Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics


 * 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   merge to Claude Shannon. If there is really nothing left to merge, the article should just be redirected. NW ( Talk ) 22:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

This is Claude Elwood Shannon's PhD thesis. But it does not appear to have made any significant impact on the study of genetics. Many books (and our biography of Shannon) mention his PhD thesis briefly in connection with Shannon's bio, but without any details as to the relevance of the work outside Shannon's life. I was unable to find any genetics book that even mentions it. Notability is not transitive. Pcap ping  21:47, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Others have expressed similar concerns on the article's talk page. These have not been replied to or addressed in years. Pcap ping  22:07, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete: I'm finding hard to think of how anyone's PhD thesis would qualify as a separate article since it would come under WP:PRIMARY. If the information is relevant then it can be added to the article about the subject with an attribution to the thesis.--RDBury (talk) 02:25, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Sole Google News result; "In contrast, his doctoral thesis, An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics (1940), was not as influential". Otherwise I don't think this dissertation would meet the very high bar required for a single document to be notable. (Obviously the professor himself is notable.) I'm not even sure Eistein's paper on Brownian motion, Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen deserves a stand-alone article. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * merge with the article on Shannon.   But I do not see how an article about a thesis come sunder WP:PRIMARY any more than an article about any other book or publication. I can'tthink of many theses where it would be appropriate, butt here are some, such as Nash's.    DGG ( talk ) 17:11, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My understanding, and maybe I'm wrong, is that research papers in technical journals are primary because they are basically the initial report of the discovery, theory or whatever. At the time of publication they haven't been evaluated by the larger scientific community and there is no way of judging their impact. Wikipedia can't have an article based on every research paper out there because there are simply too many of them and it would take a PhD to even understand most of them. So secondary sources are used as a criterion as well. Also, any piece of research builds on the work of others and is added to by later research. It's part of the job of secondary and tertiary sources to organize the knowledge into a coherent pieces rather than scattered around in different places. Having separate articles for individual research papers defeats that purpose. Einstein and Nash are good examples but the material in Einstein's paper should go in the Brownian motion article and Nash's should go in Nash equilibrium article. Another example that comes to mind is the Feit–Thompson theorem which had a huge impact and was proven in a single, very long article. But in that case the Wikipedia article is still about the theorem and not the article that Feit & Thompson wrote.--RDBury (talk) 20:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There's nothing in this article that's not already written in Shannon's bio. If you look at the talk page, you'll see that it was created by pasting a chunk of text from there&mdash;and it was a mostly off-topic chunk. Pcap ping  21:51, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * comment The bar is pretty high for scientific papers, but the most famous work of a scientist   of international fame can be notable.  Nash's thesis specifically as a work is considered a seminal masterpiece, and there's no shortage of references to it being that. and einstein's certainly is a major landmark, and again, with plenty of references to say that this particular paper is famous and deserving of fame and a highlight of the history of science (I was about to write "of physics", but it's more than even that). It's not that the work is widely cited and important, but that it be specifically recognized historically as being of particular significance as a monument, as those two are.   I would not carry this very far, and  it does not apply here, for this is not a particularly historic work.  There is a tremendous difference between having an article on "Every paper out there" and having an article on the Brownian motion paper--given that there are 2 or 3 million scientific papers a year, about one in a million, 6 orders of magnitude.     DGG ( talk ) 09:26, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I see your point and maybe I'm guilty of using a bit of hyperbole. It seems to me a matter of drawing the line between the notability of the a paper and the notability of it's content. Perhaps a point I was missing earlier was that the later may be notable in terms of science but the former may be notable in terms of the history of science; this being a valid area to be covered in Wikipedia.--RDBury (talk) 11:50, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The notability of individual scientific publications should (obviously) be discussed on case by case basis. Which is what I've done with this nomination. Let's not transform this AfD into a general forum for debating the notability of other papers (by other authors, etc.) Pcap ping  16:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I posted a link here from Wikipedia talk:Notability (books) which seemed the post appropriate place to continue a general discussion. There isn't a Notability (articles) guideline and the only person to respond so far said WP:GNG would be more applicable.--RDBury (talk) 23:48, 15 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Merge with Claude Shannon; it would (if cleaned up) make a nice section. This should not be taken as opposing a consensus to delete; I would not like this disputed orphan to linger.


 * On the general point, it is not impossible for theses to be notable enough to have articles; but they should either have been important enough to be published or have been the subject of an extensive secondary literature - like Hegel's thesis, which proved that there were only six planets just in time for the discoverty of Ceres. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:41, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Like I wrote above, this chunk of text was originally copied from that article. Most of it is off-topic precisely because of that. There's nothing to merge. Pcap ping  01:45, 16 September 2009 (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.