Talk:Carl Friedrich Gauss

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Hey man im josh talk 14:33, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that a geographer determined the surface area of Carl Friedrich Gauss's brain?

• Source: Schweizer, Renate; Wittmann, Axel; Frahm, Jens (2014). "A rare anatomical variation newly identifies the brains of C.F. Gauss and C.H. Fuchs in a collection at the University of Göttingen". Brain. 137 (4): e269. doi:10.1093/brain/awt296. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0014-C6F0-6. PMID 24163274.

• Reviewed:

Improved to Good Article status by Dioskorides (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.

Dioskorides (talk) 21:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC).

• General eligibility:
• New enough:
• Long enough:
• Other problems:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:
• Other problems:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Fantastic work bringing this to GA status! Great choice for a hook! Reywas92^Talk 01:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Peer review

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Previous peer review

I've listed this article for peer review because I plan to nominate it as a featured article and I believe it meets all criteria.

Thanks, Sushidude21! (talk) 23:22, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I've added this to Template:FAC peer review sidebar RoySmith (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

RoySmith

This was delisted in 2008. One of the issues raised was that the lead needed to be expanded, so I'll start there.

• who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science You've already listed four fields, so this seems redundant. Maybe "also contributed to many other fields"?
• It's a little odd to start with his professorship at Göttingen and then follow up with his studying there. I'd introduce those in chronological order, something like "He studied at the University of Göttingen and went on to hold a professorship there".
• masterpieces Disquisitiones Arithmeticae WP:SOB
• proving the law of quadratic reciprocity and proving the triangular case => "proving the law of quadratic reciprocity as well as the triangular case ..."
• There's also some confusing changes of tense here "made ... formulating ... proving ... proving ... developed". Perhaps this could be rephrased? Maybe start a new sentence with "He also developed the theories of ..."?
• he propounded several mathematical theorems I had to look up "propounded". I suggest using a more commonly understood word here. OED says "There are ten meanings listed in OED's entry for the verb propound, seven of which are labelled obsolete."
• he was one of the founders of geophysics The article says "Gauss influenced the beginning of geophysics in Russia"; it's not entirely clear what that means. Does it mean "Gauss influenced the beginning of geophysics and he was in Russia when he did that"? Or "There was already a field of geophysics which Gauss helped bring to Russia"?
• He developed a fast Fourier transform The article says "discrete Fourier transforms". Somebody who is better at math than me should weigh in here, but I'm not sure that "fast Fourier transform" is exactly the same as "discrete Fourier transform".
• Gauss confessed to disliking teaching, but some of his students became influential mathematicians I don't think that's a legitimate use of "but".

Reading though the article, I recognize several different styles of writing. This is, of course, because the article has been written over many years, by many different authors. Harmonizing these styles is not easy, and looking at WP:FACR 1a ("its prose is engaging and of a professional standard") I'm not even convinced it's required, but it sure would be nice. That being said, some of the writing exhibits a"choppy" feel, which does need to get fixed to be considered "engaging and of a professional standard". For example:

Gauss was born on 30 April 1777 in Brunswick in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (now in the German state of Lower Saxony). His family was of relatively low social status.[5] His father Gebhard Dietrich Gauss (1744–1808) worked variously as a butcher, bricklayer, gardener, and treasurer of a death-benefit fund. Gauss characterized his father as honourable and respected, but rough and dominating at home. He was experienced in writing and calculating, whereas his second wife Dorothea, Carl Friedrich's mother, was nearly illiterate.[6] He had one elder brother from his father's first marriage.[7]

is a classic collection of simple declarative sentences with no overall flow connecting them.

Anecdotes

@Dioskorides, your work is much appreciated, but it's worth always keeping in mind, as you know, that the GAN process is one person ensuring rather permissive guidelines apply to an article—it's not at all the case that no removals can be made without prior permission. Remsense ‥ 论 20:17, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Ok, certainly, but I think that it should be explained if someone wants to delete such a great amount of text, a whole chapter. It would be useful to look for a consensus. --Dioskorides (talk) 22:18, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

This type of "chapter" is generally avoided, per WP:ANECDOTE. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:21, 9 February 2025 (UTC)