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Talk:Ben Gascoigne

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Featured articleBen Gascoigne is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on December 3, 2010.
Did You KnowOn this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
May 10, 2010Good article nomineeListed
June 16, 2010Featured article candidatePromoted
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 17, 2010.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that astronomer Ben Gascoigne (pictured) discovered that the Milky Way's nearest galactic neighbours, the Magellanic Clouds, are twice as far away as first thought?
On this day... A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on November 11, 2022.
Current status: Featured article

A couple of points

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  • Early life:
  • "won a bursary a year early": perhaps rephrase to make it clear he finished high school a year before the normal last year (guess it would still have been 7th form in those days)
  • In that case, rephrasing to make it clear to those without familiarity with the NZ schooling system what the expression means is more important than I had thought. It means in his second-to-last year of high school, he applied for a university scholarship and was successful. This is notable as application for such scholarships, while not uncommon for gifted students, normally occurs in the last year of high school. Iridia (talk) 11:22, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "a first honours degree in mathematics and a second honours degree in physics": clarify: completed an honours degree in maths (with First Class Honours? if so, should be mentioned) and then went on to another in physics
  • After looking at the interview, I think the bit that confused me was the article saying "a first honours degree". He did an Honours degree in math, missed out on the scholarship through paperwork issues, then did another (!wow) Honours degree in physics, which was awarded with First Class Honours. Pretty amazing. Iridia (talk) 04:54, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Were you going to modify this? Iridia (talk) 06:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "had been determined to study": sounds a little as though he was predestined to do so. Rephrase?
  • It's the 1931 Napier earthquake: link & say that, it's a fact that shouldn't need to rely on Gascoigne's memory here.
  • The problem is i can't prove that he is wrong - i cannot be certain that there was no earthquake in 1928, or even if there was, in which earthquake the young man in question was killed. The interview with Gascoigne is the only source i have at present that identifies the scholarship on which he studied, so i was running with a way of clinging to verifiability, not truth, as it were. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:51, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mention what his doctorate was in.
  • War service:
  • "found himself working"? the job wasn't specified ahead of time?
  • Not in the sense i think you mean, no. He returned to a (presumably academic) position in the Physics Dept, which, "like physics departments all over the place at that time, was enlisted to help with the war effort". So no, he would have literally found himself, like his colleagues, doing work other than that which he would originally have envisaged. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mt Stromlo:
  • "granted nine months time" On which telescope?
  • Needs to clarify that Siding Spring was chosen as the site, then Siding Spring Observatory had telescopes built there by the Stromlo group, then comes the para where he works on the 40" corrector.
  • AAT:
    The first part of this needs revision. Siding Spring Observatory was established & had telescopes & most importantly infrastructure: that was one of the reasons it was considered as the AAT site. Since it was the ANU site, that was one of the reasons the ownership brouhaha developed: if that is clarified, the next part of the paragraph follows well.
  • I will revisit that, but it sounds odd. Gascoigne himself recounts the 1957 exploratory visit during the site selection stage and states he was the first astronomer to set foot on what would one day be the site for the AAT. Obviously something happened between 1957 and 1963 which I overlooked. I am sure you are right. I have the two most likely books to sort this out, so i will go back and check. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:51, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice addition of information there. However, the structure of the section needs refinement: the establishment of SSO is mentioned in several sentences in the section above, Mt Stromlo. It would be much clearer if the two SSO paragraphs were consolidated, so that the AAT section deals only with the AAT's establishment. Otherwise the text reads as though Gascoigne is playing a role in the establishment of Stromlo's new field observatory, which is already established by the timing of that sentence. Iridia (talk) 01:32, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "first to take a photograph": can it just say first light? The commissioning process is a little more complex than that phrase makes it sound.
  • I think my source didn't actually use the expression first light, so i wasn't sure about whether to stretch that far, or to go with a piped link and stick to the source's actual content for hte text. Will check a couple of other docs. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:51, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I thought about this some more. Actually, "first light" is not an expression that would mean anything to a lay person. They would be relying on a wikilink to take them to the term in order to understand it. The current piped link text allows a lay person to understand the article without clicking through the link, so in fact i prefer the text as it stands. Thanks for finding that confirmatory article. hamiltonstone (talk) 02:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are references that indicate the AAT has a very high impact factor among telescopes that would be preferable to that extended quote, which are in the astronomical literature rather than the historical. Suggest referencing those rather than the interview there.
  • Keck and SDSS are also two decades newer than AAT: both are 1990s-tech, which is a nice point IMO. (Mind you, it's the instruments that keep a telescope cutting-edge, rather than the construction date, but it might be a bit difficult to work that in). Iridia (talk) 07:04, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Last point: those sentences now say that Gascoigne believed the AAT was one of the world's top telescopes. That's not quite what the source says. "We have had some compliments on the AAT...Virginia Tinsley, a very prominent astronomer, told Robyn Williams during an interview that [..] we are on top and have been for some time." The ADS etc references state that by the given metrics, the AAT is "one of the world's top telescopes", so it would probably be more relevant to instead mention one of the statements he makes in the next para of the interview ref to represent his view on the project. Iridia (talk) 04:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could use a selected bibliography of his works (suggest picking the most-cited papers from ADS, plus his book).
  • Good idea. Will get on to that.

Iridia (talk) 02:54, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for those suggestions. I will work through them over coming days. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:51, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nationality

[edit]
Someone has made that change, and it seems reasonable per the sources. hamiltonstone (talk) 04:55, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Would "New Zealand-born Australian optical astronomer and expert in photometry" be more accurate? He spent most of his life in Australia, and won the Order of Australia (implying he was an Australian citizen). Ackatsis (talk) 07:41, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that a full (rather than honorary) award of the AO implies citizenship. However, most sources refer to him as New Zealand-born, and I've not found one that says he bcame a citizen. I am happy with either the current wording (NZ born) or Ackatsis's formulation. hamiltonstone (talk) 10:45, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I've gone ahead and made the change. I didn't find any direct citation of citizenship, but the Australian Government Honours website always indicates if an Order of Australia is honorary, and it doesn't in this case. I don't think there's any argument that Gascoigne is most closely associated with his work in Australia, which spanned nearly all of his professional life. Ackatsis (talk) 11:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Curator?

[edit]

Someone contacted me off wiki to query the suggestion that Ben Gascoigne "curated" his wife's work. While that word is used in one of the obituaries, it is not ever used by Gascoigne himself, despite the fact that he wrote or spoke on several different occasions about his relationship with his wife's art. He calls himself many things - photographer, handyman, cook, archivist - but not curator. The work of a curator does go well beyond the activities conducted by Ben Gascoigne. As far as can be told from the sources, he never assembled works for an exhibition, for example, was never employed by an art institution to deal with the works of either his wife or others, and though he contributed memoirs to catalogues, he did not appear to prepare the actual catalogues himself. Accordingly, I am deleting that word. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:06, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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