Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Leonhard Euler

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Leonhard Euler[edit]

I feel this article is comprehensive and adequately cited, and looks nothing at all the way it did during its first nom (archive1). I'll be relatively free in the next week or so to respond to comments, so I welcome any input. Borisblue 02:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support as nominator. Borisblue 19:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Please fix your refs, and your layout should conform to WP:GTL. Sandy 03:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Wow, I can't believe I've been in this projct this long and have not seen WP:FN. Thanks for the input Sandy! I'm going to bed right now, but fixing the refs will be the first thing on my to-do list tomorrow. Borisblue 05:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I've fixed the refs, and the last sections have been rearranged to conform with WP:GTL. Borisblue 23:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article is well referenced, but it might benefit from one more run through, to tighten up the prose and add a few inline cites.

  • This work wasn't very influential however, it was said that "for musicians it was too advanced in its mathematics and for mathematicians it was too musical." Italics should be used sparingly; it's not necessary to italicize quotes. Also, the weasle words "it was said that" should be eliminated; the statement has a citation, it should say who said that.
  • Needs to be cited: He is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time; he is also one of the most prolific, with collected works filling over 60 volumes.
  • Redundancies in the lead: Euler developed many important concepts and proved numerous lasting [mathematical] theorems in diverse areas of mathematics, from [areas including] calculus, to number theory to [and] topology. In the course of this work h He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology, for instance defining the fundamentally important concept [such as the definition] of a mathematical function.[1]
  • Skipping further down the article, to a section in the middle, "There is a very famous anecdote inspired by Euler's arguments with secular philosophers over religon." is awkward. Very famous is redundant. Euler's arguments with secular philosphers over religion inspired a famous anecdote.
  • More weasle words: It has been estimated that it would take eight hours of work per day for 50 years to copy it all by hand. (by whom, name the person).
  • Stubby sentences: A lot of mathematical notation in use today was introduced by Euler. Euler introduced the notation f(x) to describe a function. Additionally, he invented the notation for the trigonometric functions that is currently in use.
    • Euler introduced much of the mathematical notation in use today, such as the notation f(x) to describe a function, and the notation used for the trigonometric functions.
  • Skipping down to number theory: Two sentences in close proximity start with "a lot of".
  • Skipping down to graph theory, this sentence needs a cite: In 1736 Euler solved, or rather proved insoluble, a problem known as the seven bridges of Königsberg.

These are just random examples: in general I the article is very readble, but a bit more work is needed to tighten and refine the prose, and to cite a few more statements. I won't object, as I won't be able to revisit the article due to travel, and these issues should be easy to fix. Sandy 00:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking the trouble to comb through the article. I've fixed all the problems you cited. Borisblue 16:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are several stylistic problems with this article, but I cannot fix them since those screen-high citation blocks make the source text impossible to navigate. Please move the citation details to the end of the page. Fredrik Johansson 14:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh dear me, you're right, the citation is a mess. I've formatted it better and removed unecessary parameters so the 1-page-long citation block doesn't happen anymore. I hope the markup is editable now. Borisblue 15:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, but a few things could use attention:
  • "Several of his children also attained distinction." Details?
  • "Richard Feynman (Lectures on Physics, p.I-22-10)." Make this consistent with the rest of the article (use a footnote)
  • "Understanding the infinite was naturally the major focus of Euler's research." A layman isn't going to see why this is so "natural".
  • "Trivia" by definition is trivial; either expand these points (especially the last two), work them into the text, or eliminate the section.
Overall, though, a great article. --Spangineeres (háblame) 17:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I removed the "children" bit, and incorporated the trivia section in the article like you suggested. I'm trying to figure out exactly where the Feynman quote comes from, but once I do, yes that ref should be in footnotes as well. Thanks! Borisblue 17:57, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

*minor note. As a native french speaker, I'm not sure that "he is the master of us all" is the correct translation for "c'est notre maître à tous". In terms of connotation, I think the semantics of master is slightly stronger in english, especially with the phrasing "the master of us all" rather than "our master". Now correct me if I'm wrong but isn't "the master of us all" suggesting some sort of hierarchical relationship? The wiktionary entry The french word "maître" is routinely used to denote reverence to the rolemodel, I don't think that's the case in english. Pascal.Tesson 05:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC) I fixed it. Pascal.Tesson[reply]

  • Oppose for now. Here are things that should be adressed I think: See update of vote from Oppose to weak support below. Pascal.Tesson
  1. I have quickly gone through it and the prose, while quite good, is not exactly compelling and certainly not brilliant. For instance I have removed a number of occurrences of "Euler" where the pronoum suffices. Some adjustments of that sort would really improve the flow of the article.
  2. I've corrected the translation of the second french sentence which completely missed the witty point of Condorcet. this has also been adressed. Pascal.Tesson
  3. The philosophy and religious beliefs section is not so clear and in any case it seems odd that this would appear before the description of his mathematical legacy. Pascal.Tesson
  4. I'm not sure about the Feynman assessment of the first formula as being the most remarkable in mathematics. As a math major, I had a number of different profs describe the second one (Euler's identity) as the most beautiful truth that has ever existed and I suspect that the Feynman quote is simply misplaced. By the way I think it's worth adding the sentence that one of the magical aspects of Euler's identity is that it involves the 5 arguably most important constants in mathematics.
  5. Why don't we have a nice picture of the 10 swiss franc bill? Is this a copyright issue? If it is, then I'm sure we could either argue for fair use or even manage to get authorisation. It seems like Swiss banknotes are not copyrighted. Good news so I put it up. Pascal.Tesson
  6. There's no discussion about his work on the logarithm of negative numbers. The history of mathematics book I have home (Boyer and Merzbach) credit him with explaining to D'Alembert that the log of -1 is i pi. I don't claim to know much about Euler, but I did remember that one so I'm worried that the article is far from comprehensive in terms of his mathematical contributions. (added now) Pascal.Tesson
All that being said, it's still a great article and should be able to make it to FA after a few weeks' work. Pascal.Tesson 06:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the comprehensiveness issue is pretty much unavoidable, as Euler is the most prolific mathematician ever it would be impossible to say something about every mathematical advance he made in a 32kbish article(that would fill an entire wikiproject) the best we can do is say something about his more significant contributions. Plus, I was trying to make the math readable to the lay person, thus omitting some of the details of the mathematics and concentrating on the "big picture" And looking at it again, I agree that more can be said about his work in logarithms, which really were a focal point in his research in analysis. I agree about the Feynman quote, it should refer to Euler's identity rather than Euler's Formula, I'll see if I can get access to the Feynman book to check it out. Borisblue 14:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Re the log of -1: I think Euler was mainly settling a dispute between Johann Bernoulli and GW Leibniz. I'll try to get a source on that and stick it in the Euler's identity article soon. Melchoir 20:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. What I wrote I got from Boyer's book. From what I remember he says something like "although it should have been apparent to Bernoulli." Pascal.Tesson 20:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm continuing to make some minor fixes and have added one more inline reference in the intro. By the way, I think the duplicate references shouldn't appear as all distinct. The article has a list of 27 references when in fact there are only a dozen or so. The Calinger article appears 6 times for example. Pascal.Tesson 23:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ooops. Midway through adressing that comment, I realized that the various citations are to different pages of those references. That still looks like over-accurate referencing to me but then again maybe that's not the standard. In any case I will stop merging the references until we agree on that issue. Pascal.Tesson 23:33, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like doing references this way because I find it easier when I have to do research- since the page information is already there, I don't see any reason to rm it. By the way, since you know french, would you mind fixing the "master of us all" quote? Thanks!
Wow, just looked through the extent of you improvements- thanks for all the good work! I've reverted the referencing changes and placed a discussion topic on the the talk page. Borisblue 02:58, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that if we do decide to revert to the old system, which franky I don't really mind, only the names of the refs need to be changed. I did not actually modify the references themselves since as soon as there is a name match, the rest of the reference is ignored. I will change the translation to "He is a master for us all" which is epsilon-better I think.Pascal.Tesson 04:01, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment any chance you could rewrite the second half of the graph theory/topology section? It seems unnecessarily technical. Actually, one way out of all this is to create a separate article on Euler's contributions to mathematics where it would be fair-game to describe this to a more mathematically inclined audience. Pascal.Tesson 05:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, I'll work on that section later tonight. Actually, I did try to create a subarticle about Euler's mathematics contributions that would cover it more in depth, but then one of the established editors in this article overruled me and reverted my changes. I think I'm going to try again and create an article mathematical discoveries of Leonhard Euler which would be more comprehensive and technical, and leave the math in this article to be more of a casual read. Borisblue 16:53, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. It's not that I think there's too much on the math section of the main article, I think it's about right except for what I mentionned about logarithms (needs more) and topology (needs less). It's more a question of getting some article where we can do him justice. Pascal.Tesson 17:23, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Added a paragraph about the logarithms in the analysis section and trimmed out the topology part. I don't think it's correct to say Euler made any contributions to topology at all. Topology as we know it didn't exist in his time- while it might be right to say his work suggested it, that's not really enough to justify saying too much about topology. Borisblue 22:19, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I believe the latest issue of Nature has a book review on a recent book on the subject. Since you are a mathematician, it might be worth your while to check out both the review and the book itself. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 12:20, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm... I'll check it out. Thank you! Borisblue 22:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • As suggested earlier, I've created a specific page for his contributions. Hopefully this will help in slightly condensing the section in the main article without sacrificing any content or, more to the point, make sure that this section does not grow unreasonnably in the future. For now I have more or less simply pasted the current section into the new article which can be developped. BorisBlue, you might want to add back in there what you deleted from the main page. Since I also copied his list of works there, it might also make sense to shorten the current list to include his most famous works and refer to the other article for a complete list. Pascal.Tesson 16:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh and it might help if I said what that article title is! I chose Contributions of Leonhard Euler to mathematics. I most certainly won't be offended if anyone wants to move it to a more euphonious name. Pascal.Tesson 03:44, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I've added a few external links to extra references. The good news is that there's a lot of good information in those references. The bad news is of course that this reinforces my belief that the article is not yet comprehensive. Note also that many of these references are very well written and we should aspire to that kind of quality for the wiki article. Pascal.Tesson 16:15, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    The issue is, given that Euler has been written about by a lot of peer-reviewed journals, I have been very picky in choosing sources. The bulk of the article has been based on sources from the Historia Mathematica, American Math Monthly, and books published by the American Math. Society and Oxford press. I think we should be reluctant to base facts on the article on some professors lectures that he published on the internet, or even non-peer reviewed sources like mathworld, given that so many serious historians are dedicated to Euler and we can (and have) use them instead. You have stated repeatedly that the comprehensiveness of the article concerns you: well, other than the now-fixed omission of the negatuve logarithms, this criticism is unfortunately very vague; what precisely do you believe should be added? If it is discussion of Euler's mathematics, bear in mind that Euler is the most prolific mathematician in history, and so it will be impossible to discuss all his mathematical contributions in a 30-40kb wiki article. I think the article in its current state does give a good overview of his most significant contributions; and now with the "contributions" subpage we can add more detail if need be. But I need to know needs to be included.Borisblue 04:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    One of the external links you added was the EB article on Euler: note that that even that omits what is one of his most famous discoveries: the Konigsberg bridges problem. Of course, our standards should be (and already are) higher than EB's, but please keep in mind Euler's humongous total output when citing comprehensiveness concerns. Borisblue 04:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment actually, I know that I'm being vague. I don't claim to be anything close to an authority on Euler and I'm simply worried about comprehensiveness because I want to make sure we cross check other references before making this an FA. I'm not saying we should put in here every little bit of info we can find but we might find in those references important aspects that have been overlooked in the handful of references which were the primary sources for the bulk of the article. Skipping through some of these I was for instance able to put in the year for the St-Petersburg fire and the subject of his master's dissertation. (Not that either is tremendously important) My goal in putting these other references is also just to give the reader ample choices of further reading. I am much happier with the article now than I was a week ago. Actually let me make that clearer by changing my opinion below. Pascal.Tesson 13:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nomination. Great article, well-written, good pictures, etc. CRGreathouse (t | c) 03:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support Let me update my earlier comments. I think this is much closer than what we need for FA. My remaining concerns are:
  1. Writing still has to be polished. Because Wiki articles are written incrementally, their flow is often subpar. This has been improved from last week but it still needs a bit to reach the "brilliant prose" criterion.
  2. The philosophy and religious beliefs section is not so clear. In particular the Diderot anecdote is odd. There's an apparent contradiction with the Diderot is dumb/Diderot is not so dumb thing.
  3. Comprehensiveness: much better but as noted above we should cross check with other references. Also Euler's bibliography has been removed which might be a bit of an overkill. How about adding back his four or five most important publications and referencing to the long article for an extended list?
  4. I'm not sure about the Feynman assessment of the first formula as being the most remarkable in mathematics. As a math major, I had a number of different profs describe the second one (Euler's identity) as the most beautiful truth that has ever existed and I suspect that the Feynman quote is simply misplaced. Pascal.Tesson 13:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Updated my recommendation from "weak suport" to "support". The writing is much better with all the tiny fixes made by various editors. There are extra images, extra references, better overall organization. I can confidently say that the quality of the article has surpassed the featured one on Gauss. Pascal.Tesson 05:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I fixed the feynman reference. The Diderot thing is a bit confusing- what the article is trying to say is that this anecdote is very commonly circulated (ie, that diderot is dumb) but that the anecdote is definitely untrue. I'm not sure how to reword it however. Thanks for bringing these points up. I must say that you are definitely the best kind of FAC participant, seeing how much you contributed to make the article better. Reading the EB article again, I feel that there is some stuff that should be added (synthetic geometry, e.g. Euler Line). Also, about comprehensiveness, since we are both college math majors we are perhaps not that qualified in the field- you are right, and that is one problem with wikipedia. I'm going to try to email Ronald Calinger, a math historian who specializes in Euler (he is referneced in the article) and hope that he will respond. I think having an expert check will give us a better idea whether the article is comprehensive, and if not what needs to be done. Borisblue 22:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes it's been fun working on this. Certainly a math historian should take a look at it. I recently posted a notice on the WikiProject mathematics page to try and get some more feedback from mathematically competent people but you're right: it's the history we are likely to represent incorrectly. In any case, I am likely not going to contribute much to this article (save minor edits) in the coming two weeks but good luck with it. I'm sure that you'll get plenty of support now. Pascal.Tesson 23:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Terrific article on a terrific mathematician.UberCryxic 17:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment have added an Infobox (see talk page). Pascal.Tesson 18:03, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Well written article on important topic. Unlike articles on so many other less important topics, it can't possibly cover everything completely, because there is so much more to write about one of the greatest scientists of all time, then, say, about Cynna Kydd, but it covers the most important points, and what it does say, it says very well. AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Request to delay promotion The tally is 5-0 now, but I asked an expert historian to review the article, and he brought up some issues I would like to fix before promotion (see Talk:Leonhard_Euler#Letter_from_Ronald_Calinger.21). These shouldn't be hard to deal with, but I think it would be good to fix them before this article is featured. Borisblue 15:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Real Life (tm) is getting in the way, it may be a while before I can work on the stuff. Borisblue 01:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Same for me actually, but I don't think there's any rush. Not sure which admin is currently in charge of checking the FAC debates but I'm sure he/she will not mind a reasonnable delay. The article is close enough to deserve that patience. Pascal.Tesson 16:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have addressed Calinger's comments. Borisblue 19:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The article has been up for a month, creating work for editors who have to keep checking status in order to vote Keep or Oppose. Since it's close, and it appears you will have the support once you have time to iron out the remaining issue, maybe you can consider withdrawing the nomination until you're ready to finish it up, and re-submitting when it's ready? Sandy 18:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment with all due respect, I don't think that makes sense. For one thing, even the expert's opinion was globally positive and there's not much to do left. I think the current version meet the criteria and it's not like we have to stop improving the article once it gets FA status. Also, I'm not sure that there are many editors who have followed the article's progression that closely over the past month. I feel it would be more time consumming for everybody to start the process all over again in two weeks. Just my 0.02$ though. Pascal.Tesson 20:07, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Now wholeheartedly support I don't think that there's any question the article meets all the FA criteria.
  1. I won't go and say that the prose is brilliant, but I think "compelling prose" is probably a fair assessment. The flow is there, the traces of the construction of the article have been erased.
  2. Comprehensiveness I don't think is an issue anymore, especially after the integration of Calinger's comments.
  3. Factually acurate. Certainly falls in line with the references I had available. Thoroughly referenced, good combo of hard references and somewhat less reliable but online references.
  4. Neutral (not that this ever was an issue)
  5. Stable: while there has been extensive editing in the last weeks, the content wasn't drastically modified.
  6. Manual of style compliant. The content is well organized, lead section does what it should, TOC is good. Infobox and metadata were added.
  7. Good, varied images: portraits, stamps, figures explaining his contributions to math, copy of title page of his book.
  8. Lenght has been kept reasonnable especially after splitting the "contributions" section. 35kb is not short but then again this is Euler not Lindy Booth and that's probably below the biographical FA average anyways.

I plan to stop fiddling with it, at least until the FA status is resolved. The next target should be to rewrite the spinoff article on Euler's contributions to mathematics. Pascal.Tesson 16:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Another bit of feedback from an editor who recently updated the assessment on the talk page and whom I asked for input. Pascal.Tesson 21:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I think this one is ready to go now. Kaldari 04:45, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I think this is a great article. I made a few fairly minor changes. Here are a few more comments:
Other than that I think the article is great and support its nomination. --Zvika 17:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and something else (Spangineer has already commented on this, but it went uncorrected): "Understanding the infinite was naturally the major focus of Euler's research." I don't really understand why this is "naturally". Anybody? --Zvika 17:58, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's just that calculus is just, essentially "the study of the infinite". I'll remove it, since it's not clear.Borisblue 15:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed all the issues you brought up. Thanks! Borisblue 15:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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