Talk:Mikhail Ostrogradsky

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Russian spelling of Ostrogradsky's name

Perhaps a minor point, but given that he spent his career in the Russian Empire, would it make sense to use pre-1918 reform orthography in the Russian variant of his name? I should think that it was the official form back then, but not sure if this will improve the article. The Ukrainian rendering of his name likewise seems to be given in its modern form; the situation with historical orthography in Ukrainian is even more complicated (apparently a number of standards were developed and used in different parts of the country since the 18th century). I suppose any such pursuit after historical accuracy runs the danger of opening a can of worms as the principle should be applied to all other mathematicians from that era. Would anyone care to share an opinion? Stablenode (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Origin

Until the 8th of January 2020 Ostrogradsky had been defined as a "Ukrainian mathematician, mechanician and physicist in the Russian Empire" in the lead section. The information was verified by the following sources:

O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Mikhail Ostrogradsky", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
Woodard, R.P. (9 August 2015). "The Theorem of Ostrogradsky". arXiv:1506.02210 [hep-th]. {{cite arXiv}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

However, user User:Beliknol (whose account has been blocked indefinitely because the account's owner has abusively used multiple accounts) deleted the sources as "questionable" (from his point of view) ones, changed Ostrogradsky's nationality and added two other sources instead. I looked through the two new sources, and none of them seems to verify the information added by the user. Therefore, I am changing the lead to its previous version and mentioning the reasoning here to avoid any possible editing conflicts. M. Humeniuk (talk) 18:36, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The text was changed back almost immediately, but not the sources. MacTutor is clear that he identified as (and spoke at home) Ukrainian, but he seems to often be viewed by outsiders as (and wrote mathematics in) Russian. I'll try to write something true and neutral, but I'm not watching this page, so who knows what will happen. ―Toby Bartels (talk) 18:33, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my attempt was reverted, by an anonymous editor who had never made any other edits before (at least not from the same IP address), with no explanation, and the reversion also included my other mathematical edit (see the next section of talk), which I know I did correctly. So hopefully they'll come here and discuss things, but in the meantime, I reverted the reversion. —Toby Bartels (talk) 21:49, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This was mostly reverted again in July, by someone who is at least an active (albeit apparently contentious) editor, rather than by an anon. But it's a more careful edit, changing only the text and not the infoboxes etc, nor the math. And crucially, instead of saying that Ostrogradsky was Russian, it says that he was a Russian Imperial. So although (of course) I prefer my wording, I think that this is neutral enough that I'm not going to change it. But it would still be good if these edits were discussed here rather than done without comment. Also, there was one bad thing about the July edit: the references were attached only to the claim that Ostrogradsky was a Russian Imperial, rather than to the entire claim of who he was (including his ancestry), which they do cover. So I fixed that. ―Toby Bartels (talk) 17:38, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

there is a problem in the right-hand box of information, the place of birth at first is mutually exclusive with the place under "now:", it is a different part of the same larger constituency, but they do not overlap or have changed names, possibly simply one of them has the wrong link attached, but that seems unlikely 2A02:810A:143F:E830:654A:EA07:9343:E565 (talk) 21:07, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

His equation

The main text currently separates his divergence theorem from his equation, but these are the same thing; also, the statement of the equation is wrong. (It is correct on, for example, the Ukrainian Wikipedia). I will combine these sections and fix the equation. It would be good to get a reference to see if Ostrogradsky himself wrote it in this way. ―Toby Bartels (talk) 18:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]