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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Discovery of nuclear fission/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Laser brain via FACBot (talk) 13 October 2020 [1].


Nominator(s): Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:29, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938. It is better known than other scientific discoveries because nuclear fission led to the development nuclear power and nuclear weapons. It is also controversial. The award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for 1944 to Otto Hahn (but don't mention the war!) raised issues about whether the discovery was about physics or chemistry, and what indeed is meant by a scientific discovery. It has also been touted as an example of the Matilda effect. This carries over to Wikipedia as well; in the English language version, Lise Meitner gets more page views than Otto Hahn, but in the German Wikipedia the reverse is true. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:29, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Wehwalt

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Up to the start of "Discovery"
Looks pretty good so far.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:03, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "with the longest-lived having 13- and 90-minute half-lives" Wouldn't you list the longest first?
    No, why? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "What they found was three different decays series, all alpha emitters—a form of decay not found in any other heavy element, and for which Meitner once again had to postulate multiple isomers. They did find an interesting result: these (n, α) decay series" should "decays series" be "decay series"?
    Yes. Corrected. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure you're consistent with hyphens in "half life" and "half lives".
    Settled on the hyphen, per out article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Meitner departed for the Netherlands with Dutch physicists Dirk Coster." Were there multiple physicists or should this be "physicist"?
    Just one. Corrected. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bohr Institute v. "Bohr's Institute". Wouldn't mind if it was lower case but ...
    Because it wasn't officially called that until 1965, but the name was in use before that. Corrected to use the possessive.
    This tale has a moral, tho' we knew it before.
    It's foolish to question the wisdom of Bohr.
  • Why is Fermi linked in the US section? He's been mentioned many times.
    Probably because the text was lifted from another article. Unlinked. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Was the Fifth Washington Conference at Princeton (which I found odd) or at Washington? You say both.
    At The George Washington University. My geography of the US isn't too good. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is "straight forward" rather than "straightforward" an Engvar thing?
    Possibly. Going with "straightforward". Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • A clearer timeframe for the first two paragraphs in "Nobel prize" might be helpful.
  • "During celebrations in Germany of the 100th birthdays of Einstein, Hahn, Meitner and von Laue in 1978," Does it matter that Einstein was born in 1879?
    It's apparently within the margin of error. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting. I didn't know much of this. Look forward to supporting.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:28, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support All looks good.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:41, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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  • File:Hahn and Meitner in 1912.jpg — unclear copyright status, nominated for deletion

Support from Gog the Mild

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Nb: it is my intention to claim points in the WikiCup for this review.

Excellent work, lovely prose. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:57, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your review. Much appreciated. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:08, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Great work, happy to support. Gog the Mild (talk) 09:53, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments from JennyOz

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Hi Hawkeye, mostly typos and questions etc as my knowledge of physics and chemistry is very sketchy (though I will say I could understand 95+% of this story of discovery) ...

That's it. Thanks, JennyOz (talk) 06:43, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fab, happy to support, JennyOz (talk) 12:22, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator notes

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I've requested a source review. Please let me know if there's one I'm not spotting. --Laser brain (talk) 12:21, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Imma make some comments on the sourcing. First, the |ref=harv can probably be removed. It seems like the source formatting is consistent and has the requisite information. I note that the bibliography relies heavily on books written by physicists - I take these are good enough sources for a heavily historical physics article? Likewise, many of the references are to individual academic papers. I am a little too unfamiliar with the topic to judge NPOV on the subject matter. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:25, 7 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, most of the books in the References section are by physicists; Otto Hahn is the only chemist. The others are notable historians of science: Ronald W. Clark, Richard Rhodes and Ruth Lewin Sime. Sime wrote a biography of Meitner, whose article has been languishing at GAN since July. The article is almost entirely sourced from the secondary sources in the References section; the original papers are provided to allow the readers to look them up themselves, as is usual in scientific articles. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:24, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - Pass

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I'm not really sure if the above comments were meant to be a formal source review but just in case I'll do one below.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.