article trawling. There's enough white space there to handle this content. SureFire 22:49, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, I think there's too much to summarise neatly. Trebor 00:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Alma Mater

Reply. That's fine of course Harald88 22:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Doctoral Advisor

  • Response-to-response I think that scientific genealogy project is a good idea, but in the context of an infobox its rather unwieldy. Probably a better way of compiling such a system is with a set of articles. The infobox should be for quickie-reference information. "When did he die?" "What award/s did he win?" A "family tree" of intellectual development going back centuries is a valuable and fascinating subject, but using infoboxes as the hook into such a project is like using postage stamps to pay your mortage. Geeman 20:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply This is a non sequitor. There is no family tree in the infobox. It's just the advisor and any students with a wiki article. This provides quick and handy links primarily to these related articles so the reader can then easily check for themselves how significant or trivial these influences were. Then a secondary effect is that the reader can then crawl up or down the tree via successive infoboxes. This is no different to a succession infobox in many other articles out there.SuperGirl 22:19, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Clarification My comment was regarding "a 'family tree' of intellectual development" not an actual geneological family tree. :) I support the idea behind the project--a series of links connecting up the mentor to student relationship throughout the centuries, showing the development of ideas and scholarly work. That's a good idea. However, it would be better portrayed in actual article pages in which the whole "tree" could be written out, and/or the process could be given its due attention. Using infoboxes to create a series of links is unwieldy because it doesn't show a whole lot of information at once, requires the reader/browser to make the "family tree" leaps himself (as in, it presents these people as being related without any actual explanation of how) and because it is rather a hamfisted use of the infobox system. Geeman 02:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response. Sure....making trees and putting them on pages is a good idea and some editors are already doing that, for example see: [16]. No problem! However, this in no way replaces the idea of having quick links to the immediate supervisor and students in the infobox. I can see there is room for both on wikipedia and they can co-exist in harmony. As I said before, what you are seeing with this infobox is no different to succession boxes for monarchs or politicians. SuperGirl 08:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response to Reply Well, I think it should replace the idea of having quick links to the immediate supervisor in the infobox mostly because I don't think supervisor/student is the kind of information that is signficant enough to belong in an infobox. Who is going to look for quick reference information regarding Einstein's doctoral advisor? I can see someone wanting quick reference to his DOB, DOD, the major theories he is credited with, etc. but are people really going to want quick reference to the people he studied with? What's more, the infobox format isn't the right way to display such data. The succession of boxes used for monarchs and politicians is a much better way of portraying such data--at the bottom of the page where such links belong (for format's sake and because it really is rather tangential information.) It'd be more in line with the method you describe for politicians and monarchs and a better presentation of the idea (tracking the chain of scholarly learning) in a more obvious and meaningful way. Geeman 20:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Many people would be curious to click on the links in the infobox and explore. Your assertion that no one is interested in Einstein's advisor is false. Have you read the article on Alfred Kleiner yourself to see that it is in fact interesting? Also what you are saying about succession boxes being at the bottom of the page is false too. Check out Bill Clinton, for example, where you'll see the succession of presidents is done at the top of the page in the infobox. The fact is that different ways of displaying succession do peacefully coexist on wikipedia. If it ain't broke why fix it? If you seriously wanna change over 200 templates, are you offering to do all the work? I'm not! If you are serious about this change go ahead and do it yourself. The correct way to start is not here (because this is specifically for Einstein)--you need to start a discussion at the talk page of the infobox and raise a concensus here: [17]. May the force be with you and watch out for grumpy bitches like me. SuperGirl 21:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Some More Clarification First, I have not asserted that no one is interested in Einstein's advisor, and I think I've been pretty clear that I think the project is a good idea.... (Honestly, where did that come from?) That said, I actually would assert that there there is a pretty big difference between the infoboxes of politicians listing their predecessors and successors in office and a more abstract concept like a mentor and student relationship. That's the kind of information someone might want a quick reference to. Who succeeded Polk or preceded Taylor? People ask those kind of questions all the time about those sorts of people. Very few people have the same question about the educational development of Max Planck or even of Einstein.... Do people need quick reference to that right at the top of the page? In this case, using the infobox as a method of relating information about the history of scholarly development for centuries is an odd way of trying to relate that information and outside the scope of what that little portion of the page is meant for. Second, there are other tools that can be used, ones that suit the situation better. The "succession box" at the bottom of many bio pages (like those of U.S. Presidents) would be more appropriate. If you take a look at the bios of Presidents (like Bill Clinton's) you'll see that there is the "Preceded by" and "Succeeded by" entries in the infobox, but the succession box is the one at the bottom of the page that has a more complete list (and that's where such a concept would be more appropriately placed.) --Geeman 08:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply Where did it come from? It was when you said its inclusion wasn't "significant." Maybe I was hormonal and overeacted. You are right about a succession box being at the bottom of the the US president page. However, note: (i) succession is also in the infobox and the two coexist, (ii) in the US prez case, the bottom succession box is necessary because there is more than one type of office to describe. In our case we only have one item and that is "advisors"...so it is much neater and more visible in the infobox. (iii) Who said anything about "centuries?" (Honestly, where did that come from?). No. The infobox only has the predecessor and successor only. Period. The "centuries" thing _may_ happen as a side-effect one day when enough biographies are there to form a "chain." But that is nothing that needs concern you. That is something that naturally happens via a self-organization process as the number of biographies increases. The idea is to let that effect evolve by itself. SuperGirl 09:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Yet more Clarification Well, I'm going to leap to my own defense once more to say that I think the academic geneology project is a good idea. I just don't think the infobox is the appropriate place for such information. There exist better methods already extant on WP that are more apt. My comments that advisor/students isn't right for the infobox is quite different from asserting that nobody is interested in such information, so please be more careful when attributing statements to others. Heck, I'm interested in it myself. I look forward to spending some time checking it out. However, the issue is not whether that information can coexist in the infobox and in a succession box at the bottom of the page, but if it is appropriate for the infobox in the first place. For an infobox on politicians or regents it makes sense to have "Preceded by" and "Succeeded by" because that's the kind of information that people might want quickly. Students memorize the succession of presidents all the time, for example, and lots of people might want to quickly reference that kind of thing. The connection between advisor and student, however, is more abstract. In certain cases the connections are even debatable, not just factually but whether that relationship was, in fact, significant. The whole concept is less concrete than DOB, DOD, countries that someone held citizenship in, or the order of office holders, and as such doesn't belong in what should be a brief list of definite facts about an individual. Now, as for where "centuries" came from, according to the link you provided above for the academic geneology projects one of them (the Mathematics Genealogy Project) "attempts to go back to the time of Leibnitz." Since Gottfried Leibnitz died nearly 300 years ago that'd put the project's timeline in the centuries. The "Genealogy of theoretical physicists" page goes back even further. Again, it's a good idea and a fascinating subject, but I don't see the infobox as being the proper place to put it for the reasons already described. --Geeman 13:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Again, I'll repeat that the "centuries" factor is nothing that concerns us here. We are only taking about immediate succession and precession. If several boxes happen to link together and go back centuries, then that is a nice side-effect. It is not something we have to consciously aim for. That takes care of itself as the wikipedia grows. Whilst I agree that succession connections can sometimes be debated, I disagree that monarchs etc are more clear cut. There are contested monarchs. And look at the succession of Popes. Lot's of controversy there! That's why we have Antipopes. Advisor/student relationships are much easier to handle than Popes. Sure you can put a succession box at the bottom of the page. Nobody is going to stop you! As I said before, here is not the correct place to discuss that. The correct proceedure is to just go ahead and do it. Then once you've populated all the bios, start a discussion on the Infobox Scientist talk page suggesting the Advisor and Students then be removed from the infobox. You need to do the work first, to ensure that the information is not buried. I will support your proposed removal once I see your succession box nicely populated throughout the bios, and not before! SuperGirl 01:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response I'm probably not going to have time to populate several hundred succession boxes myself, but I'm going to make the suggestion that that be the format on the appropriate page and see if we can get that method used by people contributing rather than the infobox. Thanks for the input. --Geeman 07:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. It would help acceptance of your idea if you put together a succession box and created a working example. Then populate it on (say) 6 pages so people can take a look at how it works and get the idea. Test run in on the lineage of Carl Friedrich Gauss, as that is a very exciting academic ancestry example. I will be happy to offer a constructive critique if you alert me. SuperGirl 08:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I'll get on that as soon as practicable. I'm running into a lot of those pesky real world demands on my time lately... hence, the tardiness of this response :) I appreciate the discussion and your pointing me in the direction of that particular project, though, so thanks. -- Geeman 07:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Doctoral Students

Known for

Notable Prizes

Religion

  • Strong Delete. No entry at all—not even “See main article” --teb728 00:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC) The advice at Template talk:Infobox Scientist#Field #17: Religion is “Only use it where they have strong religious views which related to their scientific achievement.” --teb728 08:02, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete or Keep Delete, otherwise keep only if we put "See main article." This is probably good for capturing more readers :-) SuperGirl 02:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. --Howard the Duck 12:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Though not opposed to keeping if "See main article" is inserted. I could be swayed if the concensus wants this. bunix 12:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I have to add a srtong to delete. He wasn't preaching! He was excercising Physics. -- Szvest 13:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
    Reply. For that matter, no scientist is a preacher. The point of this entry is to recognise the intense readership interest in the religious position of scientists. The whole issue of the relationship between religion and science is a contemporary hot topic. So that's why it's there. But the real question here today, is can we summarise it in the case of Einstein? It's a tough one and needs some collaborative creative thinking. Any ideas? bunix 10:24, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Obviously. –Joke 15:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, and under no circumstance should "see main article" be the entry for any infobox field. If it cannot be reduced to something elegant--and in Einstein's case, Spinozism is elegant--then the field should not be used at all. I will add that Einstein is a good example--and maybe the best example since Newton--of religion taking part in a scientist's thinking. Many of his famous quotes deal with the beauty of scientific law from the perspective of a Creator--"God does not play dice with the universe" (a belief that may have prevented him from making contributions to quantum theory); one would be hard-pressed to find a page of quotes by Einstein that does not mention God three or four times. For anyone who might think Einstein's work was limited to investigations of physics, they might try reading Einstein's correspondence with Paul Diel, which cut to the core of his thinking on religion. Robert K S 15:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment This is a non sequitur. "Einstein's complex thinking on religion was of tremendous personal importance, therefore it should be summarized in an infobox." –Joke 15:51, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Response It is the criteria printed above, viz., "Only use it where they have strong religious views which related to their scientific achievement." Einstein's religious views related to both his scientific and political courses. Robert K S 16:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. You can't sum up Einstein's views on religion in an infobox. I don't understand why the scientist infobox has a religion parameter anyway. Kaldari 16:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply. Simply because the science biography readership is very interested in the religious position of scientists. The dialog between religion and science is a notable area of both public and scholarly interest. SuperGirl 06:29, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Cannot be summed up easily (is not a standard checkbox religious view) and "see main article" is abominable for an infobox. --Fastfission 17:53, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Too complex for an infobox, he was not a practicing Jew, but was a very religious person. Unless we put "Yes" in as the entry -- Avi 00:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, as per teb728. Schutz 06:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Boy this is a tough one. I'm kinda sticking my neck out here, for a royal flaming :-) So please be gentle with me. Here is my reasoning for "keep." The fact is that the discussion in both the popular literature and scholarly literature on the interplay between Einstein's scientific and religious beliefs is huge. If I stacked every piece of paper written on it end-to-end, I could circle the globe. The paradox is that because it is so complex and significant, an entry in the infobox is justified...but because of that very complexity it makes the wording tricky and the entry difficult. Because it's difficult, is no reason to "delete" IMHO. We are all clever guys and surely we can collaborate to come up with something pithy and suitable. I've trawled around some of the other science biography articles to see how they have coped with this problem to get ideas. One idea is to put it in the negative, and say what Einstein is not. So something like "Did not subscribe to any organised religion" or even "Did not believe in a personal God" could be possible entries. Or even something like, "Had complex beliefs that are described in the main article" might work. SureFire 23:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete with a proviso I think Einstein should be described as "German-born... of Jewish ancestry" in the first sentence of the article for reasons having to do with consistency with other WP articles, his description in other encyclopedias (encyclopedium?), because it works best as an introduction to the body of this article and most importantly its an accurate assessment of Einstein (to that extent that something like this can be done in a few words, of course.) If the current opening sentence is kept (which lists his date of birth, death and the locations in which they occurred) then I vote Keep as such information is incomplete on its own. Though an infobox notation is not very informative, it's better than nothing. IMO: It needs to say right at the top of the page that Einstein was of Jewish ancestry. Geeman 02:12, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Einstein would hate this infobox with the flags

He despised nationalism. If you guys really want flags, then put in all of them, to reflect his cosmopolitan attitude. Maybe insert an extra section "Other remarkable events" next to "Notable Prizes" and mention Israel's offer of the presidency. That will give a nice excuse to insert the Israelian flag as well, to better illustrate the notion of Einstein, the cosmopolitan. And add the German and Swiss flags again after his Nobel Prize, otherwise superficial readers might think the other flags have something to do with it! Physicists 19:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so there are three points here — four if I start with a general comment:
  1. The content of the infobox has been discussed in details on this page just a few days ago; I am not sure it is a good idea to reopen the discussion so soon, or to modify the infobox before any such discussion.
  2. This has been discussed above as well: we are writing an encyclopedia, and with all respect due to Einstein, his potential opinion about the presence of flags in our infoboxes is of very little interest to us. We want to make articles that are complete, informative, easy to access, etc, not articles that are modeled according to their subject.
  3. The fact that he got offered the presidency of Israel is significant, and deserve to be discussed in the article (and currently is); however, should we really indicate in an infobox all the potential nationalities that a person could have had if he had made different choices in his life ? Nationality was the most discussed topic in the discussion above, so I reverted this change for now (as I will revert the change made while I was writing this edit and which put "Cosmopolitan" as a nationality).
  4. As for the flags added to the Nobel Prize, I don't really care, even though I would rather not add them. Sure they are useful, but they essentially duplicate information already present in the infobox.
Schutz 20:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I think Physicists was being facetious. He has a good point too. I have removed the flags from the Nobel Prize as their use there is rediculous. Kaldari 20:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, maybe but... being facetious on the talk page is ok; if he was being just facetious while editing in the article, then he probably forgot to read WP:POINT. Schutz 20:41, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
As an aside... As mentioned above, I agree with you, flags should not be added to the Nobel Prize, but this prize was actually the occasion of a (diplomatic) fight between Switzerland and Germany who both wanted to claim it (especially because Einstein was not present to receive it, so "his" Embassy was supposed to receive it for him). Funny story (the Swiss let the Germans take it in the end, partly because the Germans insisted, and partly because a Swiss already got a Nobel prize just one or two years before), but maybe a bit too anecdotical to deserve a note in the article (if someone disagrees, I can add it — relevant sources and copies of original documents are available online in misc archives). Schutz 20:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Add it, why not. If the he-was-famous-so-he-was-one-of-us kind of attitude was already there before wikipedia, it maybe diffuse things here, by adding the issue itself in the article. --Van helsing 21:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC) My God, just saw the Infobox stuff above… err… are you sure this was discussed before? That is… motivating.

I agree. Having just looked at the article again, the flags are hideous. Why can't we remove the lot of them? Where is the consensus to have tiny little flags, like we're covering the Olympics? Does it help people too lazy to actually read the infobox to have the little flags? Too often on Wikipedia, people roll with the misguided notion that just because we can do something (populate a page with templates, infoboxes, links, categories, banners, little flags) it is a good idea. –Joke 21:09, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind one way or the other, although hideous is probably a bit exagerated... Anyway, I've just looked at about 10 random pages which include {{Infobox Scientist}}, and all but one (Leonhard Euler) had flags. Being consistent definitively is a good idea, so this part of the discussion should probably happen on the template talk page. Schutz 21:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

So the infobox is for those, who can't be bothered to read the article. And the flags or for those, who can't be bothered to read the infobox? --Pjacobi 21:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. –Joke 21:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The flags are disturbing and distract from the contents. Consistency is nice but I don't agree that we have to let others with general infobox ideas decide what should or should not be in this article. Let's vote!

Vote to Keep/Delete Flags in Infobox

Vote: Assuming that we accept the infobox, do we agree to include flags in this article's infobox or not?

  • No flags: apart of being against Einstein's philosophy it's ugly, useless and distracting Harald88 22:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
  • No flags for the Nobel prize, don't care about the rest. Honestly, I don't care for any of the flags, and I'm kind of sick of voting on everything, but as long as we're going through the motions, I'm going to give an adament "no" on the Nobel Prize flags, since Nobel Prizes are not awarded to countries (normally), and no one gives a flip what country claims the prize. It degrades the prize in my mind to treat like an Olympic medal, where some country can claim a certain number. Really all the flagcruft is pretty ugly and distracting, IMO. Kaldari 23:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
  • No flags for the Nobel prize, yes for the rest, if only for consistency. Schutz 07:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • No flags --teb728 07:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep flags. I see nothing wrong with them. They are ubiquitous on the 'pedia. However Delete nobel prize flags as none of the other infoboxes do that. Also I recommend to delete "Bohemia" from the residence entry as it is insignificant and that flag is not properly bordered anyway. Possibly bring it back one day if someone draws it properly. SuperGirl 08:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • No flags — The whole idea of the Infobox was supposed to be a quick summary of certain properties. The flags add bulk ("clutter") without adding information. If somebody cares about national flags, I'm sure he can look them up. — DAGwyn 04:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Nobel prize flags. Keep rest, as per Schutz. Consistency is good. Doesn't look ugly to me. Also the argument that "Einstein wouldn't like it" is not the point. In George W. Bush's wiki article there is a graph of his popularity ratings going way down...should we delete that graph because Bush does not like that graph? The idiosyncrasies of the subject matter should not dictate the standard practice in an encyclopedia. Flags are pretty standard in many infoboxes where countries are listed. SureFire 07:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
    Comment. Then those other infoboxes ought to be fixed, too. The infobox looks really silly with the flags. DAGwyn 20:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
    Comment. I just calculated that the American flag alone is in 500 wiki articles. That means there are 1000s of silly editors out there. Have fun deleting them all. SureFire 10:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
    Careful. Some editors clean up 500 pages for breakfast! :-) Carcharoth 14:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Neutral on the nobel prize flags. Keep rest of flags. What looks silliy is not the flags per se, but listing all his residences where he hardly spent enough time to scratch himself. I would stick to the major ones (>=10years), and the reader then goes to the article for expansion.bunix 00:30, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete all the flags. They are splashes of garish colour on what should be an article that people read, not a pretty flag mosaic for people to admire. Carcharoth 14:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - please see Wikipedia:Don't overuse flags - only a guideline, but something to think about. Carcharoth 10:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment see the talk page of that "unofficial" guideline, where you will see support for flags. When you also consider the 1000's of flags used throughout the wikipedia, the consentual horse has bolted and flags are here to stay. We can't beat 'em, so we may as well join 'em. The use of the flags in the Einstein box does look tasteful and does not look at all cluttered IMHO. SuperGirl 14:08, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
  • No flags as per User:Carcharoth. They are ugly, distracting, and add nothing of value.--Stephan Schulz 18:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete there are too many of them, so they lose their purpose as either an indication of allegiance(s) [which we must recognize was not really what Einstein was known for] or even as a useful visual reference. Geeman 02:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics

I am not an expert on Albert Einstein, so maybe I am incorrect, but from what I had heard about Einstein he had difficulty with mathematics and always needed help from a mathematician when he was working mathematical equations out, but this article says he was brilliant at math from an early age. FDR | MyTalk 20:29:25 October 21, 2006 (UTC)

What you heard is wrong. Einstein was rather good with math. That does not mean that he did not confer with others on difficult topics (notably Hilbert on general relativity), but that's just the normal process of science. --Stephan Schulz 21:12, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
See User:Samsara/Debunking an urban myth: Einstein at school. I have a book with a copy of his final high-school certificate, and he got top marks in all mathematical related branches. I should probably scan it and add it to the article, since it is such a widespread myth. Of course, being good at math in high-school does not mean being good at "higher maths", but at least we know he was indeed brilliant from an early age, as you say. Schutz 07:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I was under the impression that it was not because he was poor at maths, but rather whilst developing his theories he found occasionally he had to learn some new (to him) elements of mathematics to help explain and/or develop his theories. I am 90% sure that is the angle Kip Thorne uses in "Einstein's outrageous legacy:Black holes and warped spacetime" but I admit I do not have the book to hand at the moment. Desdinova 23:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

"Incompleteness and Realism"

This section needs a little work. It has some excessive quoting, for one thing, and does not really explain any of it in simple terms. Additionally, when it says "In the Schilpp book", does it just mean, "In EPR, which is in the Schilpp book"? I can't tell though I guess I could pull out EPR and see if that is what the text is from. There is a general problem with talking about EPR in the way which is done here, mainly that Einstein didn't himself write EPR — it was written by Podolsky based on conversations with Einstein and Rosen. Einstein himself didn't like the way it was formulated at all — he thought it was unclear. Though one can use EPR as an example of Einstein's thinking on incompleteness, the quotes in it cannot be directly attributed to Einstein individually (if at all directly). Maybe someone can go over this and fix it up a bit. --Fastfission 01:17, 29 October 2006 (UTC) I agree i does need to be fixed. -Jman888

Head Sise?

Where did the info about his head come from? And why is it included. Its interesting but not entirely needed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.108.223.7 (talk) 15:07, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Spurious quotation on Buddhism

I removed the following from the list of quotations on religion. The webpage cited does not provide a source for the alleged quote, which is described as spurious in Wikiquote. I don't think it should be allowed in the article unless and until a proper source to the works of Einstein can be provided.

--Dannyno 21:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd say we should delete the whole section anyway, since quotations belong to wikiquote; in Wikipedia, we should just have a summary of his beliefs, backed by references to the actual quotations, not by the quotations themselves. Schutz 22:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Better than that would be a synthesis based on secondary sources, not quotes isolated from their context. At the moment I think the quotations on religion and his "scientific philosophy" are totally worthless and totally against Wikipedia policy. --Fastfission 04:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough; either way, the quotes should go away. Schutz 06:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes quotations are suitable for Wikipedia. You cannot generalise and say that all quotes should be in wikiquote. Wikiquote is for, and I quote from their policy pages: "...quotations which are notable. A quotation can be notable either because it has achieved fame by itself, but more usually because it was said by someone notable, or appeared in a notable work." I take this to mean that a short quote to illustrate a specific point in Wikipedia should not be entered into Wikiquote, but might be found in wikisource if the original document was there. Having said that, yes, the quotes section should be replaced by the link to q:Einstein. Carcharoth 20:29, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Removal of WP templates

I see that the wikiproject notices at the top of this page have been severely trimmed. I'm unsure if this is a good or bad thing, and am tempted to suggest that instead of being removed they get put into a section at the top of the page - so that the most important ones appear at the top, then the TOC, then the less important ones. What do people here think? Mike Peel 12:18, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the templates should be moved to a subpage of the talk page, such as Talk:Albert Einstein/WP templates. Q0 23:08, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I've added back most of the templates, and put the important talk page ones at the top, the ones that have a small option to the right of the TOC, and those that don't have a small option in a section below the TOC. Hopefuly that's OK? I'll be talking to the people in the wikiprojects that don't have a small option on their template, to see if they can add one. Mike Peel 09:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The Cosmological Constant and GR's Substrates

I think that there should be an extrapolation on his cosmological constant, such as his reasoning behind it and its resurfacing in modern theoretical physics, such as an explanation for the accelerated expansion of the Universe, as well as its connection to the Higgs field.

The general policy seems to be that detailed discussions of the various physical theories are conducted in their own articles, not in the general Einstein article (which includes just enough about them to orient the reader). For example, the cosmological constant has its own article. Actually Einstein was not personally involved with either the accelerated expansion of the universe nor the Higgs field. — DAGwyn 08:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, GR has led to many discoveries, such as black holes, and it is also in controversy with quantum mechanics, which is very worth noting. Watchayakan 07:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

General relativity has its own article. Einstein was not personally involved with black holes, either, and I rather doubt that he would have approved of the way that theory has developed. Actually, all classical theories conflict with quantum theory. The problem of constructing a consistent quantum theory of gravitation is quite apart from anything Einstein did. — DAGwyn 08:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I understand (on extensiveness), but mentioning them and their impact on society (even if just the scientific community, but we all know that black holes and curved space have become a big part of pop culture) would seem a good idea, especially considering the fact thet what he claimed was his greatest blunder might turn out to be a very prescient thought. Watchayakan 11:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I still think that the coverage of that topic in the cosmological constant article is sufficient, and that it would be too much detail for the Einstein article, which is already way too long. Note also the Schrödinger section of the classical unified field theories article, where it is observed that in his formulation the cosmological term arises automatically. That article also notes that Eddington thought that there was a natural role for the cosmological constant. If somebody searches for the phrase he should turn up hits on these. I'm especially concerned that we don't give the impression that Einstein approved of black holes nor of modern cosmological ideas. — DAGwyn 22:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Random Text Added To Speculation & Controversy Section

The following statement has been inserted by someone into the Speculation and Controversy section which obviously needs removed. (I am new to wikipedia and tried to use the edit feature however the text in question didn't appear for some reason) I would be grateful if someone could assist with its removal. Statement in question as follows:

"The world needs to know, 2=1. It is proven. A new revolution is upon us. type 1=2 in google and you will find it. Mathematics as we know it is over. Amarvir rules." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.71.208.27 (talk)

Hi 84.71.208.27, Welcome to Wikipedia. The text that you mention is an instance of vandalism, which happens all too frequent at Wikipedia—this article in particular gets hit by it about 10 times a day. Fortunately a lot of editors watch changes on this page; so such garbage is usually reverted quickly. This instance survived for over 3 hours, which is unusual. (By the way, please sign your posts on talk pages by adding ~~~~.) --teb728 08:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Bold text

  1. ^ "Theology: Albert Einstein".
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