Talk:Gyula Kőnig

Referencing

I put a "unreferenced" template on the page (unlogged in --- sorry), which has been deleted. I realize that there are some sources cited at the end; but what I meant was that none of the claims in the text is referenced, which is bad, and in particular that the quotes in the text are unreferenced, which is terrible. (I wanted to follow up the Cantor quote for my research.) Does anyone know where Cantor's letter has been published? It's otherwise an excellent page, by the way. Best wishes, Omicron18 (talk) 09:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I added a tag that more accurately reflects the cleanup needed. —David Eppstein (talk) 14:34, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 10:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

His name

Do we know for sure that he wrote his family name as Kőnig rather than König? The fact that he was Hungarian is insufficient proof, since this name is of German origin. McKay (talk) 08:56, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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Jewish Hungarian and Christianity

I thought we'd better discuss here (instead of in the edit summaries). I added Jewish Hungarian to the first sentence. His son is desribed the same way, as are numerous other mathematicians and others. I don't think this is primarily about religion, but about a combination of ethnicity, heritage, cultural identity and related concepts. Thus, I don't think his conversion to Christianity invalidates this description, (especially since it was late in life). St.nerol (talk) 17:51, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Re: "I don't think": it's not a question of your opinion. It is very important for Wikipedia's purposes to distinguish being of Jewish descent and being of Jewish faith. We can only use "Jewish" to describe people who personally state their faith and for whom it is significant for whatever they are notable for; see WP:BLPCAT. When that is not the case, but we still have published sources for Jewish ethnicity, we use "of Jewish descent" instead. For Dénes, the documented fact that he committed suicide to avoid being killed as a Jew by the Nazis seems convincing enough to me that we can use the "Jewish" description and categories. For Gyula, the documented fact that he converted to Christianity seems convincing enough to me that we must limit what we say to "of Jewish descent". Also note that, since Judaism passes through the mother (except by the standards of the Nazis), Dénes' Judaism is irrelevant to the question of whether Gyula was a Jew. As for the "numerous other mathematicians": numerous other Wikipedia editors behaving badly does not excuse your misbehavior. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:06, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

WP:BLP (Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons) is about living or recently deceased persons, and is not applicable. St.nerol (talk) 18:12, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

BLPCAT applies to all biographies. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:14, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Let me cite WP:BLPCAT: "These principles apply to [...] living persons within any Wikipedia page" St.nerol (talk) 18:20, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

You didn't follow the link to Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality, did you? The same exact principle is expressed there, applied to everyone. By what bizarre leap of logic did you think that somehow the death of a subject makes it ok to use poor sourcing and guesswork to describe their religion? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:00, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

1) Why do you call it a poor source? 2) It's ethnicity that's relevant in this case (WP:ETHNICRACECAT gives the example Category:Jewish musicians) rather than religion. 3) It was you who referred to a policy specifically about living persons. –St.nerol (talk) 07:27, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Again, for ethnicity use "of Jewish descent". We do that to be unambiguous about whether we are talking about ethnicity or religion. (And don't try to tell me that this is the wrong word and that really all people of Jewish descent should just be called Jews. No, they shouldn't. Jewish descent includes descent through the father, which no Jew accepts as defining someone as actually being a Jew.) —David Eppstein (talk) 07:37, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

In our article on Jews it says: "Generally, in modern secular usage Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent), and people ... who have formally converted to Judaism."

I found another book on Google Books explicitly calling him Jewish. Does it matter at all to you that he was Jewish even by religion for most of his life, until his conversion? –St.nerol (talk) 07:51, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I will agree to write "mathematician from Hungary of Jewish descent" in the lede, if that is acceptable to you. St.nerol (talk) 07:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

So that's a different question. Why is his Jewish descent so significant with respect to what he is notable for that it should go into the lead? If it does go into the lead, how can you possibly consider it to be neutral and encyclopedic to mention that and not his Christian conversion? —David Eppstein (talk) 15:38, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

It's a fairly well established standard in our biographys to start off something like: *Name* (*Timeframe*) was a *Ethnicity*/*Country* *claim to fame*. I think it's because you want to place a person in a context, and then relate other facts and stories (like the conversion) to that "backdrop". Is this controversial? –St.nerol (talk) 12:21, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

We usually mention the nationality. We don't usually get into the weeds of more detailed ethnicities and subpopulations. Compare the members of Category:20th-century Indian mathematicians, for instance — each of them has an ethnicity that is much more specific than "Indian", but we almost always just say "Indian mathematician" or "Indian-American mathematician" etc., just stating the nationality. And we probably should do even this part less regularly than we do. (There are a lot of mathematicians for whom we state a nationality but for whom we don't have an explicit source for their nationality. It's merely where they were born and educated and lived and worked. I don't think that should be good enough.) —David Eppstein (talk) 16:14, 27 May 2018 (UTC)