Talk:John C. Gittins

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Copyright

I think the similarity to the subject's home page (found by "CorenSearchBot") can be counted as "fair use" in this context. Contents of publication-names surely don't count? Melcombe (talk) 17:28, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Doctoral advisor?

The Mathematics Genealogy Project fails to list the doctoral advisor for John C. Gittins. (I guessed that it might be Peter Whittle, but there seems to be no listing of Whittle's students, either.) Who was the advisor?

Thanks! Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How do you know he had a doctoral advisor? Qwfp (talk) 18:52, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At Oxford University, Professor Gittins's homepage lists him as having the higher degree, D. Sci. (Oxford), 1992. The Mathematics Genealogy Project lists his doctoral advisor as "unknown" and lists no year. (British academics often had only M.A. degrees, at least until the Thatcher era, according to Michael Dummett.) Thanks! Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:15, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

He no doubt does have a DSci (and not an honorary one), but that doesn't mean he had a doctoral advisor. The award can be just by submission of a selection of publications, as indicated in the artcle D. Sci. that you linked to. No "advisor" or "supervisor" needed. As indicated in the article, the award usually goes to someone with vast experience ... someone who has been working independently for many years. Thus there is a major difference from what a "PhD" usually entails. Melcombe (talk) 09:39, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

("honorary": I corrected my phrasing, which previously had the ambiguous and usually misleading word "honorary", which I had intended to mean "given later in life, to mark a very productive research career", rather than in the usual sense of "honorary degree". Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 22:04, 18 September 2010 (UTC))[reply]

His doctoral advisor was Dennis Victor Lindley. The Mathematics Genealogy Project now shows this. --Richard Weber (talk) 22:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]