Talk:Albert Einstein

Start a new discussion at bottom

Archives
Complete archive Individual archive files: Oct 2001 – Feb 2004 Mar 2004 – Jan 2005 Feb 2005 – Aug 2005 Sep 2005 – Dec 2005 Jan 2006 – Feb 2006 Feb 2006 (priority dispute) Feb 2006 – Mar 2006 Mar 2006 – June 2006 June - 6 Aug., 2006

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? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.48.226.60 (talk)

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)

• "Squeaky science"? I've never heard of it. (Neither to any great extent has Google.) --Fastfission 13:05, 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 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

File:Einstein Memorial.jpg

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)
Born	March 14, 1879 Ulm, Württemberg, Germany
Died	April 18, 1955 Princeton, New Jersey
Nationality	Dual US -Swiss
Alma mater	ETH Zurich
Known for	Brownian motion Photoelectric effect Special relativity General relativity
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1921)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of Zurich (1909-1910) Karl Ferdinand University (1911) ETH Zurich (1912-1913) University of Berlin (1914-1931) IAS (1932-1955)
Doctoral advisor	Alfred Kleiner
Doctoral students	Hans 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. Newton has one, why not Einstein? They're useful for basic details about a scientist. --Michael C. Price ^talk 02:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Its a nice summary of some key facts LW77 02:53, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep -- Avi 03:51, 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 are 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. OK, well, how about we replace the quote with this: Spinozism? If you click on that link it sums it up nicely. Anybody agree or disagree? SureFire 13:53, 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)

• Keep - very useful. --Bender235 10:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep as per Bender235, Michael C. Price etc. It's handy. Also most of the main biographies have an infobox now that the Einstein article looks rather odd without it! bunix 11:34, 17 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)

• Even Snider Comment Strange, I thought the purpose of an encyclopedia was to look info up, trivial or not. --Michael C. Price ^talk 20:15, 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.
• 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) User:FayssalF/Sign

• 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

• Action. OK, I've done this in the above example. However I have not changed the main page until we get consensus.SureFire 14:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• 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)

• Reply Take a look at the version that is on the main page. I think the footnote takes care of your concerns. SureFire 22:16, 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)

• Keep, but remove Doctoral Advisor, Doctoral Students, and Religion. Kaldari 17:33, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. But remover religion. Billlion 18:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Religion may be marginal, but useful. I would keep Doctoral Advisor and Doctoral Students. Bejnar 18:38, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep but remove religion. Would you but "scientific preference" in the Pope's infobox? --SquidSK ^(1MC•log) 18:51, 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)

• Comment The answers to your questions are here: [13].SureFire 22:33, 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)

• Comment The use of the term "alma mater" has already been discussed and accepted by consensus here: [14].SureFire 22:00, 17 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)

• Comment. My suggestion re the shortening. I'd support the removal of "doctoral advisor", "doctoral student" and "residence". -- Szvest 22:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC) User:FayssalF/Sign

• 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. I agree with Surefire on the longer version. Schutz 22:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• STRONG KEEP, but remove the Religion field. Steiger 00:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. Residence is a bit rediculous as dead people don't have a "residence". The Latin meaning of "residence" is "place where you sit", not "place where you are laying 6 feet underground" :) Kaldari 00:41, 18 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)

• Comment.Ah, guess I needed to read the note at the bottom of the infobox :P Kaldari 00:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose internal spamming, no comment about infobox -- The proper manner in which to request participation in discussions is to post announcements on Wikipedia:Requests for comment, or another project page -- not to post messages to large numbers of user talk pages. John254 00:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Action. Good point about the RfC. I've gone ahead and added one in.SureFire 14:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. More internal spamming --teb728 02:24, 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 doplore what happened in Florida, and would never repeat that here :-) SureFire 14:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Vote tally so far:

• Keep 4: Michael C. Price, Schutz, Harald88, bunix
• Delete 4: Fastfission, teb728, Joke, DAGwyn
• Votes apparently resulting from votestacking 13: SureFire, Tyrenius, LW77, Avi, SuperGirl, Bender235, bunix, kingboyk, Szvest, Robert K S, Kaldari, Billlion, Bejnar, SquidSK

So by my count the vote is 4 to 4—hardly a consensus to Keep. --teb728 02:05, 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.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. 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)

• Comment I agree with bunix: The "spamming" was neutral. --Michael C. Price ^talk 06:53, 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)

• Comment.'There is no "votestacking" going on here. Please take a look at the messages left by Surefire. Kaldari 07:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Remove religion (not necessary), replace "USA" on residence with "United States" and replace "US" on Nationality with "American". --Howard the Duck 04:51, 18 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)