Talk:Stanisław Ulam

message: Lemberg belonged to Austria Empiry (not to Poland) in those days and Ulam was US citizen. 82.82.126.128 15:52, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Lemberg

message: I've seen this before, and it's a neat sequence.  I don't remember a proof of this conjecture, however.  If there is a proof, it would be nice to see a sketch of it. If there is no proof, that would also be nice to know. (Maybe it's just really obvious, and I'm obtuse.) As far as I can tell, one wants to keep going until a power of two is reached or number known to result in a power of two is reached. How does this preclude cycles and divergent sequences?Coleca 06:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're probably talking about he Collatz conjecture, also known as the Ulam conjecture.  It is only a conjecture (i.e. not proven).  Bubba73 (talk), 01:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ulam's Theorem

message: I would request anyone who supports the present spelling to read Ulam's autobiography:  Adventures of a Mathematician. His usage in English is Stanislaw and he spelled Stanislaw Mazur with an unmodified l. His friends called him Stanislaw, or Stan; his own usage seems to have been S. M. Ulam. This would be acceptable as a compromise, but it is not the most common usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Now changed; let anyone with a substantive case take it to WP:RM Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Name

message: the comment was:
(Note: Sakharov's role as an independent discoverer has been called into question as of Dec. 29, 2008.)
I removed it because it isn't really relevant to this article, at least in its present form.  Also, it appears from the NY Times article itself that "Sakharov's role as an independent discoverer has been called into question" before.  Still, something about this may belong somewhere—just not here, I think.  Very interesting subject.  False vacuum (talk) 22:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleted comment about Sakharov 

message: Hi
I noticed an editor added a great section of material on Fission and explanations.
Unfortunately this was more on the theory of fission, and its explanation, than on Ulams work and so I had to remove a lot of it. I did retain some material and moved it to the section "Manhattan Project" to better explain how Ulams work led to the project. This also needs a lot of citations as, if it was the case that the Manhattan project relied on his work as heavily as claimed, then that should be supported by quotes or refs.
I have tagged the artice with a number of cn's as there is a need for showing the sources of those specific points. If he indeed was the first to realise something or the one that started something it should be stated as such with a ref and possibly a quote or two
thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 02:50, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite and cn tags 

message: The section on Ulam and the Manhattan Project contains the following paragraph:
When a single neutron collides with a uranium nucleus, in nuclear fission experiments, the final products are fission fragments and "new" neutrons. If a target-mass of solid uranium is bombarded with neutrons those "new" neutrons might collide with other uranium nuclei and again cause those nuclei to fission. Ulam realized that,[citation needed] if the target-mass was sufficiently large, a chain reaction would occur and fission could be either continuous—or even more importantly it could increase exponentially. This last statement is just plain wrong - Leo Sziliard is the inventor of the chain reaction. Sziliard actually applied for a British patent in the 30's. Sziliard and Fermi actually received a patent for the controlled release of nuclear energy in a pile post WWII. [4]
It seems clear from another articlehttps://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Nuclear_chain_reaction that the injected comment "This last statement is just plain wrong..." is factually correct but unhelpful. It would be useful for someone with expertise on this subject to correct this section.
Jylothr (talk) 06:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disputed: Ulam's contribution to the nuclear chain reaction 

message: Because the following material is only remotely related to the subject of the article, I have moved it from the body of the article to the talk page. Deer*lake (talk) 15:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Book ''Mathematics and Logic'' 

message: On 12 April 2012, an anonymous editor rewrote the lead paragraphs of this article.  The new material is full of factual errors, misplaced emphasis, and non-standard English.
Some examples of errors:
Ulam escaped from Warsaw
In 1939, Ulam left Lwów, not Warsaw, to return to his position at Harvard after a summer visit with his family.  Coincidentally, the war started shortly after he left.
Ulam was invited by John von Neuman to join and participate in ……..  the Manhattan Project
It was Hans Bethe, not von Neuman, who invited Ulam.
… co-invented the Monte Carlo method of computation with the von Neuman
Ulam is universally credited with inventing the method.  He did not "co-invent" it.
Examples of misplaced emphasis:
the professor of Mathematics at the University of Florida</br>
the faculty of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
These relatively insignificant academic positions do not belong in the lead paragraph, which leaves out his major position at Colorado.
Examples of non-standard English.
... in an amid fear of Holocaust
… was placed in Los Alamos National Laboratory
… relating the pure and applied mathematics, most notable of his works includes the [[Ulam spiral]
Consequently, I am restoring the lead paragraph to its previous version.      Deer*lake (talk) 13:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Restoring the lead paragraph

message: His name was Stanisław Ułam, was it not? The l's are eł's not el's and they are both pronounced "w" in Polish and certainly were by Ułam. So it would have been STAN-is-wah OO-wam. Ułam's colleages used to ask him what the line or bar through the l in his last name was, and he used to say it stood for "l over 2π." (Like a reduced constant; a little physics joke). SBHarris 00:54, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: I cannot find such an institution mentioned in any books other than the source. Ditto for Polish National Wood Industry Council. Can I ask that someone add Polish names of those organizations? The translations may be mangled (I cannot find anything relevant searching Polish sources). I also think that the original, not Englicized, version of the name Michael should be used, i.e. Michał, as seen for example in . That source seems to be provide more information about Ulam family, which may be notable, sadly I cannot access the preceeding page, but it does imply that our article may be confusing Michał Ulam with Szymon Ulam? The section is reproduced verbatim from , in a chapter "Ulam family of Lwów". --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:02, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I cannot find such an institution Cannot find what institution? Deleted the bit about the Woof Industry Council. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Cannot find either. Deletion is probably best, this is not really important to Stanislaw's bio anyway. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ulam family of Lwów 

message: Some interesting claims from pl wiki that would be worth adding here for completeness, referenced of course:
* his first published work was in Fundamenta Mathematicae on :pl:Arytmetyka liczb kardynalnych (I am sorry, I don't know how to translate this into English... arithmetic of cardinal numbers?)
* He recevied his PhD in 1934.
Also, while the Polish article doesn't say so, a good article should clearly state from where he received his PhD. Also, who was his supervisor? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: As the article says, he was awarded a DSc and his supervisor was Kazimierz Kuratowski. Ulam's description of what he did to get his DSc (write a thesis and face examiners) sounds like our Western PhD. There is probably a matter of translation from Polish here. You're our expert on Poland, so I'll leave it up to you. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:30, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I expended this a little from a Polish source, but I think this may be better reviewed by somebody more versed in math and physics. Reading on, why is C. J. Everett notable? Also, I am waiting for your reply to issues I raised in the previous section. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:22, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't linked him, alyjough he may make the grade under WP:ACADEMIC. He was a collaborator with Ulam on many papers, and worked with him on the Super. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:05, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Added a link to a list of Ulam's papers to the article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:08, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

text: I'd suggest redlinking him per WP:RED, and briefly explaining his significance (going beyond just saying he was Ulam's friend). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:34, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  From pl wiki 

message: There's been a recent change  to the article, adding what appears to be accurate, relevant, and interesting detail to the Teller-Ulam design section:  "Ulam had used his expertise in Combinatorics to analyze the chain reaction in deuterium, which was much more complicated than the ones in uranium and plutonium, and he concluded that no self sustaining chain reaction would take place at the (low) densities that Teller was considering.<*ref*>Lecture by Stan Ulam in Denton, Texas, at a Conference on the History of Applied Mathematics, in the late 1970's.<*ref*>"
The citation looks shaky to me. I assume this is fine for an article at GA status, but I doubt it would survive FAC, which I understand is where it may go in the not-too-distant future. I came up with an alternative that appears to support the text:
Title: The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power; edited by: Peter Galison, David J. Stump; Chapter 5: Computer Simulations and the Trading Zone; page: 135; author: Peter Galison;publisher = Stanford University Press; date = 1996
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=2HEYgFz_kioC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135 
It was posted by an IP user, that's why I'm bringing it here.  If anyone has a better citation, be old and add it; otherwise I’ll add this one to the article next week. Dictioneer (talk) 20:22, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change to ref in Teller–Ulam design section 

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thread_title:  External links modified