Talk:Josephine M. Mitchell

Library donation
The sentence "When a flood destroyed the mathematics library of Charles University in Prague, she and her husband donated their own extensive library to replace it." may be incorrect, as the flooding referred to is presumably the more severe 2002 European floods of August 2002, rather than the 1997 Central European flood. As Mitchell died on December 28, 2000, and her husband on February 6, 2002, the donation may have been made on their behalf posthumously, rather than directly by Mitchell and her husband. The actual text of the ref cited (from 2003) is ambiguous: "In one special way, they have already provided unusual support for mathematics: Their rather magnificent collection of books and journals was sent to Charles University in the Czech Republic, where recent floods had destroyed the entire library." (my emphasis) Bahudhara (talk) 06:25, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Exactly the same thought (and conclusion) occurred to me, on checking the source. My interpretation, and it is no more than that, is that the American Mathematical Society made the decision to transfer property donated to it. But in any case, the words appearing in the article are not adequately supported by the source. We might well suppose that they would have thought it an appropriate use of their library, although "replace" is likely to also be too strong an assertion. --PaulBetteridge (talk) 09:05, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Please go ahead and correct that part to a more accurate description of what happened. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:10, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
 * An appropriate change was made by another editor --PaulBetteridge (talk) 22:03, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Doctoral advisor
The article currently lists Mitchell’s Ph.D advisor as Hilda Geiringer, citing the Mathematics Genealogy Project. Several other sources, though, give her advisor as Anna Pell Wheeler (sources: Institute for Advanced Study; AMS). Anybody have a way to verify? —Delirium (talk) 19:10, 10 September 2023 (UTC)