Talk:George Gamow

message: To Ortolan88
May I put the whole Gamow's bibliography in the wikipedia from your x-ref? It would be quite interesting after all to add some links on the titles of his works. I've made this (in fact just a fairly assortment) of the work of Janez Strnad. I do believe that such listings tell us some stories too. What do you think? -- XJamRastafire 08:56 Aug 22, 2002 (PDT)
:Well, it's fabulous, but it's not my bibliography.  I just Googled it up.  There's an ongoing discussion on the Wikipedia-L mailing list about reusing material and crediting it and so forth.  The gist of the discussion seems to be to get permission from the person who compiled it and give them credit when using it.  You'd also have to mark it up, etc.  If you were on the mailing list, you could ask their opinion.  Otherwise, respond here and I'll raise it.  Ortolan88
When was Odessa moved from Russia to Ukraine? AFAIK it's always been in Ukraine, the only difference is that Ukraine was in the Soviet Union, and now it isn't. -phma
:I modified the text to say that Odessa was then part of the Russian Empire, which hopefully clears things up. The Ukrainian-ness of the city in the past can be debated, but that's another story... --Iceager 05:22, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: , I am removing the section that says Hoyle's Professor Gamma was inspired by George Gamow. Putting it back with a citation needed tag isn't enough. When challenged it is up to the editor adding the material to provide a reliable source. See WP:UNSOURCED. "Self-evident" isn't enough for material to be in Wikipedia. 
Gamow and Hoyle both worked on nucleogenesis, but they were not collaborators. They were on opposite sides of the big bang vs steady state universe controversy. Hoyle never accepted the big bang. Gamow's αβγ paper argued that all the elements were created in the first moments of the big bang. Gamow was wrong, and it was Hoyle who showed how stars and not the big bang could create the elements beyond helium. Carbon had to be able to be built up in the triple alpha process to get beyond the instability of lighter elements. Hoyle calculated that was possible only if carbon 12 had an excited state at 7.68 MeV, the so-called Hoyle state. While at Cal Tech he convinced William Fowler to have the Kellog Lab group look for it. The state exists, and once in about 2500 times, instead of breaking up into the smaller nuclei it emits two gamma rays and ends up in the stable ground state of carbon 12. 
In 1965 Gamow made fun of Hoyle's steady state ideas in his popular Mr Tompkins series. Hoyle appears in an opera (materializing out of empty space) in Mr Tompkins in Paperback. It is possible Hoyle had Gamow in mind in the Professor Gamma series and was making fun of him. Or he was thinking of his own nucleosynthesis work. In any case a source is needed. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fred Hoyle's Professor Gamma 

message: He was born in the Russian Empire (short: Russia). He worked in Leningrad, Soviet Union. So what makes him a Ukrainian-American physicist? Just that that he was born in the city which is now in Ukraine? It's kind of not enough. I don't see Trotsky called a Ukrainian Marxist in Wikipedia, despite Trotsky being born in what is now Ukraine. Alexxzz123 (talk) 20:11, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this is a bit inconsistent throughout Wikipedia. What makes a person Soviet but not Ukrainian or not Russian? In the case of Gamow, Ukrainian language and people existed during Russian Empire while ethnicity of a person not always matches with the ruling people. So, if there is a written evidence or reliable resource saying that he was Ukranian, this should be fairly reflected in the article. 2001:16B8:6652:8800:8C6D:FC06:54D:A5AB (talk) 23:51, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was he a Ukrainian originally?