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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. (non-admin closure) ~ Aseleste (t, e | c, l) 03:04, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Walter Minder

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Walter Minder (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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All the existing reliable and independent sources are related with the false-discovery claim of astatine. I couldn't find reliable and independent sources to prove its notability. Nanahuatl (talk) 08:10, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 08:17, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Switzerland-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 08:17, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. After the element 85 debacle, he seems to have switched to dosimetry [1]. I am not sure if he could be considered notable for this work. Certainly my impression looking at the sources I could easily find is that he mostly is mentioned as a walk-on part as one of the doomed seekers of natural element 85, but maybe that just means I am not looking in the right places. Double sharp (talk) 08:22, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I can sense the "notable for 1 element" jokes coming even now. Uncle G (talk) 08:41, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I found much the same as Double sharp, with the exception of an entry in a 1969 book entitled Who's who in Atoms, volume 2 which seems to have a little more. Some of the chemistry books do give more information than this, such as the place of birth and when Minder retired, but not much. A reader who looks for this subject should be redirected to the actual subject that xe is one person within. Perhaps a biographical footnote at Astatine#History is enough, as that's how the world at large seems to treat this. Uncle G (talk) 08:41, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect, possibly selectively merge to Astatine#History, where the element discovery topic is already covered. The article doesn't establish notability apart from that. Sandstein 09:36, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • comment it seems that the same would apply for Alice Leigh-Smith since she also does not seem notable apart from this 1 event. --hroest 14:49, 19 April 2021 (UTC) PS: and also Helvetium which is also currently under AfD, which is a good time to merge all articles at Astatine#History. --hroest 14:50, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Alice Leigh-Smith has at least three separate claims to notability in her article: "first woman in British history to receive a PhD in nuclear physics", false discovery of astatine, and subject of semi-biographical novel. So I don't think a merge or redirect would be appropriate in her case. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:57, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • This should not be about some notion of evening things up. Human knowledge is not even. Some people's life and works are better documented than others, and documented in the context of more than 1 thing whereas others are not, and from the articles alone that is clearly the case here, even if I hadn't just checked a bunch of books with these two in them. Go and look at ISBN 9780199383344, for one example. Leigh-Smith is in the main body of the work, life discussed at length, including husband and travels. Minder's life is a few sentences under a picture, and a couple of sentences in a preceding chapter. Uncle G (talk) 00:17, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Europe-related deletion discussions. EpicPupper 18:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I added in the little bit about Minder's life from Uncle G's source. (He was also a pacifist and demonstrated twice against the possibility of Switzerland acquiring nuclear weapons.) Still not sure if that is enough to make him notable. Double sharp (talk) 03:19, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect per Sandstein's suggestion. As written this looks like a case of WP:BIO1E. It's possible his book Radiumdosimetrie could save him from that, but for that we would need published reviews and I didn't find any. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:31, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neutral per the single but in-depth source found below. Another source of this quality would push me over to at least a weak keep. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:54, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep it seems he has written at least four books "Radiumdosimetrie", "Röntgenphysik", and "Strahlenchemie" and Geschichte der Radioaktivität. After his death, this obituary was published in the Der Bund, a major Swiss newspaper. Printing a long obituary in a major newspaper further adds to notability. From his obituary is also becomes evident that he was viewed as a pioneer of nuclear energy and radiology in Switzerland. The obituary also clearly fleshes out his life beyond the failed claim to Astatine, his position at the Bern Inselspital and his role in the Swiss governments efforts to protect the population from radioactivity (Strahlenschutz), which he led as the Director of "Sektion für Strahlenschutz" for 6 years. I would thus argue that merging with Astatine is not sufficient since he has notability beyond this episode. David Eppstein it is quite likely that we will not find reviews for his books online given the time he wrote them and the geographic context, so we may have to be more lenient here. I hope with this new evidence Double sharp, Sandstein and Uncle G could reconsider. --hroest 17:07, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • That will be Gerhard Wagner (physicist) I expect. We basically have three groups of sources. The history of chemistry books all largely give the same as the one that I cited above. There are plenty of repetitions of largely the same biography, in conference proceedings and otherwise. This one that you have fleshes things out a bit. And Debus 1968, p. 1187 tells us things like wife (Hedwig Muller) and children (Markus, Christopher). In combination, I think that we can get a standalone article with rounded coverage of both life and work. There are multiple independent biographical sources, which there really weren't with just the history of chemistry books alone, as they seem to be all parrotting the same tale.
      • Debus, Allen G., ed. (1968). "MILLER, Walter". World Who's who in Science: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Scientists from Antiquity to the Present. Marquis-Who's Who.
      • "MILLER, Walter". Who's who in Atoms. Vol. 2. Vallancey Press. 1969. p. 1057.
    • Uncle G (talk) 18:35, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, per the obituary Hannes Röst links to. Double sharp (talk) 02:06, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep this is a good and intelligent start. The article needs expanding with a lot more explanation, but then that is beyond my scope. But anyway, my vote is keep. Greetings --Huligan0 (talk) 20:42, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Walter_Minder