Talk:Klaus Fuchs/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Dwaipayanc (talk · contribs) 17:52, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

• Will start the review soon. My background knowledge in physics is only up to high school level, and I sincerely hope I won't irritate you by asking silly questions! This personality, however, I found to be quite fascinating when I read a book about the Manhattan Project several years ago; so decided to do the review. Will be back soon! Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 17:52, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Comments

• "Fuchs entered the University of Leipzig,.." Do we know which year?
  • Yes, it was in 1930. Added. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• "When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Fuchs decided to leave Kiel, enrolling at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin" Just curious, are these two events related by cause-effect? It seems from reading the sentence as if Hitler's becoming Chancellor was the reason for Fuchs' leaving Kiel.
  • Yes, that's right. Re-worded to make this clearer. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• " In August 1933, he attended a conference in Paris chaired by Henri Barbusse..." I think you can mention what kind of conference it was? I guess it was a political conference, and perhaps related to communism?
  • The source just says "anti-fascist", so we'll go with that. I note in passing that Richard Rhodes doesn't have the same strictures against close paraphrase that we do. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• " where he joined a communist discussion group led by Hans Kahle. His sister Kristel arranged for Israel Halperin to bring him some magazines..." These names (Kahle and Halperin) may benefit from short descriptors. For Kahle, at least we can presume that he was also perhaps interned, and was the leader of the communist discussion group. But, we know nothing on Halperin.
  • Friend of a friend. And another Communist. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• "...who worked for the GRU" perhaps the full form of GRU, since this is the first occurrence?
  • Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• "was transferred to the NKGB when he moved to New York..." A descriptor for NKGB is needed, as the reader may not know what is NKGB (as an example, you told what is GRU earlier).
  • Added. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• The second paragraph of the section "Value of Fuchs' data to the Soviet project" has only one citation at the very end of the paragraph. Does that reference cover everything discussed in this paragraph? This paragraph is quite vital, and seems that might benefit with some more references, if available.
  • Added another reference. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

--Dwaipayan (talk) 18:20, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

All points addressed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

• wow, great. The article is an exhilarating reading, I liked it immensely. Just one small query. In many articles on physicists, we see more discussion on their discoveries. Equations, or, names of theories etc, and some elucidation of those. In this article, although there is the name of a theory named after him, we don't see what it was, I mean the theory was. Although I won't understand anything of the theory, do you think adding some description of the theory would be beneficial. I understand it would be too technical, but still...--Dwaipayan (talk) 02:08, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • The article says techniques (such as the still-used Fuchs-Nordheim method) for calculating the energy of a fissile assembly which goes highly prompt critical. It's a differential equation, and there are whole books on the subject, but I'll have to read one of them before attempting to update its article. Here's the Fuchs-Nordheim equation:

${\phi }'(t)={(-{\beta }+{\rho }(t)){\phi }(t) \over {\Lambda }}$

I do understand the need to have physics in an article about a physicist, which is why I've mentioned Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:40, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the article meets GA criteria.--Dwaipayan (talk) 22:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)