Talk:Owen Gingerich

Education
Can anyone find any additional information on Gingerich's education? Such as, what degrees did he get from which institutions and in what years? I have been unable to find a curriculum vitæ for him. If you can, please add the info to the "Early Life" section. Jacob1207 03:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I have found some of that data. However, it would be nice to have info on his doctoral thesis.  Can anyone dig up the title, topic, name of his adviser, etc? Jacob1207 23:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Good Article Nomination
I have read this article and found that it is pretty much well written, broad in its coverage, holds to a neutral point of view, is stable, and contains properly tagged images with rationales. However, before I can promote this article to Good status there are unsupported facts in the text that I think could benefit from citation, so here goes...
 * 1) The sentence at the beginning of the Career and contributions section that entails Gingerich's eccentric teaching style should be cited.
 * 2) The sentence that say he was awarded an Order of Merit by the Polish government should be cited also.
 * 3) This sentence is not only a run-on, but the quote in it should be cited, Gingerich, who is a Christian as well as a historian of science and a cosmologist, has been asked several times to comment on matters concerning science and faith, including Intelligent Design, an issue with "immense incomprehension from both the friends and foes."
 * 4) Also the bit about him hiring an airplane to advertise a class should be cited.

Overall, the article is very informative. I am putting this article on hold. When these concerns are met I will happily promote it to good status. Deyyaz [ Talk 05:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Failed GA, not touched since put on hold.Rlevse 21:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I apologize that I didn't check this article during the time its GA nomination was under consideration. I have, however, addressed the four points raised. Jacob1207 06:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

March 2007 Good Article Review
The article is factually accurate and verifiable, fairly broad in coverage, neutral, stable, and has good images. It's a good subject for a Wikipedia article. I have just one major problem with it as far as Good Article status goes: the structure needs reworking, and in particular the lead section needs to be redone. Here are some more detailed comments, roughly in descending order of importance.


 * 1) The introduction (section zero) is not an adequate summary of the article: it mostly just lists his current posts. It needs rethinking and should be rewritten in the light of Lead section. The intro should capture the essence of the article (and of Gingerich).  Currently, for example, it gives short shrift to the work he is most famous for (history of astronomy) and it doesn't even mention the Science & Religion topic.
 * 2) The "Career and contributions" section is a bit of a mishmash. The first paragraph talks about the IAU controversy of last year, and the same topic is in the second paragraph. The section needs to be more organized, either by topic or chronologically.
 * 3) You might want to use Template:Infobox_Scientist to gather together personal information about Dr. Gingerich; currently it's scattered throughout the article and some is missing.
 * 4) Combine the "Early life" and "Personal life" sections; they're closely related. I'd put the combined section where "Early life" is now.
 * 5) Assume each major section is read somewhat independently; for example, the "Early life" section begins "He …" but should begin "Gingerich …".
 * 6) I was surprised to see no mention of Gingerich's work on models for the solar atmosphere. More generally, a lot of his earlier work is missing.
 * 7) "was raised on the prairies of Kansas". Actually, I expect that North Newton, Kansas had extensive cropland agriculture when Gingerich was growing up there.  There wasn't much prairie left.  I'd change it to "the flatlands of Kansas", since North Newton is indeed as flat as a pancake.
 * 8) The "Science &amp; Religion" section is nicely written. "Religion" should be in lower-case in the section title, though.
 * 9) The text is inconsistent between "Dr. Gingerich" and "Gingerich". Typical Wikipedia style is the latter, I think.
 * 10) There should be a better bibliography. For example, the text refers to Gingerich's book The Book Nobody Read but there's no citation that I can follow. I suggest using Template:Cite_book and being fairly systematic about tracking down and listing his best-known books, certainly all the books mentioned in the article.
 * 11) I would have liked to see a few more independent references; many of the references are reused.
 * 12) The link to the Bethel College story is broken.
 * 13) You might want to compare this article to a known Good Article of scientist, e.g., Richard Dawkins, to get some more ideas of your own.


 * GA review (see here for criteria)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS):
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
 * 1) It is stable.
 * 2) It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
 * a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA):  c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
 * 1) Overall:
 * a Pass/Fail: —Eubulides 07:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * a Pass/Fail: —Eubulides 07:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Not clear
It is not clear which pronunciation Gingerich prefers, English or German. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.223.218 (talk) 16:44, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Defending an “interventionist” (miracle-making) God that violates the Central Doctrine of science

 * When atheists fib to protect God-A certain breed of nonbelievers are anxious to avoid pointing out the real flaws of religion salon.com.84.152.35.49 (talk) 22:44, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)
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No mention of his failure to detect frauds
I think he admits, in the PBS Secrets of the Dead episode in which the forgeries (in the Italian market) of Galileo works were offered as contempororaneously produced, at least self-disappointment. I don't recall claims of incompetence being reporting, re his now-questionably-competent overconfidence, that such forgeries were too infeasible to consider attention to that possibility, & I suggest further research & discussion of whether appropriate WP:RSs on the matter are available. --JerzyA (talk) 01:46, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Death and changing language to past tense.
Owen died today and the article is altered to reflect that. Some verbs were changed to past tense, but I didn't fix it everywhere because I do not want to edit the content of some sentences and make the usage worse. Someone closer to Owen should go over the whole article to make the tense of verbs correct and make content edits. 69.5.112.154 (talk) 01:11, 29 May 2023 (UTC)