Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philip J. Morrison

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. @pple complain 07:35, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Philip J. Morrison

hoax RepriseRubric 16:41, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There's another physicist at Philip Morrison but I cannot verify that PM and PJM are the same people. Wl219 17:07, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Why is this a suspected hoax? See this. --Evb-wiki 17:12, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. ~~In addition, see this~~. Smashville 17:14, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Apparently the wrong Philip Morrison. But why exactly is this believed to be a hoax? Smashville 17:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Doesn't appear to be a hoax based on the external link. May not be notable enough for an article, however. DCEdwards1966 17:17, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep does not appear to be a hoax. Nom is a user with few edits who has nominated other non-hoaxes in this manner. --Djsasso 17:47, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Dekete - Certainly not a hoax, but nonetheless he fails WP:BIO. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (tαlk) 19:40, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Doesn't necessarily fail WP:BIO...there are probably parts not sourced here. I know notability in academia is a little different... Smashville 19:54, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Notable or not, this is a serious disambiguation issue. I found a couple of websites where the famous physicist named Philip Morrison (who apparently did not use a middle name or initial) was called "Philip J Morrison." Since these two men were contemporary American physicists, I bet they got mail for each other, etc., pretty often. I have copied some information from the article onto Phil Morrison, which is a disambiguation page, and I created Philip Morrison (disambiguation) as a redirect to that page. --orlady 23:09, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 23:33, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If we have no clue who this page is really about, Delete per lack of context (same rationale as speedy for little or no context (CSD A1)). If someone wants to write about one specific/definite person with this name, no reason such an article wouldn't be permissible. DMacks 00:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Ummmm. Did ya read the article? --Evb-wiki 00:28, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Hence the "if" in my statement. The above comments discuss some concern about who this actual article is about so if it's not known, the article's presence adds entropy to Wikipedia. If it's known, then a concern prefaced by "if it's not known" isn't relevant. The utexas page that's linked doesn't make any mention of the person being dead (and the phone number listed on that page is still active and goes to voice-mail for someone of this name), yet the article says he died in 2006. DMacks 00:42, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Gotcha. And as evidenced by those issues, there is a question of verifiability (at least as to WP:BLP or not) and notability. Thus, I still haven't made up my mind with this one. Cheers. --Evb-wiki 00:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - Oops! His death does seem to be a hoax. Ouch. --orlady 01:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but improve. Not only is there a need to disambiguate from the other Philip Morrison who was a physicist, but he seems to be an important (i.e., notable) person in the interrelated fields of hydrodynamics, plasma physics, and fusion. Philip J. Morrison (that is, the plasma physicist) is a fellow of the American Physical Society (see this list) ~~and appears to have written a regular column in Scientific American magazine (see this article)~~. He also has many technical publications in multiple decades and has supervised many graduate students.--orlady 01:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I struck out the Scientific American info because I have determined that the columnist was the other Philip Morrison.--orlady 01:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Okay. This may be a relatively close call on WP:PROF; however, in the spirit of caveat #2, "this proposal sets the bar fairly low, which is natural: to a degree, academics live in the public arena, trying to influence others with their ideas. It is natural that successful ones should be considered notable." --Evb-wiki 01:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Writing technical publications and supervising graduate students is what is expected of any academic and does not in intself establish notability as per WP:PROF. There is no evidence either that this person is relatively more succesful than others in the same field. --Crusio 04:02, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep. By my count from a Google scholar search (counting only the results that were obviously physics) he has an h-index of 23 and 169 citations for his most cited paper, which is by him alone, both respectable if a bit bean-countery in the absence of more qualitative measures of notability. But what convinces me about this case is the name confusion: having an article about him serves an encyclopedic purpose in helping people who look up one or the other Morrison from getting him confused with the other one. —David Eppstein 05:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Given that he is apparently a full professor at a major research university, he is very much more successful than other people in the same field. Very few physicists reach such a rank--possibly the top 5 or 10% of those who get doctorates in physcs. That's the appropriate group. From Scopus, I find 42 published papers, (with the most cited having 114 and 87 references respectively). the average number of papers published in all fields by those who get a PhD is about 2 or 3. It's probably a little higher in physics, but I know of no studies here. That's enough for notability. there would be other ways of disambiguation, so I do not find David E's argument convincing, but PJ is notable in his own right.DGG (talk) 07:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
~~Maintain delete~~ The correct group to compare this person with is not any persons that ever got a PhD. This person should be compared to other professors at research universities. If one does that, the production mentioned by DGG is just average, at best. Wikipedia cannot include articles on each and every professor at a major university. Hence I maintain my vote for delete unless other evidence of notability gets presented. --Crusio 07:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I struck out your second !vote. You may comment multiple times here, and this is not a vote, but it is still bad form to leave multiple un-struck-out delete or keep requests, because people often do count those to get a sense of how strongly the community is leaning one way or the other. —David Eppstein 15:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Oops, sorry about that, won't do that again! --Crusio 15:23, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Relative to the criteria ("If an academic/professor meets any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, they are definitely notable") listed in Wikipedia:Notability (academics), being a fellow of the American Physical Society is evidence that "The person is regarded as an important figure by independent academics in the same field."--orlady 11:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom.--Yeshivish 16:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Do you really believe this is a hoax? --Evb-wiki 20:35, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete WP:VERIFY,WP:PROF --AmerHisBuff 09:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How many sources do you require for "verifiability"? This article lists several sources now, and the bogus information about birth date and death has been removed. Would you feel better about this article if it included a list of Morrison's technical publications, such as "Noncanonical Hamiltonian Density Formulation of Hydrodynamics and Ideal Magnetohydrodynamics" (1980), "Hamiltonian description of the ideal fluid" (1998), and "Generalized Poisson Brackets and Nonlinear Liapunov Stability - Application to Reduced MHD" (1984)? (As for notability, I figure that if Wikipedia has articles for freshman basketball players at the University of Texas and people from small towns in Texas who had brief careers in minor professional wrestling leagues, it can also have articles for respected senior physicists on the U of Texas faculty.)--orlady 15:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.