Talk:Emil Lenz

Biography assessment rating comment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Edofedinburgh 14:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey! I'm confused. I learned that Lenz was a russian physicist, and searching the WWW for info about him, that's what I get the most. Maybe we just drop the nationality? Or we should use the as a guide the passport he used? I do not know which one that was, though... Awolf002 02:46, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Checked it one more time (see Hutchinson) and he most likely was a russian citizen. Awolf002 03:17, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi. All the references I could find also described him as Russian, but I wrote Estonian because of a correction by 61.9.208.172 over on Lenz's law. I have asked the user for clarification, but in the meantime I have no objection to changing the nationality to Russian. Wmahan 03:39, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Lenz was at Baltic German, and he was born in the Russian province of Livonia, to which Dorpat (now Tartu) then belonged. The term "Estonia" during his entire lifetime refers to the Russian province of that name, which is the province North of Livonia, with the capital of Riga (now Tallinn), appr. the northern half of today's Republic of Estonia, and with which apparently Lenz had nothing to do whatsoever. So, to say that he was an Estonian physicist would only make sense if he had been an Ethnic Estonian, which he wasn't; if anything, he was Livonian. This means that he was an ethnic German but a Russian citizen (and if you would have asked him what he was, which is a useful criterion in such messy matters, he would have said, with virtual certainty, either "a Balt" or "a German", depending where asked and by whom). For the list of all such scientists (you can check the list at the University of Tartu entry), we have used a standard description for such cases, which I would of course suggest for Lenz as well: "Heinrich ... Lenz ... was a Baltic German physicist most famous ... in 1833. / Lenz was born in Dorpat, Livonia (now Tartu, Estonia)." This would bring him in line not only with the general standard here, but also with all his expedition colleagues from a similar background. Clossius 07:10, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wow, thanks! Wmahan 07:54, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, this sounds okay to me, too. Although it is always difficult to ascertain what somebody would say 170 years ago. So, if we get flak for this I think we should fall back to the passport = Russian... Awolf002 14:44, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

---

The name of the town Lenz was born is Tartu now. It really doesn't matter what the name was then, you can put in brackets. The wikipedia isn't being written for people of the 19th century but for people today who know or at least should know the town under the name of Tartu. See http://www.tartu.ee. He was born in what is today Estonia, right??. I mean who has ever heard of "Livonia", it's not even a country. Sky 15:52, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. We are describing a person, here. He lived at a certain time and if you want to know what he did, you need to know in what environment he lived as well. My vote was to say he lived in Russia. He surely did not live in Estonia.

I do not believe, using your argument gets us consistent results. For example the Kings of Persia ruled a country that does not exist anymore and their capital is gone, too. Does this mean they ruled in Iran or Iraq? I do not think so... Awolf002 18:36, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

So what's his name?

An editor (Omnipaedista) moved this from Heinrich Lenz to Emil Lenz... I'm not sure about that. This Google Ngram shows three things about how this person is referred to in those English sources that Google has processed:

1. From first notice to about 1940, "Emil Lenz" was what he was called -- overwhelmingly so.
2. Starting in 1940, "Heinrich Lenz" trends and "Emil Lenz" declines, the lines crossing in 1970 and "Heinrich Lenz" holding the whip hand since.
3. FWIW, since 1980 people have begun to tire of referring to Mr Lenz altogether, under any name. This is probably not important.

Based solely on this data, I would contest this move. However, couple-three things:

• For all I know, another person(s) name "Heinrich Lenz" may have achieved some notice beginning around 1930, and this may be corrupting the data.
• The article says he is "usually cited as Emil Lenz" (and there's a ref that I can't read), and if this is true, and by this is meant cited in scientific journals, that's a data point. (It's not a deal-killer; if he's usually cited by "Emil" in scientific papers but usually described as "Heinrich" in popular histories, we might very well go with "Heinrich".)
• Or maybe there's some other data or some point I'm missing.

(And FWIW -- I don't think its worth too much -- the total area under the "Emil Lenz" curve is still greater than the total area under the "Heinrich Lenz" line).

Anyway, my inclination is to have a proper WP:RM discussion, but before that, I invite the editor to point out his reason for the move. Herostratus (talk) 02:06, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, according to this, about half of the "Emil Lenz" strings are as part of "Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz" (if I'm interpreting the data correctly)... Herostratus (talk) 03:21, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The reasons for the move were:

1) The scientist himself signed his papers as "E. Lenz"

2) At least two highly authoritative historical sources have "Emil Lenz":

• I. Grattan-Guinness (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 2, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p. 1213: "The latter [law], formulated on empirical grounds by Emil Lenz in 1834, stated that the induced current would flow in such a direction that the resulting Ampère force would oppose the inducing motion."
• Lezhneva, Olga (1970–1980). "Lenz, Emil Khristianovich (Heinrich Fridrich Emil)". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 8. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 187–189. ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.</ref>

3) The German Wikipedia article has "Emil Lenz" and the Russian Wikipedia article has "Ленц, Эмилий Христианович" (he was a Russian of Baltic German ethnicity).

I believe that "Google metrics" are quite irrelevant here. Most links will point to undergraduate physics textbooks that are not reliable historical sources and usually cite him as "Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz" (his long name).

--Omnipaedista (talk) 10:03, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

OK. Yes, that's reasonable. I mean, it's probably six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other, and as long as the proper redirects are in place it doesn't matter a lot. I still wouldn't have moved it without a discussion, but it's not worth worrying about IMO. Herostratus (talk) 03:27, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Mən

Türk dili yoxdu? 212.47.137.68 (talk) 03:51, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Religion

Was Lenz a Protestant? 192.109.217.74 (talk) 05:53, 3 May 2023 (UTC)