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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 not promoted by GrahamColm 10:39, 10 August 2012 [1].

Stephen Hawking

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Stephen Hawking (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Fayedizard (talk) 06:49, 8 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets the criteria as I understand them. Until very recently it was one of those wonderful articles that had arisen through many thousands of editors making one or two changes. Since then I nominated it for GA, which it passed following review from Binksternet, and has also had a peer review from Finetooth (with continuing useful comments from Binksternet)- both these processes have improved the article immensely.

In it's first FAC it coped well but was ultimately rejected… It's had another PR since, and it's been quite deeply rewritten (the local library are getting sick of me) and I'd like to send the article back into the fray. One of the interesting things about the process has been so see how much it's worth going straight from the biographies in many cases, rather than building up from lots of newspaper stories… Fayedizard (talk) 06:49, 8 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – The article has some good material, but there are a few issues and it doesn't seem quite as comprehensive as it could be.

  • The sentence that begins, "Hawking attended St Albans High School..." has a couple of minor problems: there is a period in the middle and 'At' is capitalized. I could have fixed it, but it seems like this sentence could be split in two and the parentheses eliminated.
  • "...after the disease had stabilised and with the help of his doctoral tutor...": reads like mangled English.
  • My understand is that "steady state" is not a theory about the creation of the Universe; rather it's a theory meant to explain why the Universe has no beginning, yet is expanding. This contradicts the assertion in the text.
  • I assume that he eventually earned his Doctorate, but it never says when. I'd also like to know what his thesis was about and where we went to work after graduating. In fact, his full career and places of work should probably be documented.
  • "Hawking's work with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson": when was this?

Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 02:52, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bob, and thank you very much for your very sensible comments - I've adjusted the grammar, of course, and I've added a couple of light bits to cover your other suggestions. The major thing about his career after graduation is that he's been at Cambridge since graduation appart from regular trips to CALTECH - we can talk about adding a sentence to that effect if you like, although I'm a little cautious about it sounding more negative than we'd like... I've put in some date information about the no-hair result - I've intentionally not put an exact date because the section focusing on when the work was done rather than when the result was published; again, I'm very open to opinion on this. Regarding steady state, I think that's definitely something for more conversation. My understanding is that the theory that states that the universe has no beginning is the ' no-boundary proposal' that is discussed later in the article - and the source is fairly straightforward about Steady State and Big bang. Can we go into more detail? Fayedizard (talk) 09:19, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for addressing my concerns, Fayedizard. I crossed out my issue regarding steady state as it perhaps seems like a nuanced point anyway, although I think the link should be changed. However, since this is a biography, I would still like to see more information on his career per FA requirement 1b for comprehensiveness. Many of the fine details are covered in the International Who's Who entry, and I see some other corroborating sources.[2][3][4][5] For example, the article doesn't mention his elected fellowship and later professor fellowship at Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge. I assume he's tenured since he holds the Lucasian seat? It could also mention the year he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (1974) at the somewhat early age of 32. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:19, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Bob, apologies for taking a while to get to this, I've changed the steady state link to Steady_State_theory as recommended. Tenure isn't a feature at UK universities I'm afraid (there are related concepts, but that's a longer and deeper conversation). I was a bit confused about mentioning the year he became a fellow - that's already in the career section... (it was in several places, but it's only in once now) but I might have got confused about what was being asked. The other thing that's confused me is the "professor fellowship", which I understand you got from this source? My understanding is that Cambridge does not have "Professor fellows" as a distinct thing. Hawking is a professor of Cambridge and he is a fellow of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge; they are separate honours. On the other hand - you're supported by a source here... I'm going to go through my bookshelf tonight (library books in this case, I don't have shelf permanently dedicated to biographies of the man) and see what I can come up with. It would be great to get another opinion on how reliable this is, and if it's supported elsewhere. Fayedizard (talk) 11:02, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Going back over the Ferguson Bio, Hawking appears to have followed a normal (non-teaching) academic career path - phd, fellowship, fellowship, readership, professor without chair, chair (again, and unhelpfully, this use of fellowship is different from cambridge fellow). I can put in the dates and such of these, and would be happy to if that is consensus, but my reluctance is due to this sort of thing crowding out the more important aspects of his work - the spectacular thing about is career is that he holds *that* chair, and the range of discoveries he has made. Fayedizard (talk) 12:22, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For a comparison, you might look at the J. Robert Oppenheimer article. His biography contains a great deal of detail. The lead can be used to cover the highlights. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:32, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've popped in the details of his fellowships and career path - it turns out that the second fellowship was specially created - good call! Fayedizard (talk) 08:48, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries. - Dank (push to talk)
  • Okay I'm going to do some of these and hand some off to you. "He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded ...": nonparallel. See WP:Checklist#series.
  • "(see Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems)": Work that into the prose rather than tacking it onto the end.
  • "if the universe obeys general relativity and if the universe fits any of the Friedmann models, then the universe": two universes too many.
  • "to stay at Cambridge. and in ...": ?
  • "thermal radiation": I'm not sure what this means.
  • "known today as Bekenstein–Hawking radiation": known today as Hawking or Bekenstein–Hawking radiation
  • "a period of growing fame and success for Hawking, his work was now much talked about ...": comma splice
  • "While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a universe which is not closed.": repetitive
  • "Since this contradicted the idea under quantum mechanics of microcausality": "under" doesn't sound right. Maybe: the quantum mechanical notion of microcausality
  • Otherwise, so far so good on prose per standard disclaimer, down to where I stopped, about two-thirds of the way, at Stephen Hawking#Personal life. These are my edits. (The toolserver may not show the most recent edits.) - Dank (push to talk) 02:13, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Dank, it's a pleasure to find your name on a review. No problem with any of your copyedits, and no problem with any of the suggestions - I've made a single edit to cover all the changes (that had not already been done) and I believe it caught them all. Do let me know if I've missed anything and I'm looking forward to the rest of your comments.Fayedizard (talk) 03:01, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Made two tweaks, otherwise good to go. Striking "otherwise". - Dank (push to talk) 14:05, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I went though looking at the changes - although some edits are not necessarily ones I would have made, I'm happy that all of them improve the article :) Thank you so much for your review :) Fayedizard (talk) 17:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I haven't went through the article so no problems found yet but will give few issues if found any. For now, I see that Images are having captions which I believe that are of a bit of low standard for a FA. It doesn't seem to be fitting in the criteria. Here are the problems I see

  • In 1962–75, it is stated, Hawking in Cambridge. There is nothing in the picture from which one can determine that he is in Cambridge other then little view of the Background which is not enough. At least mention the event or anything else. Also, during 62-75, was the Professor looking like that? The pic is used in that section thus it should be a pic about him during that years thus I'm not quite sure that it is of him in those days or not (most probably it is not) and If not, it should be moved to relevant section.
  • In 1975–present - Caption is Hawking with string theorists David Gross and Edward Witten. For which event did they gathered? What is the relevance of the picture with the content in the sub-section?
  • In Recognition, the caption is too big. There is no need for inclusion of The Medal of Freedom is the United States' highest civilian honour. as it already appears in the main article Presidential_Medal_of_Freedom with which the caption is linked to. Thus remove the last extra line.
  • In Space and spaceflight - Hawking in 2007, experiencing weightlessness, can you change it a bit or link vacuum?

This was just for the images, I'll go through the article and will let know if there exists any issues. Thanks! TheSpecialUser TSU 13:06, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi TheSpecialUser - thank you for your comments, I've dropped the first picture, extended the caption to the second, reduced the caption for the third, and done a small rewrite on the space one - let me know if I've read the comments correctly? :) Fayedizard (talk) 08:14, 29 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Great! 1 last job regarding images, WP:ALT for the image in the infobox. TheSpecialUser TSU 09:19, 29 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm blushing... certainly shouldn't have missed that the first time. Done now :) Fayedizard (talk) 17:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment — I think the publications section should have some of his scientific papers to represent his technical work, no? Leonxlin (talk) 20:37, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That section represents his popular work (I have changed the section header to reflect this). His technical work is already discussed in the career section, including references to his papers.TR 06:01, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment For the world's most recognisable scientist today, I am shocked by how short this article is: less than 50 kB. Is there really so little to say about this iconic 70-year-old man? To compare with an equally well-known physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, that the latter article is 110 kB. Even Edward Teller (though only 60 kB) appears to be much longer, wordcount-wise.—indopug (talk) 10:22, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]


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