Talk:Wolf Prize

split the page?
Is this page objective. This prize is not very well known in the physics community, yet this page describes it as second to the Nobel prize ?!? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.91.179.208 (talk) 09:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Splitting the page is fine; but I'd say implies a duty to redirect the incoming links (mostly to the mathematicians). Charles Matthews 12:05, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Done. A much larger consistency problem exists in how Nobel Prizes are referenced: it seems to alternate between Nobel Prize in Physics and Nobel Prize in Physics. - Udzu

Prestige in mathematics
An anon has added a comment putting the Abel Prize ahead of the Wolf Prize in Mathematics diff (see also ). Unless sources can be provided, this is OR (see WP:OR).

The Wolf Prize in Mathematics usually awards for lifetime achievement which is probably why comparisons with the Nobel are often made. See for example which excerpts a San Francisco Chronicle obit of Chern: "Wolf Prize in mathematics, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize". Furthermore, the Wolf is often mentioned in conjunction with the Fields, e.g. :"...the panel felt that the clear leadership of US mathematics was demonstrated by looking at two of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics: the Fields medal and the Wolf prize." from an NAS/NAE/IoM study "International Benchmarking of US Mathematics Research".

Here's an excerpt from the preface of the two volumes on Wolf Prize mathematics (edited by Chern and Hirzebruch):

"There is no Nobel prize in mathematics. Perhaps this is a good thing. Nobel prizes create so much public attention that mathematicians would lose their concentration to work. There are several other prizes for mathematicians. There is the Fields Medal (only for mathematicians); it honours outstanding work and encourages further efforts. (The Abel prize is just in the process of being established.)"

"'Then there is the Wolf Prize. The Wolf Foundation began its activities in 1976. Since 1978, five or six annual prizes have been awarded to outstanding scientists and artists, irrespective of nationality, race, colour, religion, sex or political view, for achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people. In science, the fields are agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, and physics; in the arts, the prize rotates annually among music, painting, sculpture and architecture."

"'The Fields Medal goes to young people, and indeed many mathematicians do their best work in the early years of their life. The Wolf Prize often honours the achievements of a whole life. But it may also honour the work of young people. The first Wolf Prize winners in mathematics were Izrail M. Gel\cprime fand and Carl L. Siegel (1978). Siegel was born in 1896 and Gel\cprime fand in 1913. Gel\cprime fand is still active at Rutgers University. Several prize winners were born before 1910. Thus the achievements of the prize winners cover much of the twentieth century."

"'The documents collected in these two volumes characterize the Wolf Prize winners in a form not available up to now: bibliographies and curricula vitae, autobiographical accounts, reprints of early papers or especially important papers, lectures and speeches, for example at International Congresses, as well as reports on the work of the prize winners by others. Since the work of the Wolf laureates covers a wide spectrum, a large part of contemporary mathematics comes to life in these books.'"

In any case, my point is that a new award like the Abel (which would only be seen as prestigious really by mathematicians by virtue of giving it first to Fields and Wolf winners....) has not yet been established in reputation, so it is premature to assert that the Abel has displaced the Wolf. It is certainly high-profile (due to the prize money), but why cannot one make the same assertion about it surpassing the Fields? That would be unsubstantiated also. My examples should show that the Fields and Wolf are considered the premier math prizes. To overturn this, the anon needs to provide sources showing a significant change in the status of the Wolf and being displaced by the Abel. Given the new-ness of the prize, I don't think this is really possible. --C S (Talk) 11:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Wolf Prize in Medicine
It seems that the page Wolf Prize in Medicine is just a bare list of recipients. Can we include this on the main page? Is it really important for a half-page-long list to be in its own file? WhatamIdoing 05:09, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it's more helpful for each of these awards to have their own page, as do the Nobel Prizes. These are prestigious prizes, and each is notable in its own right. It also greatly assists the categorization of the prize articles for each to be on its own page. I'm not sure that the length is that critical, but award pages in general are not well-written about. However, there is scope for every award to have more: Information about the juries or selection committees, as well as the processes, nominations, and controversies (which will all be award-specific). --lquilter 14:39, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I was also surprised to note just now looking at the other Wolf Prize articles (chemistry, agriculture, physics, arts, mathematics) that the proposal to merge isn't mentioned on those. Surely the proposal isn't just to merge medicine and leave the other awards on their own pages? That would be bizarre to say the least. --lquilter 14:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm strongly against this suggestion which is, to say the least, make no sense for me.--Gilisa (talk) 18:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I ran across the Wolf Prize pages while checking articles tagged for WPMED. I have no connection to the material and really don't know enough to have an opinion on how best to organize all of the related pages. Perhaps they could all be included in one large page. Perhaps the merge is not a good idea. However, I strongly believe that a bare list of 22 winners, with no explanation, no context, and no further information -- with, in fact, not even a single complete sentence -- is not an encyclopedia article, as that term is commonly understood. The obvious options are: The last option may be the best, but I don't see any volunteers to do it. I don't really care which option is chosen. My goal is simply to have no zero-sentence-long, totally unsourced pages masquerading encyclopedia articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * merge it into Wolf Prize (which would automatically provide context and background information),
 * move the page to "List of winners for Wolf Prize in Medicine" (a way of signaling that no one wants to make it an article), or
 * turn it into an encyclopedia article.


 * I’m totally agree with you that the third option is, no doubt I think, the best (and the second is right after-but lets avoid it for now). This list is in did of low standard and care should be taken a.s.a.p. However, patience is needed as well and the list should be tagged according to the problems it have- suggesting merging into an article of higher standard (even if still not very high) doesn’t sound to me as the intuitive first option.Best--Gilisa (talk) 20:15, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Wolf Prize in Medicine is a list of Laureats of that prize and should be called that, but there are now lists for each category and they are tagged as lists. That is perfectly appropriate on the lines of other such lists of prize recipients, one could have similar lists for other categories of the Wolf prize. No it should certainly not be merged in to this article. It is just a list! I wonder if this is actually an old debate that has actually already been resolved by renaming the article to reflect the fact that it is list not an article?Billlion (talk) 07:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Most award pages should be named after the award, and a list of recipients is completely appropriate for them. There's no need to separate the list of recipients into a separate page; they work just fine as an in-article list. Better to just tag the article with various "needs improvement" tags. --Lquilter (talk) 07:38, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Wolf Prize in Physics
2004 award that went to Higgs, Brout, and Englert is pretty tainted seeing that it did not include Guralnik, Hagen, and Kibble (GHK) in that award. That GHK team had the most complete solution and 1) showed how the gauge particle got mass, 2) predicted and commented on the existence of the "higgs" field, and 3) showed how Goldstone's theorem is avoided. The others did not do all three.  All three papers were recognized as milestone papers by PRL’s 50th anniversary celebration. Additionally, each of the six physicists were awarded the 2010  J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for this work.  Guralnik just wrote a summary of this paper and the history.  It is a good read if you are interested in the history of the mass boson and the physics in the 1960's. (http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.3466).  Nobel Prize will have to figure out how to award to all three groups and six individuals (which is permitted by the Nobel will) or wait (and wait). LHC Mary (talk) 01:07, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Wolfs
The disambiguation page for the word "wolf" is being purged of excess binomials (Wolf man, Wolf River, etc.) because it was getting too long. The only exceptions being made are those which are commonly shortened to just "wolf".

First, is this the case with the Wolf Prize? Is the second word of the binomial commonly omitted? Do people say "He hopes to win a Wolf" instead of "...a Wolf Prize?"

More to the point, actually, is it reasonable to assume that a person wanting to learn about the Wolf Prize could simply type in "W-o-l-f" instead of the whole binomial, and therefore be helped by it's inclusion on the disambiguation page, or is that hightly unlikely? Chrisrus (talk) 06:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Definitional citation
"among peoples" is that grammatically right...or should it stay so even if it is not incorrect but cited..? There seems to be no source to the citation. UserHuge (talk) 16:50, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Wolf Prize. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070801174745/http://www.wolffund.org.il/main.asp?idMain=18 to http://www.wolffund.org.il/main.asp?idMain=18

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 08:12, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Do NOT add list of Prize winners
The article has no list of winners nor does it link to such a list. Bravo! This is in keeping with the Wikipedia philosophy: Consider what the most likely reason is that someone would bother coming to the page at all and foil them!

If anyone does add such a list, be sure to find a way to limit its utility or convenience. Either add lots of extraneous information to each entry or, better yet, provide 26 lists (one for each initial surname letter) rather than 1 list. It is important to adhere to Wikipedia philosophy. Jamesdowallen (talk) 11:17, 10 February 2023 (UTC)