Talk:William Lipscomb

Add, delete, changes needed
Chemists welcome to add, change, delete some items. I do not have the chemistry background to get some items to professional quality. And I want to quit the job of editing my father's page, which I have done with full disclosure on my talk page and using my real name, for potential conflict-of-interest reasons. My thoughts on the page:

All text in all sections
Needs to be scrutinized by scientists and verified as, or changed to be, accurate, plus such changes as perhaps might lift the issue of my potential conflict-of-interest.

Credit: Unusual on this page is the names of about a hundred students and colleagues in the text and in references. This normal scientific practice, unusual in an encyclopedia, gives proper credit to those who made discoveries. An alternate treatment that omits these names, except as whole phrases are omitted, might give undue credit to Lipscomb but certainly take away credit from individuals who deserve it. Of particular importance are the stories of the three-center two-electron bond, the Extended Huckel method, and low-temperature x-ray diffraction where there were particularly strong contributions from other laboratories.

Characterizations: I added just limited characterizations of individual research results of the Lipscomb group. I avoid characterizations of the research that are broad or are of Lipscomb himself, such as one I found where Lipscomb is said to be, "... one of the founding fathers of protein crystallography in the North America." Statements in these categories are overviews that may give context to a collection of results, but would have to be added by someone else.

All images (except in Large Biological Molecule ... section): Replace by same images, but file names to omit "Lipscomb" prefix (download, change file name, upload, link to). Prefixes like this are a good way to organize files on a computer, but do not meet Wikipedia naming standards. Images Ethane-barrier.png and Diborane b2h6 bonding diagram.png are online and ready to link to. Need to do the same for others.

Possible individual issues to address:

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and the Chemical Shift
What if anything did Lipscomb discover about NMR? What is the significance of his work?

Checking dates it appears to me that Lipscomb publihed the first comprehensive theory of the chemical shift. But I do not know this to be a fact, so I cannot add it to Lipscomb's page. - jslipscomb 27 June 2012. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jslipscomb (talk • contribs) 22:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)


 * It is often dangerous to describe someone or something as the first. The article now cites Ref.15 published in 1966 on this point. However there were earlier theoretical treatments of chemical shift, including one as early as 1954 by physicist Charles Pence Slichter. Which papers could be considered comprehensive could be a matter for long debate. So I think we are better to say a comprehensive theory rather than the first and leave it at that. Dirac66 (talk) 00:20, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

What if anything did Lipscomb contribute to the theory of the chemical shift?

Diagram of hexaborane includes an explanation of how to interpret the spectrum, which needs to be verified. I do not have an NMR background. I copied the explanation from Lipscomb's NMR book, NMR Studies of Boron Hydrides and Related Compounds, pages 133-135. I think I got it right, but not completely sure.

Boron Chemistry and the Nature of the Chemical Bond
Styx numbers: Delete the half-paragraph on styx numbers? I have heard one vote for delete, because styx numbers are said to be not used. True? Keep anyway for historical importance? Need a consensus on what to do here.

Diamond-square-diamond diagram: Potential error in the coloring to follow certain atoms from one step to the next. I did the coloring with some guesswork about which atoms in one step corresponded to which atoms in the next. Original diagram, which I redrew to avoid copyright problems, is here. It may do as a notional diagram.

Diamond-square-diamond "... carbons apart meta-carborane" and "... isomerization of the icosahedral carboranes or on the viability of the cuboctahedron as an intermediate" are at too high a level and may be in too much detail for an encyclopedia. -- Done. Simplified 24 June 2012 by jslipscomb.

B10H16: New bond between borons without terminal hydrogens involved. Significance should be mentioned. Also consider, is this important enough to keep or should it be deleted?

Ethane barrier: If the following is of sufficient importance perhaps it should be added to the ethane page. "A modern understanding of the ethane barrier on the basis of quantum mechanics began in 1963 with the first accurate calculation using Hartree Fock Self-Consistent Field (SCF) theory."

Paragraph: "Lipscomb's group developed calculation methods, both empirical and from quantum mechanical theory" may be too high level for an encyclopedia. Needs to be brought down to earth.

Paragraph ending: "... delocalized over the whole molecule." may be too high level for an encyclopedia. Needs to be brought down to earth.

Paragraph on Roald Hoffmann: "This method was later extended by Hoffman[25]. In Lipscomb's laboratory ...." I am pretty sure that the "later" extension of the method by Hoffmann was in his own lab, presumably at Cornell. This is why I set (reset?) the context to the Lipscomb lab in the next sentence. But "pretty sure" is not good enough to say so. Someone should do the research on when Hoffmann reached Cornell in relation to the publication of this [25] paper and then credit Hoffmann with doing the extended theory in his on lab if that is the case, as I expect. This should be easy to figure out.

Large Biological Molecule Structure and Function
Carboxypeptidase A: Needs verification. Explanation of what Carboxypeptidase A does was written by me, because the Carboxypeptidase A Wiki page seemed to me to start off at too high-level for beginners. My explanation needs verifying by a scientist, perhaps edited, and then maybe added to the Carboxypeptidase A page. Another source to consider: the Carboxypeptidase page has a good first paragraph, but generalized and not specific to Carboxypeptidase A.

Aspartate carbamoyltransferase: Needs verification. Explanation of what Aspartate carbamoyltransferase does was written by me, because the Aspartate carbamoyltransferase Wiki page seemed to me to start off at too high-level for beginners. My explanation needs verifying by a scientist, perhaps edited, and then maybe added to the Aspartate carbamoyltransferase page.

All molecules: Need a sentence or two on what Lipscomb's group discovered for each molecule beyond just the structure. Perhaps to make room the existing text on what the molecule does could be cut back.

Delete? Paragraph starting, "Lipscomb's group also contributed to an understanding of ...." lists comparatively minor results, which perhaps are not of sufficient interest for an encyclopedia.

-- jslipscomb (talk) 01:52, 10 March 2011 (UTC) (updated jslipscomb (talk) 14:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC) )

COI & expert needed
I understand that a major editor here is the subject's son. I was asked to look over the article, but this is beyond my realm of understanding, so I am requesting an independent expert to verify this article. Phearson (talk) 04:04, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Many of the links are bad, too, but I'll leave them in case the editors want to tweak them or find the correct links (if any).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.147.182 (talk) 12:46, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Is this a biography of a person or chemistry?
I think this article would be better if jslipscomb could move most of the chemistry to the relevant entries and just leave this page as the biographical page for the person in question. I understand that Lipscomb was a Nobel Prize winning chemist, but this should really be about his life, achievements, etc; which can be verified using other than primary, or secondary sources. Or am I being an idiot? Skeptic sid (talk) 22:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. There is no reason to explain the chemistry here - rather the article should mention the different areas of his research and specific accomplishments. Toddst1 (talk) 23:59, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Candidates for moving to their respective pages are:
 * Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, second paragraph starting: "Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy uses..." should move to the Nuclear magnetic resonance page. This is a layman's description of NMR that might ease readers of that page into an understanding.  That page starts with a jargon-loaded intimidating paragraph, as do most of the pages I discuss below.
 * Boron Chemistry / Ethane Barrier: The last half of the paragraph beginning "The ethane barrier ...." I have already copied to the Ethane page along with the diagram. Perhaps this could be omitted here.
 * Large Biological Molecule / Carboxypeptidase: Most of the paragraph could move to the Carboxypeptidase A page, starting at "Carboxypeptidase A is a digestive enzyme, ...." as a layman's description of that might ease readers of that page into an understanding.
 * Large Biological Molecule / Aspartate carbamoyltransferase: Most of the paragraph could move to the the Aspartate carbamoyltransferase page, starting at "For a copy of DNA to be made, ...." ending with "... control how fast the catalytic units work." as a layman's description of that might ease readers of that page into an understanding.
 * Other Results / Lipsombite: The sentence "Powder diffraction is limited to identifying an unknown sample as some specific known substance or as not a known substance in the catalog." could be copied to the Powder diffraction page (probably should still be here too), as a layman's description of that might ease readers of that page into an understanding.
 * Other Results / Low-temperature x-ray diffraction: The second half of the paragraph, starting with "Keeping the crystal cold during data collection...." could move to the X-ray scattering techniques page in a new section on low temperature diffraction. Each of the items in my list I gathered from scholarly sources, but sadly, I did not keep a record, so this is not sourced as well as Wikipedia entries should be.

See sections above for items to possibly delete, and see section below for how to add a personal biography of Lipscomb.

But I cannot touch the William Lipscomb page again until I am cleared of the suspicion of impropriety. Look at the top of the page and see, "A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view." That banner will have to go, notwithstanding that nobody has so far pointed to anything non-neutral that I have added. I have gone to some trouble to document sources.

jslipscomb (talk) 18:40, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Biography section expansion
I expanded Lipscomb's biography, adding sections on Early Years and on Educations. Consequently I removed the expansion-required flag that had been put on the Biography section. New material is sourced entirely from Lipscomb's extended autobiography, which is online for verification. See reference on the William Lipscomb page.

jslipscomb (talk) 12:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC) (updated jslipscomb (talk) 23:41, 22 August 2011 (UTC) )

Be a little wary of published obituaries of Lipscomb as a source. Some of these have minor errors, as they were rushed to print without double-checking. However, statements that agree across two or more obituaries do seem to be reliable.

jslipscomb (talk) 12:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC) (updated jslipscomb (talk) 14:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC) )


 * Greetings, with your caveat about obituaries, I added the citation to Dr. Lipscomb's cause of death from http://www.nesacs.org/Noticeboard/2011/LIPSCOMB_CHEM_EDUCATOR(JUL2011).pdf ( which because it is a pdf, I did not make clickable link ). I think even if it were rushed to print, it is highly likely that cause of demise is correct.  I have no relationship to Dr. Lipscomb of which I'm aware, I was reading random pages and came upon the biography.  Ellin Beltz (talk) 04:44, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Appeal for calm
Recent comments on this talk page indicate that the COI banner at the top of the article ("A major contributor ...") has caused some hard feelings. Jslipscomb wants to be "cleared of the suspicion of impropriety" for contributing to his father's article, and Ellin Beltz feels the need to deny any relationship to William Lipscomb when editing the article.

Note that the WP:COI policy says (paragraph 3) that "When someone voluntarily discloses a conflict of interest, other editors should always assume the editor is trying to do the right thing. Do not use a voluntarily disclosed conflict of interest as a weapon against the editor." In this case jslipscomb has clearly indicated that he is William Lipscomb's son, and has indicated willingness to accept revisions suggested by other editors. I do not think therefore that his actions should be described as "impropriety".

Perhaps the COI template could be replaced here by a more appropriate tag, for example "A major contributor to this article has identified himself as the son of the subject. Other editors are invited to revise the text in order to maintain a balanced perspective."

Other editors could concentrate on actually making appropriate revisions, or else suggesting them on this talk page. I see three areas of concern for the moment:

(1) As indicated above (in the section Is this a biography of a person or chemistry?), this article should be limited to describing William Lipscomb's contributions. Detailed explanations of NMR, the functions of various proteins, etc. should be left to articles on those subjects which may be accessed by hyperlinks.

(2) The article seems too long at 50K. For comparison I checked the articles for other chemistry Nobelists 3 years in each direction (i.e. 1973-79). Prigogine (1977) is 17K and the others are less than 10K. Of course one could argue that the others are too short, but the comparison suggests that we should at least examine the article for superfluous content.

(3) Some of the language does show an unbalanced perspective, for example the mention of "grand challenges". We can say for example that Lipscomb attempted to determine the structure of boranes and carboranes by boron-11 NMR rather than by X-ray diffraction, without referring to this as a "grand challenge". Dirac66 (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I have now revised the NMR section by removing the general description of NMR as well as the mention of "grand challenges" in this section. Dirac66 (talk) 21:08, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

---

Yes, perhaps "too-big challenge" or "too-hard challenge" might avoid connotations of grandeur. These challenges were an extremely serious issue to Lipscomb. If I were cleared to edit this page again I might expand "Lipscomb gave himself a grand challenge likely to fail, and then plotted a course of intermediate goals." based on personal conversation where he gave it to me straight, thusly....

Lipscomb in designing his career had seen some chemists attack problems that were too hard and failed, accomplishing little, and he saw other chemists who attacked problems that were too easy and succeeded with uninteresting results. Consequently, Lipscomb designed at least the NMR and chemical-bond phases of his career as too-hard challenges with stair-steps of intermediate challenges that ensured results of high significance at the point that it would become too hard to proceed. This is a choice in career design that Lipscomb wanted young chemists to understand. The next two sections below begin with quotes from Lipscomb's Nobel lecture alluding to this plan.

jslipscomb (talk) 00:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the best course here is to just give the Nobel lecture quotes and not expand on their meaning from personal conversation. Wikipedia policy for all editors (see WP:Verify) is to base statements on verifiable sources. Your knowledge of William Lipscomb is helpful to Wikipedia because you are no doubt aware of many more sources about him than most editors are.
 * As for being "cleared to edit this page again", I have re-read WP:COI which applies because of the relationship, and does NOT imply that there is any impropriety. The guidelines in WP:COI do permit you to make non-controversial edits (described in the guidelines) to the article. For edits which may be controversial, the guideline is to suggest them on the talk page, as you have in some instances. Due to the technical nature of this article, it may take a while before other editors deal with all the suggestions.
 * Again, none of this implies any impropriety on your part. The viewpoint of Wikipedia in WP:COI is that "a biography should preferably not be written by the subject's spouse, parent, or offspring. However, an expert on a given subject is welcome to contribute to articles on that subject, even if that editor is deeply committed to the subject." Dirac66 (talk) 03:41, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I've boldly replaced the COI template on the article, with a Connected Contributor template at the top of this talk page. If jslipscomb is no longer making significant changes to the article, there is no need for the COI template on the article itself. If the expert-required template attracts an expert - which may well be what is actually required for a substantive rewrite - then they will doubtless peruse the talk page when they review the article. The COI template has been on the article for six months, and in that time has mostly caused disgruntlement rather than improvement. I think it would be better for everyone to remain as gruntled as possible. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 04:09, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, this template on the talk page is more appropriate. Dirac66 (talk) 15:14, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Of course I shall follow your advice, so I removed the word "grand" from a few remaining places. From the guidelines I might take a stab at "Making edits that have been agreed to on the talk page." Adding a personal biography sourced from Lipscomb's extended online autobiography (not from my experience) and simplifying and shortening the science seem to be some big issues if that is not too much to start with.  jslipscomb (talk) 22:55, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Apology
Hello, as I am the one who tagged the article as being edited by a possible COI, I like to apologize if this has prevented any editors from contributing. I was responding to a request by another editor to check if there was any promotional content being added by the subject's relative. I was not able to determine that, as the science is beyond my understanding past an american high school diploma and a ISO certification in computer maintenance. To help signal to other editors of a potential problem, I tagged it, so that anyone looking through the tags of "COI" and "Expert Attention needed" may be able to in/validate the additions. At no time was there any restriction implied to COI editors as long as the material they added was not in dispute. The tagging was done as a protective/maintenance precaution. Phearson (talk) 17:11, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * No apology needed, you were entirely right to tag the article. In fact, its the removal of the tag that I did under the auspices of WP:IAR :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:18, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm cool. The COI banner was a prudent measure until the page could be checked and either fixed or cleared.  But meanwhile, I just had to sit it out.  jslipscomb (talk) 22:31, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

NMR reference - bibliographic info request
In the NMR section, the source for the sentence "The calculations provided ... in magnetic or electric fields" appears to be accessible only to readers with a subscription to Accessscience. For other readers it would be helpful to add a footnote with the usual bibliographic information - author, article title, book or journal title, pages, publisher (for a book) or volume number (for a journal), year. Dirac66 (talk) 15:14, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Thank you for spotting this.  The broken link is replaced by a reference plus instructions for anyone to verify, anyone with $30 US to spend to get behind the paywall that is, which I just did:


 * Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Lipscomb, William Nunn (1919-) (5 paragraphs) © RM, 2011, all rights reserved, as published under license in AccessScience, The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Online,, © The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2000-2008. Helicon Publishing is a division of RM. To see this biography  (1) Go to  (2) Search for Lipscomb (3) at right Click on "Lipscomb, William Nunn (1919- ). (4) At right click on Purchase Now (price in 2011 is about $30 US including tax for 24 hours). (5) Log in (6) Repeat steps 2 and 3.to see Lipscomb's biography.


 * The original form of the quoted text:


 * "Lipscomb went on to investigate the carboranes, C2B10H12, and the sites of electrophilic attack on these compounds using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This work led to the theory of chemical shifts. The calculations provided the first accurate values for the constants that describe the behavior of several types of molecules in magnetic or electric fields."


 * The author presumably used the passive voice, "This work led to the theory of chemical shifts." to waffle about to what extent Lipscomb's work led to the theory of the chemical shift. Entirely?  Partly?  He did not know.  Neither do I.  But we do know that Lipscomb published a 40-page comprehensive theory of the chemical shift, so in the Wikipedia entry I modified the quote with brackets to indicate the change.


 * jslipscomb (talk) 22:10, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, now we know where the information comes from. Some readers will have access through institutional subscriptions.
 * I agree with your replacing "the theory" with "a comprehensive theory", since in the 1960s other chemists also published on the theory of the chemical shift, e.g. John Pople, Martin Karplus and Ben Dailey. Sorting out who contributed what would be a large task.
 * Also your trimming of the protein descriptions is a step in the right direction. Other editors may decide to trim more. Dirac66 (talk) 18:38, 22 August 2011 (UTC)