Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A. H. Lightstone


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was KEEP. postdlf (talk) 18:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

A. H. Lightstone

 * – ( View AfD View log )

No-notable academic: the only claim to notability seems to be having written or co-written two articles 30-40 years ago on an obscure mathematical topic. No indication he satisfies WP:PROF JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 14:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * keep: Lightstone is an influential mathematical logician. His book with Robinson is cited over 70 times at Google Scholar, which is high by the standards of mathematical logic.  Note that he wrote the book essentially on his own, Robinson suffering from an incurable condition at the time.  How is mathematical logic an "obscure mathematical topic"?  Tkuvho (talk) 15:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Peter A. Loeb said Robinson "wrote the first draft" in his review of the book for Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. Qwfp (talk) 17:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * keep per Tkuvho's reasoning. Regardless of his medical condition, his work seems to be heavily cited which would qualify for inclusion as "impact".  Additionally, "obscure mathematical topic" wouldn't apply, and is irrelevant for inclusion.  Dennis Brown (talk) 16:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Oprah might never have brought Kurt Godel or Paul Cohen or even Richard Feynman on her show, but just because popular culture treats real science and mathematics as obscurities doesn't make them unencyclopedic topics. This Afd's going to be SNOWed out. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:15, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a debate on the notability of A. H. Lightstone, not that of Oprah, Gödel, Cohen, Feynman, or any particular mathematical or scientific topic. Qwfp (talk) 17:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment: Nonstandard analysis is certainly not "an obscure mathematical topic". CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:20, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment obscure was perhaps the wrong word; my point was having written papers on your subject is not usually a criterion for inclusion, unless the papers are notable or the subject especially so. Otherwise every academic would merit an article and WP:PROF sets the bar considerably higher. On citations Google is only a rough guide and 75 is not an especially high number for something written 35 years ago, while the even older article which seems to be the main basis for his notability has been cited only nine times.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 17:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: It is incorrect to claim that "the main basis for his notability" is the popular article in the American Mathematical Monthly. Though well-written, a popular article cannot serve as the basis for notability for an academic, other than some exceptional cases (I can imagine the author of the "Manifold destiny" article may be notable for that alone perhaps).  It is obviously more accessible than his professional publications, but clearly much less influential than the latter.  Tkuvho (talk) 17:18, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: For what it's worth, I think a single paper could suffice. Consider Riemann's "On the number of primes less than a given quantity"; was that all he had written, I think it would still be appropriate to have an article about him.  I'm not familiar enough with Lightstone or nonstandard analysis to say if this is similarly seminal, just making the general point. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * See Ernst Ising for a non-counterfactual example. I'm less sure about Lightstone. For one thing we're naturally curious about eponyms, hence the obituaries of Ising. Qwfp (talk) 20:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. His research productivity was low, but he wrote a large number of textbooks, so I think the case for WP:PROF may be stronger than for #C1. Unfortunately this was long enough ago that it's difficult to judge how widely adopted those texts were. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. By the standards of mathematical logic, the case for #C1 is strong. I just went to our list of logicians. The first on the list turned out to be a wrestler.  The second was Sergei Adian, the famous logician.  Now google scholar lists only 37 cites for his most popular text, as compared to Lightstone's 75. We should compare things that are comparable.  Tkuvho (talk) 17:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —David Eppstein (talk) 20:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment What other articles exist is irrelevant, as per WP:WAX. If he satisfies WP:PROF then that should be supported by reliable sources that attest to his impact not just editorial judgement, and if he's notable they should be possible to find.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 20:22, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Initially, it looked more likely to flip to a math article with attribution, but as a prolific (typewriter) author who died young whose work was worth finalizing posthumously, who knows what he might have continued with; the (albeit minor) scholarship, but at the 'primary meaning' Queen's University nudges it sufficiently as a bio, IMO. Dru of Id (talk) 20:32, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think, rather than basing it on WP:PROF (although that seems possible too) the clearest case is via the "multiple independent periodical articles or reviews" clause in WP:AUTHOR. We now have in our article nontrivial coverage of four of his books, each with nontrivial content about the book (not just a title and publisher) based from multiple published reviews. Worldcat lists The Axiomatic Method as in 431 libraries, Mathematical Logic as in 396, Symbolic Logic and the Real Number System as in 535, and Nonarchimedean Fields as in 354, all good numbers for this sort of technical book. I think that's enough. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. has created notable mathematical work. WP:IDONTUNDERSTANDIT is no reason for deletion. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC).
 * Keep: recent expansion of article renders this AfD almost moot. CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help. There is a similar effort underway at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:0.999.../FAQ to erase any allusion of an alternative to the reigning dogma.  I would appreciate your input.  Tkuvho (talk) 07:06, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. He's the author of a fair number of books. It looks as if the deletion nomination resulted from the fact that the article was earlier in a condition that might have failed to give sufficient grounds for its existence.  But later editing has changed that. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment. Note that the article was nominated for deletion two days after its creation.  Extraordinary alacrity.  Tkuvho (talk) 14:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep: The holdings of Lighstone's work in libraries mentioned above by David Eppstein, plus his citation count, demonstrate his significance. EdJohnston (talk) 15:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep per David Eppstein. Salih  ( talk ) 16:54, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Per David's findings: That his book holdings exceed 1500 is an easy clincher. Thanks, Agricola44 (talk) 15:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC).
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.