Talk:List of members of the National Academy of Sciences

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the List of members of the National Academy of Sciences article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

Biography: Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as Low-importance).

Organizations Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Organizations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Organizations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.OrganizationsWikipedia:WikiProject OrganizationsTemplate:WikiProject Organizationsorganization articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Science Low‑importance

	Science portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Science on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ScienceWikipedia:WikiProject ScienceTemplate:WikiProject Sciencescience articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

United States Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Red links[edit]

The red links don't mean the people's articles don't exist, just that the link is wrong. I made all the links just by putting brackets around all the names, and some ended up blue, some ended up red. --brian0918  28 June 2005 13:32 (UTC)

Yep, middle initials may be responsible for many red links. —Lowellian (reply) 10:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Explanation of my recent edit[edit]

I've changed lots of capital letters to lower-case in section headings. If they're proper names, then they should be capital. But what I found was that at least the first section used lower case. So it is possible that someone capitalized them out of a mistaken idea of Wikipedia conventions (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style concerning section headings). If they should be capital, could someone (1) revert my edit, and (2) capitalize the one[s] that was[were] lower case, and (3) insert a commented-out explanation that they're capitalized because they're proper names (maybe also saying that in the edit summary)? Thanks. Michael Hardy 00:25, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the section headings should not be capitalized, except for the first letter of the first word. —Lowellian (reply) 10:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Grace Wahba was omitted from the applied mathematical sciences section

Michael Powell[edit]

Is the Michael Powell listed here under Applied mathematical sciences, the son of Colin Powell? If so, he should be linked as Michael Powell (politician). If not, he should be given a different designation like Michael Powell (mathematician). I'm fairly certain he isn't any of the other people listed at Michael Powell. SteveCrook 03:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I renamed him Michael Powell (mathematician) and added him to the list eventhough there is no article about him. Kjaergaard 04:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. SteveCrook 05:18, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Splitting it up[edit]

The page is unwieldy in length. I propose splitting it into its constituent sub-sections. Thoughts? --LQ 03:45, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Let's split it up by alphabet and put TOC links to it. Chris 22:02, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A year alter I come back to this ... It's currently organized by subdiscipline, so it would make more sense to do it that way, don't you think? --lquilter 17:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All right, I'm doing it. To retain consistency I have created two subpage templates for references and standard top-page text. These are at

We should probably also develop a [[List of members of the National Academy of Sciences/infobox|subject infobox}} that can be transcluded onto each page as internal navigation. --Lquilter (talk) 18:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

so how is one to see if any given person is included? We need an alphabetic list, instead of this, or in addition to it.DGG (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

2 questions:[edit]

2 salient questions: why exclude deceased members? And why aren't the lists sortable? Both changes would make the information more complete and accessible to readers. Excluding deceased members minimizes the member's achievements, and necessitates constant gardening as current members die. --Animalparty-- (talk) 20:40, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know why we need to remove deceased members. Perhaps we could mark them with an asterisk instead? The only rationale I can think of is to avoid the lists getting too long, but that doesn't seem like it needs to be an issue, since it's already broken up into several pages. Natureium (talk) 21:34, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rename[edit]

The name of this article seems to originate from the times when English wikipedia only dealt with the United States. The name should definitely be adapted now to e.g. "List of members of the United States National Academy of Sciences". The same applies to Category:Lists of members of the National Academy of Sciences itself, and all the pages below it. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 08:57, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]