Talk:Mahmoud Hessabi

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Infinitely extended particles[edit]

Could someone please add more information about Infinitely extended particles? I couldn't find much about this. Mahanchian 00:12, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Most probably "Hessabi, A" is not the same person as Mahmoud Hessabi (Hessabi, M). At the moment I have no resources to check who is "Hessabi, A", author of three listed publication in this entry. --Zende Rood (talk) 20:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Princeton and Chicago[edit]

His papers indicate that he used to work or study at Princeton and the University of Chicago, does anyone know more about this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.157.14.126 (talk) 15:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Hessaby hoax[edit]

There is some scepticism about the real value of what is much publicized (especially after his death) about his scientific achievements, his so-called "infinitely expanded particles" theory in particular. The reader is advised to look the entry in independent (not Iranian based) references. Ditto for his alleged status of being a favourite student of Einstein's.

Hessaby is deservably highly respected in Iran for his role in establishment of Tehran University. He had huge impact on the status of higher education in Iran. About his research works, I added his classic papers. Apparently "Légion d'honneur" is also a very prestigious award. Sangak 21:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He Never awarded "Légion d'honneur"! There is no credible source for this claim! Iranian users like you spread lies of his son through Wikipedia!


I am Shayan Modjtehedi and I do not approve of this statement.

Prof. Hessabi's origin[edit]

here is mentioned that he was born in tehran. However everone who knows Hessabi better knows that he was from tafresh. please check and mention this. Babakexorramdin 07:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Why to mix religion and science?[edit]

Taken out from the article: "At the age of seven he memorised the Qur'an by heart"

Why do we have to mix religion and science/history all the time? What the heck does it matter if he knew Quran by heart? Does this make him a better student of Einstein? Or does this imply his extensive knowledge in Physics? Maybe he also knew the Satanic Verses by heart beside Quran, would that make him a worse student in Physics? When do we learn from our mistakes and "leave the church in the village"?

Awful, two thumbs down! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Houmie (talkcontribs) 08:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hessaby was never the great scientist he is made out to be. He was a traditional Iranian (people who whether you like it or not are pretty religious) and he contributed a hell of a great deal to the advancement of science and education in our country, which is admirable. So no, it doesn't matter if he was religious (not that there's anything wrong with it to begin with), and if it doesn't matter, why are you so concerned? Alireza Hashemi


I think this is not a mix of religion and science to mention he was memorizing the whole Qoran at age 7. I am not sure whether this is a fact or not. However by having a look on the lenght and difficulty of memorizing Quran, specially for a person whose native language is not Arabic, then it shows the strong memory and will of that person. --Zende Rood (talk) 20:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that it's a fact that he had memorized Quran, I think this is important to be noted for biographical purposes. Memorizing Quran at a young age is unfortunately something that is encouraged and promoted in the Iranian culture and government and very few kids are able to do it. Having said that I personally think it's a waste of time to memorized such a non sense, unless if you're a scholar of Islam and religion. Persiancowboy 06:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Persiancowboy (talkcontribs)

On the present biography[edit]

I must be forthright and state that the present biography is not befitting a scientist. The text is not professionally written and certainly should be modified - I have tried to put some dots on i's, but that is clearly insufficient. For example, to say solely that Professor Hessaby has had meetings with Dirac, etc, is at the very least patronising to him and his memory (at worst, disingenuous); if you are a physicist, then you will naturally come across a large number of very prominent physicists during your professional life; at his time, prominent people were Einstein, Dirac, Schrödinger, etc. One should state, instead, something about the issues having been discussed in such meetings (if such meetings have indeed taken place); that is what matters. I have further tried to look into the scientific papers; one of them is an abstract of the APS Meeting of 1947 in Montreal, which disqualifies it as a "Key" publication. A second one is a short announcement, more like an abstract (prior to the creation of Physical Review Letters, one published such short abstracts, firstly to announce a later-to-be-published long paper, and secondly to make a claim on having been the first to have come up with some original result); in my opinion, this brief announcement is short of being a "Key" publication. Further, "Key publications" need to include some more recent publications. At present, the latest publication dates from 1957 (and Professor Hessaby died in 1992). Finally, the biography fails to mention that Professor Hessaby has been a visiting scientist at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (in the publications that I have consulted (1947-1948), he gives his official affiliations as being Princeton University, Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, and Tehran University). I am not familiar with the background of his position at the Institute, however there is a real possibility that his being a visiting scientist there does not make him a "student" of Einstein: at or around the time Einstein was the Director of the Institute (the Institute was in fact build around him) so that it would be technically incorrect to consider all visitors to this Institute as pupils of Einstein. The three papers/abstracts/anouncements that I have consulted (one full paper in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences, one abstract, and one conference announcement/abstract) do not contain any acknowledgements, either to Einstein or to anybody else for that matter. This is relevant, since both students and post-doctoral researchers almost always thank their "teachers/supervisors" in their papers for suggesting the problem or for, say, fruitful discussions on the subject matter of the problem dealt with in the paper. Given this fact, I am inclined to believe that Professor Hessaby cannot rightfully be considered as having been Einstein's pupil. In saying so, I leave aside the fact that in 1947 Professor Hessaby has been 44 years old, so that calling him a "student of Einstein", at such an advanced age, is truly patronising. To summarise, the present biography leaves much to be desired. --BF 17:03, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 09:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Physics in US under Einstein[edit]

The "Physics in US under Einstein" section was blanked. Should it have been? Tweisbach (talk) 01:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the text that Dr. Hesaby was a student of Albert Einstein. Other than a single picture and lots of hearsay, I haven't been able to find a credible source proving that he was a student of Albert Einstein. I have a picture with Noam Chomsky, but that doesn't give me the credit to claim that I'm one of his students, and attending one or several lecture by a renowned scientist doesn't give me the right to also claim to be his/her student. I think we need a co-authored article/journal, or at least a mention of Dr. Hesaby in any of Einstein's archives in order to establish that their relationship was more than a single encounter. Persiancowboy 06:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Persiancowboy (talkcontribs)

Title of his paper=[edit]

Re Theoretical Evidence for the Existence of a Light-Charged Particle of Mass Greater than That of the Electron - How can there be a "theoretical evidence"? Oxymoron, if anything Zezen (talk) 10:35, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Mahmoud Hessabi/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

"At the age of seven he memorised the Qur'an by heart"

Why do we have to mix religion with science and history all the time? What the heck does it matter if he knew Quran by heart? Does this make him a better student of Einstein? Or does this imply his extensive knowledge in Physics? Maybe he also knew the Satanic Verses by heart beside Quran, would that make him a worse student in Physics? When do we learn from our mistakes and "leave the church in the village"?

Awful, two thumbs down!

Substituted at 21:51, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Légion d'Honneur[edit]

So I came across this gallery from his "Museum". About 3/4 of the way down are two scans of awards for the Légion d'Honneur. However, the dates are completely different. How can one person with the highest award from a country twice? Is one of them fake? Are they both fake? Unfortunately a full list of LH recipients is not available online, and I don't really feel like calling them up to verify. Primefac (talk) 18:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus to keep very short[edit]

@Primefac, Materialscientist, and GTVM92: there was a consensus on the AFD discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mahmoud Hessabi of this article to keep it in its very short version. Apparently unaware of that discussion user GTVM92 restored it to a previous "bad" version ([1]). FWIW, I have reverted to the short version ([2]). Feel free to discuss. - DVdm (talk) 14:59, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that was the old version of the page. Thanks for that. Primefac (talk) 15:25, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]