Talk:Stanisław Ulam

Lemberg
Lemberg belonged to Austria Empiry (not to Poland) in those days and Ulam was US citizen. 82.82.126.128 15:52, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Ulam was a member of Lvov school of Polish mathematician, with Stefan Banach and Hugo Steinhaus. Yes, he was Jewish and he emigrated to USA. This doesn't change the fact, that he was born in Poland, learn in Poland, contributed his work in Poland. AM

I read "Dark Sun" several times. As I recall, Ulam proposed a staged thermonuclear design which used the neutron flux from the primary to compress the secondary. Teller pointed out the X-rays got to the secondary faster, which forced using them for compression, instead of neutrons. The "sparkplug" fission component added compression from the center of the secondary. --MWS 16:13, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Ulam's Theorem
I've seen this before, and it's a neat sequence. I don't remember a proof of this conjecture, however. If there is a proof, it would be nice to see a sketch of it. If there is no proof, that would also be nice to know. (Maybe it's just really obvious, and I'm obtuse.) As far as I can tell, one wants to keep going until a power of two is reached or number known to result in a power of two is reached. How does this preclude cycles and divergent sequences?Coleca 06:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I notice that the "theorem" has been deleted. I don't know if it's something that belongs in an enyclopedia, but arguing that it's just a conjecture is not sufficient justification. Coleca 08:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * You're probably talking about he Collatz conjecture, also known as the Ulam conjecture. It is only a conjecture (i.e. not proven).  Bubba73 (talk), 01:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There is a second Ulam's conjecture which is in graph theory. It's on wikipedia as the Reconstruction conjecture--Syd Henderson 03:25, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Name
I would request anyone who supports the present spelling to read Ulam's autobiography: Adventures of a Mathematician. His usage in English is Stanislaw and he spelled Stanislaw Mazur with an unmodified l. His friends called him Stanislaw, or Stan; his own usage seems to have been S. M. Ulam. This would be acceptable as a compromise, but it is not the most common usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Now changed; let anyone with a substantive case take it to WP:RM Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Contributions to Theoretical Biology
Ulam's contributions to mathematical models in theoretical biology should not be overlooked.

Here is a typical excerpt from a review of his work in the field.

These results helped evolutionary biologists resolve uncertainties regarding the placement of problematic species on the evolutionary tree. By comparing which species had the most similar forms of Cytochrome-C, evolutionary biologists were able to establish which species were most closely related on the evolutionary tree. Mathematical models such as those crafted by Ulam and his collaborators exemplified the power, utility, and importance of mathematical modeling in unifying the fields of molecular biology and macro-evolution.

Deleted comment about Sakharov
the comment was:

(Note: Sakharov's role as an independent discoverer has been called into question as of Dec. 29, 2008.)

I removed it because it isn't really relevant to this article, at least in its present form. Also, it appears from the NY Times article itself that "Sakharov's role as an independent discoverer has been called into question" before. Still, something about this may belong somewhere&mdash;just not here, I think. Very interesting subject. False vacuum (talk) 22:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite and cn tags
Hi

I noticed an editor added a great section of material on Fission and explanations.

Unfortunately this was more on the theory of fission, and its explanation, than on Ulams work and so I had to remove a lot of it. I did retain some material and moved it to the section "Manhattan Project" to better explain how Ulams work led to the project. This also needs a lot of citations as, if it was the case that the Manhattan project relied on his work as heavily as claimed, then that should be supported by quotes or refs.

I have tagged the artice with a number of cn's as there is a need for showing the sources of those specific points. If he indeed was the first to realise something or the one that started something it should be stated as such with a ref and possibly a quote or two

thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 02:50, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Disputed: Ulam's contribution to the nuclear chain reaction
The section on Ulam and the Manhattan Project contains the following paragraph:

When a single neutron collides with a uranium nucleus, in nuclear fission experiments, the final products are fission fragments and "new" neutrons. If a target-mass of solid uranium is bombarded with neutrons those "new" neutrons might collide with other uranium nuclei and again cause those nuclei to fission. Ulam realized that,[citation needed] if the target-mass was sufficiently large, a chain reaction would occur and fission could be either continuous—or even more importantly it could increase exponentially. '''This last statement is just plain wrong - Leo Sziliard is the inventor of the chain reaction. Sziliard actually applied for a British patent in the 30's. Sziliard and Fermi actually received a patent for the controlled release of nuclear energy in a pile post WWII. [4]'''

It seems clear from another article that the injected comment "This last statement is just plain wrong..." is factually correct but unhelpful. It would be useful for someone with expertise on this subject to correct this section. Jylothr (talk) 06:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

It is clear from Richard Rhodes's "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", which contains copious references, that Leo Szilard is credited with the idea of the nuclear chain reaction. Wikipedia's own article on Szilard goes into this in some depth. The attribution to Ulam is wrong and should not be allowed to stand. Simply removing this part is better than leaving it there if no one will edit it properly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.255.116.22 (talk) 00:52, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The Book Mathematics and Logic
Because the following material is only remotely related to the subject of the article, I have moved it from the body of the article to the talk page. Deer*lake (talk) 15:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC) See 68.51.72.248

Corrections and additions to the 1990 Dover paperback reprint. Page 4, paragraph 4: In 2008 it was shown by Oliveira e Silva that Goldbach's conjecture is correct for all even numbers less than 120,000,000,000,000,000. Page 4, last paragraph: As of 2011 there is still no quadratic polynomial p(x) with integer coefficients such that the set {p(n) : n = 1,2,3,...} is known to contain infinitely many prime numbers. Page 8, first paragraph: As of 2011 it is still not known whether Euler's constant is rational, algebraic, or transcendental. Page 128, paragraph 6: Fermat's last theorem was proved by Andrew Wiles in 1995. Page 130, last paragraph: Hilbert's tenth problem was solved in 1970. There can be no algorithm that determines whether a general Diophantine equation has a solution. The problem is undecidable.

Restoring the lead paragraph
On 12 April 2012, an anonymous editor rewrote the lead paragraphs of this article. The new material is full of factual errors, misplaced emphasis, and non-standard English.

Some examples of errors: "Ulam escaped from Warsaw" In 1939, Ulam left Lwów, not Warsaw, to return to his position at Harvard after a summer visit with his family. Coincidentally, the war started shortly after he left. "Ulam was invited by John von Neuman to join and participate in …….. the Manhattan Project" It was Hans Bethe, not von Neuman, who invited Ulam. "… co-invented the Monte Carlo method of computation with the von Neuman" Ulam is universally credited with inventing the method. He did not "co-invent" it.

Examples of misplaced emphasis: the professor of Mathematics at the University of Florida the faculty of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison These relatively insignificant academic positions do not belong in the lead paragraph, which leaves out his major position at Colorado.

Examples of non-standard English. "... in an amid fear of Holocaust" "… was placed in Los Alamos National Laboratory" "… relating the pure and applied mathematics, most notable of his works includes the [[Ulam spiral]|undefined"

Consequently, I am restoring the lead paragraph to its previous version. Deer*lake (talk) 13:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation
His name was Stanisław Ułam, was it not? The l's are eł's not el's and they are both pronounced "w" in Polish and certainly were by Ułam. So it would have been STAN-is-wah OO-wam. Ułam's colleages used to ask him what the line or bar through the l in his last name was, and he used to say it stood for "l over 2π." (Like a reduced constant; a little physics joke). S B Harris 00:54, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not Moved Mike Cline (talk) 09:12, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Stanislaw Ulam → Stanisław Ulam – His American name was "Stan", so if article uses his Polish name it should be Stanisław instead of Stanislaw. konrad (talk) 22:24, 22 August 2012 (UTC)


 * As all have correctly noted, the ł is only in the first name, not the last (my error). Yes, he went by "Stan", probably to avoid hearing his name pronounced Stanislaw. If there is a wiki for Stanisław Lem (which there is) probably that should be one for Stanisław Ulam. Or it could be moved to Stan Ulam, since he chose that for America. See the discussion at Sergei Rachmaninoff. Either way, of course, there should be multiple redirects from all the other spellings. (Hey, Konrad. How you doin? Don't take any złotych. According to Wikipedia, the recognized English plural is zlotys. They don't suggest how to say that plural, though. Heh.)  S  B Harris 23:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment fairly indifferent but Stan Ulam gets 6x as many GB hits. George Stanciu The Three Big Questions Page 1 "My name is Stan Ulam.” He poked the fingers of his right hand against his chest and said, “I am Polish.” I suggested that we start a club at the Laboratory for Eastern Europeans." In ictu oculi (talk) 01:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose use Stan Ulam or the current title. His common English-language name is not the Polish version, since most physics and military books do not spell it that way. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:36, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per Britannica and WorldCat. Both of these sources use special characters quite intensively, so they would certainly give him a "ł" if it was proper to do so. The title should be at "Stanislaw M. Ulam", which is how the subject is given as a book author. Kauffner (talk) 05:07, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Support FWIW, I've had a standard physics education (PhD in nuclear physics, at that), and I have never heard him called "Stan". Note that the Americanization of names for foreigners was very common in the 1940's, 50's and 60's, as immigrants (esp. Eastern-European immigrants) didn't want to be stereotyped into DP's ("displaced persons", post WWII immigrants), which was a rather pejorative term (my childhood found references to 'dirty DP's or 'fucking DP's; its not pretty.). So there was a very strong desire to fit in, to be part of the crowd, to be a "real American", and so, for example, Chen Ning Yang became Nobel laurate Frank Yang.  I suppose that, yes, in that era, Stanisław became "Stan", and, indeed, there may be many references to him that way. But his given name is Stanisław none-the-less. Its sort of a matter of pride an honour, a need to shake off old slights and slurs. linas (talk) 14:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That may all be true but it is not the job of Wikipedia "shake off old slights and slurs". Wikipedia should reflect the common English name of subjects as presented in reliable sources.  Tha fact that the subject himself used "Stanislaw Ulam" (or "S. M. Ulam") further validates the current title.  —  AjaxSmack   21:42, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * See further below. My name has an š in it, but this causes so much grief and trouble, that I've had to abandon using it.  Certainly, its impossible to get that on my drivers license, passport, or on any other official document from any branch of govt, any school, or any employer. My parents couldn't get it on my birth certificate; they simply didn't have type-writers back then with this letter. I've tried to use it when publishing academic articles, but had to abandon it because even the big-name, highly respectable publishing houses routinely screwed it up. None-the-less, if there were a day when there was a WP article on me, I'd like to see my name spelled properly and correctly, and not as it appears in countless official and unofficial "reliable sources". linas (talk) 03:24, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I suppose you want to de-Latin-ize Roman Empire names that are not Latin as well, because of discrimination by the Roman Empire against non-Latin names? Or Middle Ages personages who Latinized their names for international correspondence so as to look educated, should be renativized? -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:26, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * What?? The cultural and societal norms of today are completely different than those of the middle ages. The events surrounding WWII have certainly burned all around; the DP phenomenon, and the close-knit cultural nationalism of DP communities in the United States has been strong for real reasons! Yikes!  This has nothing to do with the middle ages! linas (talk) 03:13, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The circumstances are exactly the same, people modified their names to conform to the societal norms of the environment they were entering. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:15, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose This subject was discussed and resolved in 2007.  See Name above.  On the "What links here" listing for the article there are 181 items. Of these, 103 refer to articles that link to "Stanislaw Ulam", 11 are redirect pages, of which: 5 are misspellings, with no links; 3 are forms with "Stanisław" that link to 57 articles; the remaining 3 link to 16 articles.  Consequently, within Wikipedia, the predominant reference is to "Stanislaw Ulam".   To get an idea of the situation in a broader sample of English literature, here are graphs from Google's Ngram viewer which compare the relative frequencies of appearance of  "Stanislaw Ulam" and "Stan Ulam".  The graph  for "Stanisław Ulam" is not shown, because it does not rise above the baseline.  "Stanislaw Ulam" is used about 2.5 times more often than "Stan Ulam", by which he was known by at Los Alamos.  It appears in some of the laboratory's publications (See Ref. 13 in the article.), but in more formal contexts "Stanislaw Ulam" appears. (Ref. 50)  "Stan" is a nickname, which is not appropriate for the title of an article.  Ulam spent 50 of his 75 years in America; he has been lauded as a "Great American" and was thoroughly Americanized.  He used "S. M. Ulam" on his publications, but for most other purposes, including his autobiography, he used the current title of the article, "Stanislaw Ulam".  In consideration of the overwhelming preponderance of its usage, of its stability over 5 years, and of the tangled mess a change would make of existing Wikipedia links, this title should be kept.  Deer*lake (talk) 01:17, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I find this argument specious and absurd: it is instantly invalidated by the observation that the character ł is difficult to type! Its difficult in TeX, its difficult in MSWord, its difficult in html, its difficult even here on WP. Its difficult for professional typesetters working at academic journals -- I speak from experience, as my name has an š in it, and I've struggled repeatedly with editors who manage to turn it into ś or ş or more typically don't even bother till you nag them a bunch of times. Ditto sign-makers. Back in the 1940's, 50's, 60's ... forget it... it was literally impossible to typeset this character.  You think typewriters back then had this letter?  You think typesetting machines (the big ones, that poured molten lead into gulleys) were capable of handling this letter? Not the ones in the US! Since the character l is a suitable replacement, people will use that. Laziness explains your google results, not accuracy. linas (talk) 03:04, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I suppose I will need to go to the Polish złoty page and suggest Polish zloty since that gets more Google hits. Personally, since we do have Stanisław Lem for an example, I think we should use a typography as close to what the Roman character set of en.wiki allows, and it certainly allows the ł. This will not affect Google rank or difficulty finding the man in Wikipedia, since all redirects will be in place, just as they are for Stanislaw Lem (see, that worked). The arguments I've seen above are just reactionary bilge. Stan Ulam was up against typesetting problems in his own day, and so he didn't use the ł in print, being a practical man. We have plenty of evidence that he used it when handwriting his own name, as his colleagues asked him about it (see his joke above about it being a reduced l/2π). He was up against typesetting and xenophobia problems when writing his autobiography, too. But WE don't have to follow, as this medium is far more flexible than the medium Ulam had to contend with. S  B Harris 03:36, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I hope that consideration will be given to the guidelines spelled out in Article_titles and in Article_titles.   Deer*lake (talk) 17:26, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose – It's not so difficult to type an "ł" if you are a native-speaking Pole using a Polish keyboard. I'll assume that back in the 1950's Polish newspapers did not have any difficulties typesetting the character either.  There is a Polish Wikipedia article on Stanisław Ulam—Google Chrome will translate it to English for you, and you know what, Chrome converts the "ł" to "l" when it translates to English.  Stanisław Lem, Stanisław August Poniatowski, Stanisław Leszczyński, Stanisław Wyspiański, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Stanisław Żółkiewski and others all lived their entire lives where their native language is spoken.  I found one Stanisław who died in an English-speaking country: Stanisław Maczek, a WW II Polish tank commander who was stripped of Polish citizenship by the Communist government of Poland, and thus had to remain in Britain, where he was denied combatant rights and refused a military pension, and as a result, was forced to do menial work as a bartender.  Ulam became an American, and did his most notable work in New Mexico.  Another Stanislaw who was born in Poland and has become notable through work in the U.S. is Stanislaw Burzynski. Wbm1058 (talk) 00:37, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Ulam family of Lwów
I cannot find such an institution mentioned in any books other than the source. Ditto for Polish National Wood Industry Council. Can I ask that someone add Polish names of those organizations? The translations may be mangled (I cannot find anything relevant searching Polish sources). I also think that the original, not Englicized, version of the name Michael should be used, i.e. Michał, as seen for example in. That source seems to be provide more information about Ulam family, which may be notable, sadly I cannot access the preceeding page, but it does imply that our article may be confusing Michał Ulam with Szymon Ulam? The section is reproduced verbatim from, in a chapter "Ulam family of Lwów". --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:02, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I cannot find such an institution Cannot find what institution? Deleted the bit about the Woof Industry Council. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Cannot find either. Deletion is probably best, this is not really important to Stanislaw's bio anyway. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

From pl wiki
Some interesting claims from pl wiki that would be worth adding here for completeness, referenced of course: Also, while the Polish article doesn't say so, a good article should clearly state from where he received his PhD. Also, who was his supervisor? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 05:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * his first published work was in Fundamenta Mathematicae on pl:Arytmetyka liczb kardynalnych (I am sorry, I don't know how to translate this into English... arithmetic of cardinal numbers?)
 * He recevied his PhD in 1934.
 * As the article says, he was awarded a DSc and his supervisor was Kazimierz Kuratowski. Ulam's description of what he did to get his DSc (write a thesis and face examiners) sounds like our Western PhD. There is probably a matter of translation from Polish here. You're our expert on Poland, so I'll leave it up to you. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:30, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I expended this a little from a Polish source, but I think this may be better reviewed by somebody more versed in math and physics. Reading on, why is C. J. Everett notable? Also, I am waiting for your reply to issues I raised in the previous section. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:22, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't linked him, alyjough he may make the grade under WP:ACADEMIC. He was a collaborator with Ulam on many papers, and worked with him on the Super. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:05, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Added a link to a list of Ulam's papers to the article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:08, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest redlinking him per WP:RED, and briefly explaining his significance (going beyond just saying he was Ulam's friend). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:34, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Comment on the GA review process
The process did improve some aspects of the article. For example the current photo in the info box is better than the original Los Alamos badge photo.

However, I am not sure that the overall article is better than it was on 11 May 2013. With little explicit reference to the good article criteria, and with virtually no attention to the preservation of content, an inexperienced and uninformed reviewer made numerous suggestions of deletions and arbitrary stylistic changes, which descended to the level of changing single words. These were slavishly implemented by the nominator. The result is a pallid recapitulation of standard information about Ulam that does not do justice to his vibrant personality.

Some examples of content that did not survive the review are:


 * Ulam's vision, as was demonstrated by his early recognition of the technological singularity and by his remark at a congressional hearing, two months after Sputnik, that "… the future … of mankind is to … go outside the globe."
 * I've added this to the article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * What about the technological singularity? Deer*lake (talk) 18:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The fact that, during a long academic career, Ulam had only four graduate students, of whom only George_Estabrook was notable.
 * The infobox is only supposed to list "notable doctoral students advised by the scientist". Otherwise, I could be in an infobox myself, since my PhD supervisor is also notable. Oh well. However "the fact that, during a long academic career, Ulam had only four graduate students, of whom only George_Estabrook was notable" is well worth including in the article, if you have a source for it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * See Mathematics Genealogy Project. Note that Estabrook earned a master's degree with Ulam, not a Ph.D.  Deer*lake (talk) 18:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The quotation by Otto Frisch survived, but its context did not. In view of the section above: "Disputed: Ulam's contribution to the nuclear chain reaction", this context, which comes directly from Ulam's autobiography, is significant because it puts on record Ulam's recognition of Frisch as a discoverer of the possibility of chain reactions from fission.
 * Being a mathematician myself, I find the quote hilarious; non-mathematicians usually do not get it though. The bit about Frisch as the discoverer of the possibility of chain reactions from fission was you, not Ulam, and is wrong. He was not the first to note the possibility of a chain reaction. The achievement of Frisch and Peierls was to calculate the critical mass of uranium-235 and show that it would be small enough for a bomb that could be carried on board an aircraft. I've gone over their calculations and those of Heisenberg, and both are correct, but Heisenberg calculated the wrong thing. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * On page 6 of his autobiography, Ulam wrote: "My friend Otto Frisch, the discoverer of the possibility of chain reactions from fission, … wrote:" ( a passage that includes the remark about decimal points ). Deer*lake (talk) 18:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * A suggestion that it was Ulam's uncle Michael, whose gambling inspired Nicholas Metropolis to name the statistical approach "The Monte Carlo method".
 * This is still in the article. It wasn't removed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The article does not mention Michael in connection with Monte Carlo. Deer*lake (talk) 18:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Ulam's epitaph, written by Paul Erdős, whose own self-suggested epitaph is notable.
 * I have restored this to the article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Deer*lake (talk) 18:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Bottom line: I am involved in lifting all the Manhattan Project articles to GA so as to form a Good Topic. Changes were made to move the article through the GA process. I believe that the article is better than that, and should go through FAC and appear on the front page, where there is something of a shortage of science-related articles. But this would be as a co-nomination with you, so I need to have you on board with this. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry, you lost me when you ignored the query about Ulam's quotations that I left on your talk page. This is the second of four articles into which I have put major time and energy that has been hijacked.  After these experiences and after becoming aware of Jaron Lanier's ideas], I have no more time to waste on Wikipedia.     Deer*lake (talk) 20:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Although it may be too soon to say for certain, it appears that Deer has left the project. His only activity in June besides this post were blanking his user and talk pages. His indictments of my limitations as an editor are certainly evidence-based (and I provided the evidence! ), and I'm sure Hawkeye occasionally gritted his teeth at some of my suggested revisions, but I'm also confident that Hawkeye would not have made any revision he believed would take the article backwards or that contradicted current policy.

During his whole mathematical life he excelled not only in proving interesting and deep theorems but perhaps even more in inventing new and stimulating problems and conjectures. (p. 447, last paragraph, ref=ERDOS)
 * I think the article was better than "good" before the GAN process started, and I think it is on balance improved as a result of the process ("pretty good"). I don't think it's quite to FAC yet, primarily because it still contains a couple paragraphs which appear to be lifted directly from other Manhattan article projects which aren't directly related to Ulam's work. If there's one thing I've learned about Ulam it's that he was much more than a bomb co-inventor. In fact, I think a second quote from Erdos belongs in the legacy and/or opening paragraph:


 * However, in light of recent events, I'll wait to see if there's any consensus on this before boldly editing. I really was just passing through and picked this article because it looked interesting and had an experienced nominating editor who might safeguard against any rookie mistakes on my part. From my standpoint, mission accomplished, but at too high a cost. I don't want anyone else to feel marginalized because of my edits.


 * Since Hawkeye is doing this work to get a "Good Topic" status for Manhattan Project, I would suggest another editor take on the FAC process for Ulam with him, focusing on the BIOG/A criteria (esp. #4, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and using summary style).

Dictioneer (talk) 21:44, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * That is sad news. I had no problems with your review. I would not have made any changes that I did not agree with. I agreed with the removal of material that I felt was tangential if not off topic. It is easy to do this when you are writing an article. I often find that with an article like James Conant or Vannevar Bush, the GA reviewers know that the article is destined for FAC, and review it accordingly.


 * I also made a lot of changes, even before you got here. I was the one who scrapped the quotes section. I removed unsourced material and re-worked a lot of prose. Further changes have been made in response to the I believe that the article is much better than when we started, but I also believe that it is much better than it would have been if I had written it from scratch.


 * I hope that you will continue to review articles I have been working on. I have plenty more to come.


 * It stands to reason that since I am a techno-military historian, that the bomb development will be well covered. The bit that still bothers me about the Ulam article is in the Legacy section, where it rattles off the names of various mathematical theorems. I would like the article to include more mathematics. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:05, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Change to ref in Teller–Ulam design section
There's been a recent change to the article, adding what appears to be accurate, relevant, and interesting detail to the Teller-Ulam design section:  "Ulam had used his expertise in Combinatorics to analyze the chain reaction in deuterium, which was much more complicated than the ones in uranium and plutonium, and he concluded that no self sustaining chain reaction would take place at the (low) densities that Teller was considering.<*ref*>Lecture by Stan Ulam in Denton, Texas, at a Conference on the History of Applied Mathematics, in the late 1970's.<*ref*>"

The citation looks shaky to me. I assume this is fine for an article at GA status, but I doubt it would survive FAC, which I understand is where it may go in the not-too-distant future. I came up with an alternative that appears to support the text:

Title: The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power; edited by: Peter Galison, David J. Stump; Chapter 5: Computer Simulations and the Trading Zone; page: 135; author: Peter Galison;publisher = Stanford University Press; date = 1996

url=http://books.google.com/books?id=2HEYgFz_kioC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135

It was posted by an IP user, that's why I'm bringing it here. If anyone has a better citation, be old and add it; otherwise I’ll add this one to the article next week. Dictioneer (talk) 20:22, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

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