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I think the present version is lacking some references.
1. In sub-chapter "Further Investigations" we read in the third section: „…his two papers on biquadratic residues … are considered second in importance …“ Who considers? Such an arbitrary statement needs reference.
2. The same case in the third section of sub-chapter "Analysis": „Perhaps the most remarkables…“
3. Both the first two sections of "Analysis" are completely lacking references. Dioskorides ( talk) 18:51, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
The article provides a large overview of Gauss’s own writings, and the text often refers to it (e.g. "Gauss (1809)". But in some remarks it is not clear tio which of Gauss’s writings it may concern.
1. Sub-chapter "Analysis", first section: "One of Gauss’s first independent discoveries…" Where published?
2. Sub-chapter "Analysis", second section: "…works which culminates with his discovery in 1808 of the very general Jacobi triple product identity…" Where can I find it?
3. Sub-chapter "Analysis", fifth section: "In 1822 Gauss published his prize winning essay on conformal mappings…" Title? Where published?
And: "In addition, in unpublished fragments from the years 1834-1839…" Which ones? The Collected Works contain all the unpublished things, which of them are concerned?
4. Sub-chapter "Numerical analysis", first section: "In 1815, he published an article on numeric integration…" Title? Where? Dioskorides ( talk) 18:52, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
The first five sections of the present text deal with Gauss‘ research on the orbits of minor planets, esp. Ceres and Pallas, and his masterpiece „Theoria motus..“. This is standard in Gauss biographies. As it is stated in the text, Gauss' most relevant astronomical activities were finished in 1818, when the new observatory had just gone ready for working. In the following time he mainly cared for geodesy and geophysics, as this were quite usual tasks for astronomers in this time.
But we should not forget that Gauss cared for practical astronomy, too, after 1818. He made a lot of observations and published them rapidly, otherwise the observations would be of low value for other astronomers. In the Collected Work Volume VI we can find the great number of these short communications. But those were standard results, comparable to those of other observatories, not spectacular ones. This may be the reason why biographers tend to ignore them.
Thus I am glad to see, that the last section covers the practical part of astronomical acticity. But I have some objections, the wording seems too "sensational" for me.
1. "As early as 1799 he did some important work, recorded in entry 97 of his diary, on determining the lunar parallax in any place on Earth by reducing it to a collection of useful formulas, which improved the accuracy of the method of determining geographical location by observing the position of the Moon."
The diary note from 8 April 1799 is: „Formulas novas exactas pro parallaxi eruimus.“ That’s all, and that should not be overinterpreted in that way that he had produced complete new knowledge. His formulae novae were transformations of formulas yet in use by others (Bohnenberger, Lexell), so Gauss decided to keep them for his personal use only and not to publish them, for he presumed them already been published anywhere.
2. "Later on, he attached importance to revising the values of fundamental astronomical constants, and thereby worked on diverse topics such as the precession and nutation constants, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the proper motion of the Solar System, constructing better stellar aberration tables, as well as the evaluation of the effect of atmospheric refraction on apparent star positions."
What does it mean:"attended importance" and "worked on"? Which results, where published resp. which unpublished papers? Gauss attended, of course, importance to it in his correspondance with Bessel on these subjects. It is widely seen by astronomical historians, that it was Bessel who finally gave the best values for the mentioned astronomical constants in his Fundamenta Astronomiae in 1818. And this corresponds with Brendel‘s view.
So I want to propose a modified text in this way:
"Even early in 1799, Gauss dealt with determination of longitude by use oft he lunar parallax, for which he developed more convient formulas than those were in common use. After his appointment as director of the Göttingen observatory he attached importance to the fundamental astronomical constants in correspondance with Bessel. Gauss himself provided tables for nutation and aberration, the solar coordinates, and refraction." Dioskorides ( talk) 10:20, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
Anyone else notice the signature has got a lil integral? 73.202.158.240 ( talk) 05:06, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
MacTutor is a useful encyclopedia of biographies. Some months ago, I have removed the MacTutor Gauss article from the external link collection. Why? I found a lot of errors, here there are:
Errare humanum est, and nobody is perfect, but this is too much. And worse, there are 67 references at all, but I cannot find one single inline-reference, so we can't see, whether this errors are MacTutor-made or yet in the sources. We could not produce a WP-lemma in this way, and thus the MacTutor text cannot be a reference for it. And in addition, I think it's not useful for readers, if they find facts different in the external links than in the Wikipedia text. Dioskorides ( talk) 21:38, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Referencing to Gauss' writings is a special problem. For example this paper:
He wrote this in 1832, and presented it to the Royal Academy at its session on 15 December 1832, see the subtitle of the publication Commentatio auctore Carolo Friderica Gauss in concessu Societatis MDCCCXXXII Dec. XV recitata This first publication is part of the series with full title Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis Recentiores Volumen VIII ad a. MDCCCXXXII - XXXVII; it's edited Gottingae MDCCCXLI. So we have a text of 1832, published in 1841 in the issue of a series for the years 1832–1837.
If we refer to it in the text in the form ...Gauss (18xy), what could "xy" be: Gauss (1832), Gauss (1832-1837), (Gauss 1837), or Gauss (1841)? When I prepared the text, I have seen a certain text with different years in the different sources several times. This may cause confusion.
In the "Selected Writings" chapter I give at first the year of editorial publication, with a link to the digitalized Collected Works. We usually refer to the written text, and it is often necessary to make clear, when his contemporaries could get notice of it. But if we write: "Gauss developed his ideas on magnetism in 18xy", we should take the earliest year for xy, otherwise it were wrong. So, when necessary, I gave the early year in brackets at the of the source, and, in addition, a link to the original per, too, so anyone can check the dates. Dioskorides ( talk) 15:47, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Carl Friedrich Gauss article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 3 months |
Carl Friedrich Gauss is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on August 4, 2005. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I think the present version is lacking some references.
1. In sub-chapter "Further Investigations" we read in the third section: „…his two papers on biquadratic residues … are considered second in importance …“ Who considers? Such an arbitrary statement needs reference.
2. The same case in the third section of sub-chapter "Analysis": „Perhaps the most remarkables…“
3. Both the first two sections of "Analysis" are completely lacking references. Dioskorides ( talk) 18:51, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
The article provides a large overview of Gauss’s own writings, and the text often refers to it (e.g. "Gauss (1809)". But in some remarks it is not clear tio which of Gauss’s writings it may concern.
1. Sub-chapter "Analysis", first section: "One of Gauss’s first independent discoveries…" Where published?
2. Sub-chapter "Analysis", second section: "…works which culminates with his discovery in 1808 of the very general Jacobi triple product identity…" Where can I find it?
3. Sub-chapter "Analysis", fifth section: "In 1822 Gauss published his prize winning essay on conformal mappings…" Title? Where published?
And: "In addition, in unpublished fragments from the years 1834-1839…" Which ones? The Collected Works contain all the unpublished things, which of them are concerned?
4. Sub-chapter "Numerical analysis", first section: "In 1815, he published an article on numeric integration…" Title? Where? Dioskorides ( talk) 18:52, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
The first five sections of the present text deal with Gauss‘ research on the orbits of minor planets, esp. Ceres and Pallas, and his masterpiece „Theoria motus..“. This is standard in Gauss biographies. As it is stated in the text, Gauss' most relevant astronomical activities were finished in 1818, when the new observatory had just gone ready for working. In the following time he mainly cared for geodesy and geophysics, as this were quite usual tasks for astronomers in this time.
But we should not forget that Gauss cared for practical astronomy, too, after 1818. He made a lot of observations and published them rapidly, otherwise the observations would be of low value for other astronomers. In the Collected Work Volume VI we can find the great number of these short communications. But those were standard results, comparable to those of other observatories, not spectacular ones. This may be the reason why biographers tend to ignore them.
Thus I am glad to see, that the last section covers the practical part of astronomical acticity. But I have some objections, the wording seems too "sensational" for me.
1. "As early as 1799 he did some important work, recorded in entry 97 of his diary, on determining the lunar parallax in any place on Earth by reducing it to a collection of useful formulas, which improved the accuracy of the method of determining geographical location by observing the position of the Moon."
The diary note from 8 April 1799 is: „Formulas novas exactas pro parallaxi eruimus.“ That’s all, and that should not be overinterpreted in that way that he had produced complete new knowledge. His formulae novae were transformations of formulas yet in use by others (Bohnenberger, Lexell), so Gauss decided to keep them for his personal use only and not to publish them, for he presumed them already been published anywhere.
2. "Later on, he attached importance to revising the values of fundamental astronomical constants, and thereby worked on diverse topics such as the precession and nutation constants, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the proper motion of the Solar System, constructing better stellar aberration tables, as well as the evaluation of the effect of atmospheric refraction on apparent star positions."
What does it mean:"attended importance" and "worked on"? Which results, where published resp. which unpublished papers? Gauss attended, of course, importance to it in his correspondance with Bessel on these subjects. It is widely seen by astronomical historians, that it was Bessel who finally gave the best values for the mentioned astronomical constants in his Fundamenta Astronomiae in 1818. And this corresponds with Brendel‘s view.
So I want to propose a modified text in this way:
"Even early in 1799, Gauss dealt with determination of longitude by use oft he lunar parallax, for which he developed more convient formulas than those were in common use. After his appointment as director of the Göttingen observatory he attached importance to the fundamental astronomical constants in correspondance with Bessel. Gauss himself provided tables for nutation and aberration, the solar coordinates, and refraction." Dioskorides ( talk) 10:20, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
Anyone else notice the signature has got a lil integral? 73.202.158.240 ( talk) 05:06, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
MacTutor is a useful encyclopedia of biographies. Some months ago, I have removed the MacTutor Gauss article from the external link collection. Why? I found a lot of errors, here there are:
Errare humanum est, and nobody is perfect, but this is too much. And worse, there are 67 references at all, but I cannot find one single inline-reference, so we can't see, whether this errors are MacTutor-made or yet in the sources. We could not produce a WP-lemma in this way, and thus the MacTutor text cannot be a reference for it. And in addition, I think it's not useful for readers, if they find facts different in the external links than in the Wikipedia text. Dioskorides ( talk) 21:38, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Referencing to Gauss' writings is a special problem. For example this paper:
He wrote this in 1832, and presented it to the Royal Academy at its session on 15 December 1832, see the subtitle of the publication Commentatio auctore Carolo Friderica Gauss in concessu Societatis MDCCCXXXII Dec. XV recitata This first publication is part of the series with full title Commentationes Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis Recentiores Volumen VIII ad a. MDCCCXXXII - XXXVII; it's edited Gottingae MDCCCXLI. So we have a text of 1832, published in 1841 in the issue of a series for the years 1832–1837.
If we refer to it in the text in the form ...Gauss (18xy), what could "xy" be: Gauss (1832), Gauss (1832-1837), (Gauss 1837), or Gauss (1841)? When I prepared the text, I have seen a certain text with different years in the different sources several times. This may cause confusion.
In the "Selected Writings" chapter I give at first the year of editorial publication, with a link to the digitalized Collected Works. We usually refer to the written text, and it is often necessary to make clear, when his contemporaries could get notice of it. But if we write: "Gauss developed his ideas on magnetism in 18xy", we should take the earliest year for xy, otherwise it were wrong. So, when necessary, I gave the early year in brackets at the of the source, and, in addition, a link to the original per, too, so anyone can check the dates. Dioskorides ( talk) 15:47, 12 April 2024 (UTC)