Talk:Brian Hartley

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I knew, liked and respected Hartley, and have been a one-time colleague of his, but it seems to me that the information in this article is too subjective and personalized for a WP article, and does not convey the scientific content of the man's work, at least to an extent to justify WP inclusion on the basis of the evidence presented here. I was loathe to delete the text, but did a few minor textual corrections, and did include an attempt to put some of his work in a mathematical context. I believe ( but would have to check) that Hartley held the Fielden Chair at Manchester. It might be worth noting that an obituary of Hartley appeared in the Guardian newspaper. Messagetolove 10:25, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have just undeleted your comment as I think it is a fair one. The information is largely from Mac Tutor, and I agree it needs to be made more encyclopedic. Do you have a copy of the Guardian Obituary?Billlion 13:18, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And no, as far as I know he did not hold the Fielden Chair of Pure Mathematics. One presumes it was a personal chair. The list was provided by the Archivist at the U o M.Billlion 13:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for spelling on Fielden Chair, and, given the WP information on this Chair, which I have no reason to doubt, it appears that Norman Blackburn (who I also knew) held the Chair, not Hartley. I have no copy of the Guardian Obituary, but I know it appeared.(Also, by the way, I might suggest changing "Hartley loved hill-walking" to "Hartley was a hill-walker" or some such more neutral statement). You will note that I had had an attempt at neutralizing the text before I undid what I had written on the talk page ( when I realised that some of the quotes were verbatim from MacTutor, I had less compunction in doing that)- this was also why I thought that some of my "talk" comments were redundant. I just realised from your "alias" that we have probably met ( but if you know who I am, please respect my anonymity in this medium ( I will do likewise for you)Messagetolove 17:49, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, the tone of the Mac Tutor article is not really encyclopedic, and we need to aim for a different tone. When I get around to it I will look at the obituary in the Bull LMS. Billlion 19:27, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The BLMS obituary is easy to track down online as a PDF file, by entering "Brian Hartley" into a search engine. The date of the Guardian obituary was October 18,1994, I believe. I am not sure whether there is now an online version of that available.Messagetolove 20:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I already found it, and put in a link to the digital object identifier Billlion 10:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The "it" in the preceding edit is ambiguous. It evidently refers back, not to the last thing mentioned (the Guardian obit), but rather to the preceding mention of a BLMS obit. Can anyone provide any kind of link to the Guardian obit? That would be most helpful --- an old Cambridge cycling friend of Brian Hartley. Spock2 (talk) 03:36, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]