Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michal Lipson


 * 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. John254 00:11, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Michal Lipson

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

This article appears to be a resumé of a postdoctoral student or professor who has published and received honors like many other professors. I see nothing particularly distinguishing about this one. We don't need an article on every person who has published in a journal, received a Fulbright fellowship or NSF student award. The only significant claim of notability ("...was considered an important step...") is unsourced. Article was prodded, removed by editor who suggested further discussion in AfD. =Axlq 17:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment. For the "important step" part, her work seems to have gotten a reasonable amount of news coverage, although admittedly the scope of the coverage (which barely focuses on her, and is rather about a particular discovery) might mean that the technique is a better subject for an article than the researcher. --Delirium (talk) 17:50, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 *  Very weak delete Keep - It appears she has co-authored two books (found on Amazon), and is cited in a few other books.  She also has some mentions in Gnews, although some appear to be press releases and others would be trivial coverage. I'm not sure it's enough to establish notability per WP:CREATIVE (I don't think she would meet the general notability guidelines).  Linguist At Large  18:00, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I feel this is now a keep per Nsk92 and Crusio below. Meets WP:PROF.  Linguist At Large  21:40, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.   —Espresso Addict (talk) 18:36, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions.   -- Raven1977 (talk) 00:07, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. The nom is incorrect in characterizing the NSF CAREER award as a student award. The CAREER award is in fact for academics who are are past their PhD and postdoctoral stages and who have already regular faculty appointments but are still in the relatively early stages of their academic careers and who have shown exceptional promise. See . CAREER grants are considerably harder to obtain than regular individual NSF grants and they do carry more prestige than the latter. A portion of the CAREER grants recepients are chosen annually for Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers that are awarded by the President of the United States. I would not say that a CAREER award is sufficient to satisfy criterion 2 of WP:PROF but it certainly is a valid contributing factor for satisfying criterion 1 of WP:PROF. Nsk92 (talk) 19:55, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Satisfies criterion 1 of WP:PROF. Both GoogleScholar and WebOfScience show significant citability of her work, particularly the Nature papers. In addition to my general comments regarding the CAREER award above, here is a news article specifically about Lipson receiving this award. There is also significant regular newscoverage of her, even if one filters out the Science Daily Press releases, e.g. (where NSF characterizes the work as breakthrough),, etc. Nsk92 (talk) 20:18, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. Although Career awards certainly are prestigious, they aren't hugely useful in distinguishing notable from merely research-active faculty: The NSF has given out around 2500 of them in the past 5 years, which is a pretty significant percentage of total research-active US-based junior science faculty. --Delirium (talk) 22:03, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I mostly agree, but I did want to point out that the CAREER grants are not student awards, as the nom seems to have thought, and that they are more prestigious than ordinary NSF grants and thus can be considered as valid contributing factors towards satisfying Criterion 1 of WP:PROF. I would not !vote keep simply based on the CAREER award; as I said these grants are not prestigious enough to satisfy criterion 2 of WP:PROF outright. And I should say, speaking from personal experience as a professional mathematician, only very few and the very best of the research-active junior faculty get CAREER grants. At least that is the case for math, maybe things are different in more applied sciences. Nsk92 (talk) 22:30, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, OK, let's not lose focus over a distraction. I struck out the word "student". I originally assumed that due to the "youth" context in the article. =Axlq 02:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Fulbright is also highly selective and prestigious. Here in France, Fubright fellows are welcomed in the Senate by the secretary for education and several senators, as well as (of course) the US ambassador. But apart from that, all sources found by Nsk92 are obviously sufficient. Meets WP:PROF and WP:BIO. --Crusio (talk) 20:47, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about that. Lots of American professors get Fulbright grants and fellowships and are welcomed practically as royalty in foreign countries. It's a distinction, yes, but still below the notability threshold. A close relative of mine is a Fulbright fellow (and more published than Michal Lipson) but I wouldn't write an article about him. The only legitimate claim of notability in the article doesn't have a source. =Axlq 02:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * As was argued above about the NSF Award, I did not say that Fulbright alone is enough for notability, but that it contributes heavily to meeting criterion #1 of WP:ACADEMIC.--Crusio (talk) 09:34, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I agree that someone at this relatively early stage of their career would have to have achieved something special to deserve an article, but I think this is the case here. How many scientists at any stage in their career can boast coauthorship on three Nature papers? I don't know the area at all, but the citation record appears impressive, with two papers having over 200 citations (294, 246), three more over 100 citations (158, 115, 104) & a further 8 papers having over 50 citations per Google Scholar. Meets my understanding of WP:PROF. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:52, 2 January 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.