Talk:Torsten Carleman

Alcoholism and xenophobia and anti-semitism

I shortened the short paragraph on Carleman's problems, which now quotes the standard account of his alcoholism (which is quoted by MacTutor also). The statement about his anti-semitism and xenophobia is exactly one sentence long, with a precise in-line reference to a page in a respected book, which cites archival sources.

My translation of this material has not been changed by two separate editors on the Swedish Wikipedia, who have since expanded the description of Carleman's mathematics. This mathematical material should be added here, perhaps via Google translator, etc.

It would be interesting to check the Swedish lists of Nazis, which have been published in the last 10 years, for Carleman, or to check histories written by Harald Cram'er and by William Feller, about Carelman's role in blocking the appointment of Feller from a university appointment.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 08:44, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I deleted the stuff on alcoholism etc. inserted by Kiefer.Wolfowitz. The article as any other should focuse on the main theme i.e. Carleman´s very signifcant contribution as a mathematician. Wikipedia should NOT be an arena of gossip and slander, which now cover more lines than his mathematical findings. Ridiculous. As a consequence, I undo Kiefer.Wolfowitz changes. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 15:24, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Going back to the article, I see that the very long citation on Carleman´s alcoholism is still there. Why not removing that and only give reference to the source? (Wiener´s brave generalization on inhabitants in the Nordic countries only hurts his reputation since there should be a comparable number of victims in Wiener´s home country per 100 000 inhabitants.) 78.72.118.230 (talk) 20:02, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Tried to focuse our efforts on the mathematicla content by adding: "In 1935, Torsten Carleman lectured on a generalization of the Fourier transformation at the Mittag-Leffler Institute near Stockholm, Sweden. His notes, however, were not published until 1944 in his book (Fourier integral and questions concerned with it), and later at a CNRS meeting in Nancy (1947), he also presented his theory. Carleman’s approach foreshadows the definition of hyperfunctions, and he defines the Fourier transform for a large class of hyperfunctions of one variable, which is wider than that of Schwartz and points forward to Mikio Satos later work.[3]" 78.72.118.230 (talk) 19:15, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Should we also have citations from Reagan´s and Thatcher´s years of mental degradation, as an example? Of course NOT! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.72.118.230 (talk) 11:33, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Addition: The article about Torsten Carleman and his highly significant achievements in mathematics was written in a strict, neutral and correct sense until 19 January 2010 when Kiefer.Wolfowitz turned it into an article based on gossip and slander about behaviour and statements under alcoholic influence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.72.118.230 (talk) 12:23, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Signed comments:

I deleted the stuff on alcoholism etc. inserted by Kiefer.Wolfowitz. The article as any other should focuse on the main theme i.e. Carleman´s very signifcant contribution as a mathematician. Wikipedia should NOT be an arena of gossip and slander, which now cover more lines than his mathematical findings. Ridiculous. As a consequence, I undo Kiefer.Wolfowitz changes.

Should we also have citations from Reagan´s and Thatcher´s years of mental degradation, as an example? Of course NOT! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.72.118.230 (talk) 11:33, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Addition: The article about Torsten Carleman and his highly significant achievements in mathematics was written in a strict, neutral and correct sense until 19 January 2010 when Kiefer.Wolfowitz turned it into an article based on gossip and slander about behaviour and statements under alcoholic influence.

Please sign your comments with 4 "twiddles". I would like to understand your position. Why is it less appropriate to invoke character issues here than, say, at Gottlob Frege and Oswald Teichmuller? Tkuvho (talk) 13:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Reply

Your censorship of properly sourced material and your edit summary "removing Jewish chatter" was an unfortunate way to introduce yourself to the English Wikipedia community.

At MathTutor, Maligranda's very positive account of Carleman also quotes Wiener on his alcholism, so this fact is well established as a legitimate fact for even a mathematically focused biography.

Expanding on Carleman's rightwing politics and alcoholism does not seem like a good idea. However, a short sentence from two independent reliable sources is hardly improper. You should expand the discussion of his mathematics, rather than censor a well-sourced statement.

Also, you should apologize for your "Jewish chatter" remark.

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

REPLY: By keeping only the neuatral statements focusing on Torsten Carleman mathematical reults, was my change. I is also the way the Swedish national Encyklopedia presents him. No chatter based on subjective data close to gossip or slander.

The Wikepedia version became much more subjective since you filled up half of the article with abusing comments from some biographies. This selective way of writing tells more about the writer than of Torsten Carleman. Biographies are often colored by hostility to some persons and often develop to character murder. Subjective statements in them are not very accurate sources, in general.

An example of your wish to give mainly an ugly image of Carlesson is when, you write: "...Carleman is of the touching [rührend] opinion that one should execute [an die Wand stellen] all Jews and immigrants". But simultaneously you delete a close example when he with ironic humour included himself remarking to his students: "professors ought to be shot at the age of fifty."

Possibly, Carleman had some rasistic opinion as hundred of millions in Europe at that time and still hundred of millions have to-day over the world: Europe, USA and Israel not included, neither christians, muslims or jews as well. You should find better fora for that type of disussion than filling half the article about a top matematician with that stuff. It is boring for people who dislike writing close to slander. We have too much of it in our news papers to-day. As a result, I improve it again.78.72.118.230 (talk) 14:26, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you that speculations as to Carleman's "racism" would be inappropriate. However, the current version of the article is merely citing standard biographies, not "filling the article with chatter". I similarly agree with you that Carleman is a "top mathematician". So was Gottlob Frege and Oswald Teichmuller. It is not clear why character issues here should be more irrelevant than at those pages. Maybe it is, but you are not addressing those issues. Tkuvho (talk) 14:34, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

swedish viewpoint

The IP reports that the Swedish national encyclopedia does not comment on Carleman's alcoholism. However, Swedish wikipedia does. At any rate, it is not clear why we should follow either. Tkuvho (talk) 14:41, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

McTutor similarly reports his alcoholism. Tkuvho (talk) 14:49, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

In Swedish Wikipedia, I wrote the short note about his alcoholism and the quote from Feller.

McTutor reports his alcoholism, and indeed it reports the same quote from Wiener that we do. (Feller couldn't get a position in Sweden, because of Carleman et alia, according to probabilist folk-lore. It is significant that Feller moved to the U.S., which greatly boosted U.S. mathematics and greatly hurt Swedish mathematics: This is why it is not trivia, gossip, or slander.)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:00, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

If we can source the probabilist folklore it may be useful to include it here. Tkuvho (talk) 15:12, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Reagan and Thatcher

The IP proposes to compare Carleman's alcoholism with the alleged health problems of the political leaders mentioned. I think it would be too inflammatory to bring in such famous individuals. It would therefore be preferable to stick to mathematicians. Perhaps it is more legimitate to report character shortcomings of Gottlob Frege, Oswald Teichmuller, and Paul de Man, but this needs to be argued. Tkuvho (talk) 15:32, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

forum for gossip and slander

The IP expressed the sentiment on the Swedish wiki that wiki should not be "a forum for gossip and slander". I fully agree with this sentiment. However, it does not follow that wiki should necessarily sweep under the rug well-documented character failings of notable individuals. Tkuvho (talk) 15:42, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

COMMENT: "Feller couldn't get a position in Sweden, because of Carleman et alia, according to probabilist folk-lore", sheds light on Feller´s bitterness and the background when he wrote his a letter: "I never catch a glimpse of pure mathematics, partly because it virtually does not exist as a university institution—the students are learning on their own, the professors are only doing the exams—partly because Carleman is of the touching [rührend] opinion that one should execute [an die Wand stellen] all Jews and immigrants (which, however, he only tells his assistant after consuming a nonnegative [nichtnegativ] amount of alcohol)" To me the explanation why the situation of the students is bad is not stringent at all - probably meant as an ironic comment to a friend than trying to describe the truth. As a consequence, his disappointment and bitterness degrades him as objective witness.

People are disappointed at every university many times a years for not getting the chair they together with other are fight for. And often there are conspirations and inadequate things happening during the selection process. This is a part of the academic life, unfortunately.

Why should the decision of the collegium, where Carleman was a member, be further described, in this article. Focuse and expand instead his mathematical achievment. See the two externa links, which are much more balanced in text covering of his life as mathematician and private person. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 17:11, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

By all means the mathematical part should be expanded. Also, Feller's own comments are insufficient to pursue this direction. However, if sources can be identified showing that Carleman was directly responsible for Feller's leaving Sweden, this might be worth including. Tkuvho (talk) 17:23, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I really agree in your ambitions to expand the mathematical parts instead of further folklores and amusing chatter in private letters about his character. Do´nt miss Wolfowitz to include in the text that he also said that professors should be shot at fifty. That also shows that he had a sense of humor.

Professors were not known to be shot at fifty in any significant numbers in Europe from 1933 to 1945. Tkuvho (talk) 12:44, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Looked at Fellers biography. What a clean man! Men seems consisting of saints and villains, depending on who controls the pen - at least in poor books (or biographies).

Best wishes! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.72.118.230 (talk) 17:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't object to Carleman's alcoholism being mentioned briefly here. But there is the issue of undue weight: in the current version of the page, the quotations in the footnotes are longer than the main body of the article. One of the edit summaries invoked the precedent set at Gottlob Frege: in that article, the section Gottlob_Frege#Personality is a small proportion of the whole, and the footnote gives only a reference not an extended quotation. So maybe we should do likewise here. Jowa fan (talk) 09:33, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The article is too short and doesn't describe Carleman's analytic contributions. Go ahead and expand them.

Nobody is saying that there should be an expansion of the discussion of his alcoholism. The Wiener quote is given at McTutor, which is another encyclopedia-like entry. The quote from Feller supports the Wiener quote, and is from a carefully written monograph. There is no reason to either remove the Feller quote or, at present, to give it greater prominence.

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:49, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If I had the knowledge and the time, I'd happily expand the mathematical part of the article. But until someone comes along and does just that, things need to be kept in proportion. The quotes by Wiener and Feller currently make up more than half the text on the page. This is too much. Keep the sentence Carleman's abuse of alcohol was described by Norbert Wiener[2] and by William Feller[3] but delete the quotes from the footnotes: just give the reference. If the article gets longer in the future, then the quotes could go back in. Jowa fan (talk) 00:39, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Jowa fan,

my last revision was exactly adding mathematics and moving this to the footnote. Exactly in order not to have gossip and slander, I added the precise quote in place of the vague statement that appeared before (we also had a discussion about this with Kiefer.Wolfowitz, see User_talk:Kiefer.Wolfowitz/Archive_14#Carleman.) I am not sure I agree with you argument (which, as I understood it, is: delete content now and add it back to keep the article proportional).

Best, Sasha (talk) 03:18, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Moving the text to a footnote doesn't change the fact that we have approx 360 words on the page with approx 200 words devoted to the issue of alcoholism. Your edit entitled "reduced proportion of text devoted to alcohol abuse..." replaced a 14 word sentence with a 67 word quotation, a curious definition of "reduce". My principal argument is that the proportion of text devoted to alcoholism should be significantly less than the proportion devoted to mathematics. (A secondary issue is that if the overall size of the article increases in the future, then there is more room for providing quotations without giving undue weight to the topic.) Jowa fan (talk) 07:40, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I hid the quotation from Feller. My behavior, i.e., knowing the truth and then finding a source that confirms it, was too close to that of the POV-pushers that plague Wikipedia.

In an expanded article, it may be appropriate to restore the quote from Feller. It remains appropriate to include the description from Wiener, in a footnote, per McTutor etc.

(I note that Feller's Volume II has a nice statement of Carleman's condition on moments, with no hammer-fist footnotes like "it is not only the arithmetic that has the influence of the supernatural" that enliven Volume I. Feller's relationship to Judaism was weird, it is worth noting.)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:04, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

To me this seems a reasonable compromise. Jowa fan (talk) 12:08, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

To me too. Sasha (talk) 16:27, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the corrections and suggestions from Jowa fan and Sasha, which have resulted in reduced amount gossip and slander, which I repeatedly asked for above. Even Wiener had his personal problems with manic depression (not meantioned at all in his long Wikipedia article). But why talk about their human backsides instead of their much more important and outstanding mathematical contributions. I think that is what a reader of Wikipedia is looking for. Thanks a lot!78.72.118.230 (talk) 18:14, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Please focus on specific suggestions for changing this article.

Like McTutor, this article quotes Wiener on Carleman's alcoholism. Certainly the quotation (in the footnote) could be shortened, by replacing nonessential information with ellipses, as I considered earlier. However, it seemed to me better to preserve the (fallible) flavor of the short quotation from Wiener.

Do you want to remove the whole quotation or just to shorten it? For example, one can remove the discussion of Carleman has having a stereotypically Scandinavian alcoholism ....  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:56, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I want that you remove that part about alcoholism and the references to Wiener and Feller according to the suggestions and recent change by Riggwelter in the Swedish version of this article.

That will focus on the main point: Carleman´s mathematical achievements. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 17:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Swedish Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and so its article does not determine this article.

Maligranda's article at MacTutor mentions the alcoholism, and in greater detail its consequences; thus, our article's short mention of the alcoholism is due weight. We have no policy on English Wikipedia that mathematics professors' articles should only mention mathematical achievements and neglect other aspects of the mathematicians, which are covered in reliable sources.

I would suggest that you try to rephrase your concern to address WP policy, rather than your personal preferences. You might try finding alternative biographies of Carleman that ignore his alcoholism, etc., and then argue that following Maligranda's MacTutor article is undue.

In the meantime, I shall shorten the quotation from Wiener, in the spirit of goodwilled working for consensus.

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:45, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! You are asking: "Can you mention any biographies of Carleman that ignore his alcoholism?" Of course, those of the same length as Wikipedia do it. a)Encyclopie Universalis (www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/torsten-carleman) and b) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Torsten-Carleman/106257799406170 are two examples. Do you not find Wiener´s phycical illness as interesting and important as Carleman´s? Nothing mentioned in the Wikipedai article about it - and that is good, is my personal view. But perhaps you should feel the same strong wishes to fill that gap? Sincerely yours 78.72.118.230 (talk) 10:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

A physical illness is not a character failing. It is sad that the IP fails to realize the importance of such a distinction. It is not surprising that the Swedish national encyclopedia would fail to mention Carleman's alcoholism. After all, that type of encyclopedia is interested in creating national icons. Such a goal is not necessarily shared by a global encyclopedia. Tkuvho (talk) 11:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Kalmar mathematician,

The Facebook page is a mirror of our article, which only includes the lede. Our lede excludes a discussion of Carleman's alcoholism.

The French Encyclopedie Universalis (EU) is a start-class article. In general, Wikipedia articles are longer than those in EU. You should look for a reliable-source encyclopedia article longer than the Wikipedia article.

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Opinion on death in biography

Wikipedia is not censored. A few thoughts related to the death of Torsten Carleman:

1. Any biography should carry information regarding the individual's death. A reason like alcoholism may help the reader understand that the person was dealing with profound emotional issues, may help explain decisions made in life, and above all is informative. It is profoundly frustrating to read a sterilized biography, because editors want to "protect his image".
2. Quotes in footnotes are useful when discussing an unpopular topic, such as alcoholism or antisemitism. There are editors who will deny information until they can read the source themselves. If the quotes in footnotes are longer than the body of the article, then that just means the article needs more information. A footnote with a 3- or 4-line quote is not unusual.
3. If the death is so unusual, an article may be written about it. See Death of Edgar Allen Poe.

Last, editors should not feel they have to "protect" an historical figure, nor shield the reader from falsely "inappropriate" material. Wikipedia is not censored. Boneyard90 (talk) 13:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Tkuvho above: You may have a point in that it is not surprising that some national encyclopedia as history books may be interested in creating national icons or giving a one-sided version black/white image of military or inter-ethnic conflicts as examples. We also see it daily in our newspapers, presently developing islamofobic stuff and describing some people as terrorists or non-existing as recent outcries.

However, the reason that Carleman's alcoholism is not mentioned in Swedish encyclopedia would more likely be the same as why Churchill´s alcoholism is neglected there. A consequent line is kept by the staff, which cannot be said about biographies in Wikipedia, where various writers drive their own personal, national or ethnic efforts in painting a good picture or defaming. The present biography is an excellent example of that. The defaming part is sometimes longer than the neutral description of the mathematician Carleman and his work - and the selection of references emphazises those goals. Too easy to see what persons are behind. I prefer the neutral description and is not a member of the Defamation Society. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 14:52, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Boneyard90: "Quotes in footnotes are useful when discussing an unpopular topic, such as alcoholism or antisemitism". I will widen the list with more examples susch as: rasism in all its forms, supporting criminal acts performed by states against international laws. That includes also Western terror acts such as Vietnam war, nuclear bombs over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, individual and state terror acts and torture in Gaza and West Bank, Iraque and Afghanistan, as examples. As you see your approach will give the right to blame millions in US, Israel, Western Europe etc. Was that your original meaning making Wikipedia a political platform of discussion instead a forum for neutral information? 78.72.118.230 (talk) 15:06, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Even censored, the Kalmar IP has finally outed me, pegging me as a member of a "Defamation Society" driving my "personal,national or ethnic efforts ... in defaming" the mathematician Carleman. Not even my frequent references to John Milton or quoting Calvinist catechisms has been sufficient to disguise my true nature.

It has been an alarming surprise that my choice of a Jewish mathematician's name, Wolfowitz---to honor a theorem in the optimal design of experiments and a method of stochastic approximation---has opened me to such allegations. (A Welsh friend's experience with a Jewish-sounding name in Sweden should have alerted me.) At least the crackers have not dared call me a n-lover when I removed racist garbage from Wikipedia.

You shall soon be blocked from English Wikipedia, I trust. Good luck on Swedish Wikipedia.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:17, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Excellent that the forum now can fully see your activities and hypersensitivity translating most of my very relevant critisism into antisionism. This you have also developed in surprising letters and actions to stop my point of views, which have been driven not primarily by your defaming Carleman in this biography but to achieve that the lowest limit of standard for Wikipedia does not become too low. To some extent I have succeeded and your notes with long citations of Feller and Wiener - longer than the text about his mathematical work - are now reduced. I thank the other writers for their contribution to achieve that goal. Your ethnicity whatever it is does not intest me at all, neither you as a person. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 15:57, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a parallel between "alcoholism as a cause of death" and the the Vietnam War. It really is poor form to try and distract me with irrelevant attacks. Leave your political views and your own racism out of this, and let's focus on the topic. Calling an alcoholic an alcoholic in a biography isn't defamation, especially if it led to his death. It's only defamation if he truly is/was not an alcoholic. Perhaps you should look up defamation to make sure you are using it correctly. Boneyard90 (talk) 16:19, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Boneyard90: You wrote "Quotes in footnotes are useful when discussing an unpopular topic, such as alcoholism or antisemitism" and thought you should widen the list with more examples of similar kind such as islamofobi, racism in general,war crimes,terrorism including state terrorism. Your coupling of Wietnam War to alcoholism is not a stuff for joking considering the disgusting background with millions of dead civilians.In leaving our political views on writing a biography we should both agree, and has been my fuel in this debate. Sincerely yours!78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't joking, I really think your comparison is not relevant to the discussion. I didn't bring up the Vietnam War; you did. I think you are again trying to distract me or to bait me. Let's stick to the topic: Carleman and whether a description of his death is relevant. I didn't even know who this Carleman person was until today. I'm just bringing in my opinion based on my experience with other Wiki-biographies. If you want to see an un-censored article which describes a controversial, embarassing death, I refer you to David Carradine#Death. Wikipedia is not censored, and putting reliable material in a biography, without judgement, is not defamation. Boneyard90 (talk) 16:50, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Distributions and hyperfunctions

To improve and focus on the mathematical content I added: "In 1935, Torsten Carleman lectured on a generalization of the Fourier transformation at the Mittag-Leffler Institute near Stockholm, Sweden. His notes, however, were not published until 1944 in his book Fourier integral and questions concerned with it, and later at a CNRS meeting in Nancy (1947) he also presented his theory. Carleman’s approach foreshadows the definition of hyperfunctions, and he defines the Fourier transform for a large class of hyperfunctions of one variable, which is wider than that of Schwartz and points forward to Mikio Satos later work.[3]" 78.72.118.230 (talk) 19:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

That was a useful edit. You might look at Kiselmann's website, which may have a preprint---perhaps in Esperanto! :)  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 01:39, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Kiefer! Yes Kiselman´s paper is interesting and pedagogic, clarifying Carleman´s early contribution on hyperfunctions and their Fourier transforms in comparison with those of Cochran, Schwarz and Sato. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 08:30, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I was pleased to find a pdf file at Kiselman's website.

I am saddened to learn of the passing of Mikael Passare, who was a gentleman of mathematics.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:36, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Influenced by the discussion with Boneyard90, Kiefer.Wolfowitz and others I add some comments with references, sheding some light on Carleman´s unconventional personality and personal life (modified and condensed extracts from the MacTutor biography). 78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:18, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad the discussion could come to an amicable conclusion. Looks like you're doing some good work! Boneyard90 (talk) 16:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Blessed are the peacemakers, etc. :)

A word to the wise: :)

Adding more material is good, but it must abide by copyright rules. In general, it is good to use several sources and then write from your memory, going back to check the details and then giving careful attribution of information. I am unfamiliar with the copyright provisions of MacTutor.

Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:54, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Mr. IP,

three remarks:

• here is MacTutor copyright info. Please avoid copy-pasting entire sentences.
• you can cite the obituary using < ref name=carlson/>, then it will only appear once in the list of ref-s (in general, use < ref name=XXX> ...< /ref> the first time you cite a source, and < ref name =XXX/> in all the following times.)
• also, please do not place your signature in the text of the article. It is much more useful in the talk pages.

Best,Sasha (talk) 19:06, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be particularly useful to develop this page in the direction of the subject of this section, namely hyperfunctions as seen by Carleman. Tkuvho (talk) 15:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

there is an article by Kiselman about that. I do not think this is the place to write much more. Sasha (talk) 16:13, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

OK. If you get a chance, respond to my comment at Luzin. Tkuvho (talk) 16:15, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

As also Tkuvho above I am interested to expand Carleman´s early and brilliant achievments already in 1935 on hyperfunctions and distributions, which in some parts goes further than Schwarts´later results. To simplify I just make a reference to Kiselman´s concluding remarks. [Remember my first contacts with Laurent Schwartz´book: Probability pour les Sciences Physiques, which was used as text book for doctorands in Mathematics at Stockholm, 1970.] 78.72.118.230 (talk) 12:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

thanks for expanding the section.

Try to avoid long quotes. There is no precise criterion of what is long (see Wikipedia:NFC#Text and Wikipedia:NFC#Text_2 for the guideline), but usually a paragraph-long quote is appropriate only when it is important to reproduce the source verbatim. Otherwise, it is better to use several sources and not to quote them word to word. In this case, perhaps it would be a good idea to add a short sentence describing his construction.

Other parts which need expansion are Carleman's work on integral equations, complex analysis, and PDE (the part on quasianalytic classes is OK, I think, since there is a separate article on that). Sasha (talk) 15:28, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Sasha: I changed and condensed the quote from Kiselman. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

thanks for your additions. I have edited it a bit more and added another ref. Sasha (talk) 17:05, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Decomposition

Hi!

The decomposition seems to be missing an operator, e.g. for addition or (a la F. Riesz) subtraction.

Thanks,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:26, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

The missing addition symbol has been restored.

Perhaps William C. Donahue's book discusses the Carleman decomposition?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:18, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Carleman's wife Anna-Lisa

Thanks for comments and improvements of my addings about his personal life. Also I appreciated Boneyard90´s sober style of disussion, which we all should take impression from. My text was already modified and condensed compared with that in MacTutor, which I referred to above - avoiding copy of whole sentences (if they are not citations from the same sources, of course). I think that my comment that Erik Flemming was not only athletic but a legendaric gold medal winner in three Olympic Games could be interesting for most readers to know. Suggest we change back from that text reduction. (Myself I am wondering what the mathematican and his not less ambitious father-in-love were talking about at Christmas dinners etc.) Interesting to see that also Erik´s daughter (Torstens wife) was gymnast. Best wishes. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 12:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

do you know a ref. for the sentence "Carleman was married to Anna-Lisa Lemming, the daughter of the athlete Eric Lemming"? For example, sv:Eric_Lemming does not mention that he had a daughter at all. Sasha (talk) 15:49, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Concerning the number of Erik Lemming´s olympic gold medals are they FOUR (in javelin) and THREE bronze ones (one in the tug of war with the Swedish national team, a second bronze in the shot put, a third bronze in the pentathlon). He achieved fourth places in the high jump, pole vault and hammer throw. Sorces: Swedish) National Encyklopedia and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lemming. [Off side: In the Olympic games 1906 in Athen, he was also got most votes as being the most imposing/attractive man(!).] 78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

II. Concerning "Carleman was married to Anna-Lisa Lemming, the daughter of the athlete Eric Lemming"? the sentence seems to be wrong. From http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lemming I find that Anna-Lisa Lemming is not the daughter but the sister of Erik Lemming! Anna-Lisa (1885-1954) was elite gymnast participating at the Olympic Games 1912. From the same source, Eric Lemming was married with the painter Ella, född Winberg. They had two sons, Rolf and Åke. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

thanks for spotting the mistakes. I think we should find a reliable reference and rewrite all this part. Sasha (talk) 20:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I changed the year of divorce from Anna-Lisa - from earlier 1940 to 1946 (Hence, less than two and a half years before his death). My reference: Death Book of Sweden 1901-2009. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 12:44, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I now checked Anna Lovisa Carleman (born Lemming), she was divorced 19/8 1940, and Torsten Carleman 19/8 1946 - both data from Dead Book of Sweden 1901-2009, which should be a trusty source compared to information that one person has heard from another, who heard it from a third - both not talking their own language. Well, well we have to further follow up if possible, or delete "divorced 19??" or the year. All these errrors that have been detected and hopefully corrected the last days, shows that we also must be very, very careful in avoiding to wrongly generate abusing information about dead persons. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 15:37, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I do not have access to the dödbok, so I am not of much help here. I would write 1940 in the text, add a footnote with the page number at the dödbok, and in the same footnote mention that on a different page a different date is given. Something like '<'ref> See ..., page ... Note however that ... lists the divorce date as 19/8/1946 '<'/ref>

By the way, do these sources confirm that she was the sister of Eric Lemming? If so, you can also give a reference (and mention in a short footnote that Maligranda is wrong, mainly so that the next editors will know this is not a typo). Sasha (talk) 16:31, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Sasha, I did a correction in that direction and also hinted Death Index about the contradiction, asked them to check with the primary source and give me the answer. DI does not give any information about parents and sisters, brothers. I think to be be able to check that from the primary source later. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 17:37, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I verified from the best primary source, the Birth Book of Church, that Anna Lovisa Lemming, later married Carleman, was half-sister to the athlete Erik Lemming. Both had Oskar Christian Lemming as father. Erik´s mother was Ebba Cederin (Oskar´s first wife, who died early). Anna Lovisa was his daughter with his second wife, Maria Theolinda. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 18:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry! Getting tired, I interchanged the names of Oskar´s wifes. The correct text should be as follows. "I verified from the best primary source, the Birth Book of Church, that Anna Lovisa Lemming, later married Carleman, was half-sister to the athlete Erik Lemming. Both had Oskar Christian Lemming as father. Erik´s mother was Maria Theolinda (Oskar´s first wife, who died early). Anna Lovisa was his daughter with his second wife, Ebba Cederin." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.72.118.230 (talk) 18:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

thanks! the last thing which I do not manage to verify is that she participated in the Olympic games '12 (as the Swedish WP writes, if I understand correctly). And expand the mathematical part a bit more. Then we will get a nice article. Sasha (talk) 18:49, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I spent some time yesterday Sasha to see if Carleman´s wife Anna-Lisa participated in the Olympic games 1912, but cannot find any Swedeish female participants at all, and no female competition on gymnastics either. Althogh my efforts on that issue are not confident to 100 per cent, it might be truly that she was gymnast(with two brothers participating in the olympic games) but I have not found any evidence on that, neither that she participated in a female gymnast group during the games off competition as entertainement/decoration, which might also be 78.72.118.230 (talk) 11:46, 17 December 2011 (UTC)possible.

Now i have found some references about female gymnastics at the olympic games. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnastics_at_the_1928_Summer_Olympics#Medal_summary it was not until 1928 the women competed for the first time.

However, female gymnastic teams from some different countries including Sweden participated during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in stockholm 1912. Was Anna-Lisa Lemming there? Your will find a photo of the swedish troup at http://www.olympic.org/multimedia-player/all-photos/1912/01/01/xaaqu023/?photos=true&videos=false&mengender=true&womengender=true&mixedgender=true&olympicrecord=&worldrecord=&sport=&event=&type=&game=1333742&continent=&country=&playertab=8&sortorder=8&currentmediapageipp=20&currentmediapage=2 78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:00, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

translations

Multilingual colleagues,

please check all the translations. I have looked at the translation from Carlson (which Maligranda took from Garding), it was not very faithful (although the new one is not perfect either).

Sasha (talk) 04:00, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I added some comments on Carleman´s last years and what illnes ended his life. Also the Winer reference about alcoholism seems sufficient and most relevant as primary source.78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I found an interesting paper http://www.math.kth.se/~oaf/kvantumkurs.pdf which sheds further light on Carleman´s pioneering work. from the introduction part: "Let us �rst recall some of Carleman's contributions. His most productive period ranges from 1916 until 1940 covering more than �fty articles of a very high standard. Below we shall not describe his wellknown contributions to quasi-analytic classes which appear at several occasions in these notes. His most valuable result is the spectral resolutions for unbounded self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space whose complete proof was given in his book xxx (Uppsala University 1923). Unbounded self-adjoint operators appear already in his thesis from 1916 devoted to the Neumman boundary value problems with corner points on the boundary. Here that Carleman introduced methods to handle non-symmetric operators which admit suitable factorisations and after reduce the spectral analysis to symmetric kernels. We describe such a case in x 11 in the appendix devoted to functional analysis. Among other contributions by Carleman prior to 1920 one can mention his inequality for the operator norm of resolvents which is a veritable cornerstone in spectral theory of linear operators. Concerning harmonic measures it was Carleman who �rst recognized its power to study limits and growth of harmonic and analytic functions. The pioneering method appeared in his article Sur les fonctions inverses des fonctions d'ordre �ni [Arkiv f?or matematik 1921) which gave a uniform but not sharp bound for the number of asymptotic values."

Details in following pages. I think this stuff can be useful for expanding the Wikipedia article further. Myself I have not time the coming weeks. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 17:03, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

A claim that Carleman proved a 1923 theorem about operators on Hilbert space would be an enthusiastic anachronism.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing again

Shodin/Sasha noted that copying and pasting is prohibited by copyright. Also, close paraphrasing needs to be avoided. For example, this is too close to the source:

• MacTutor: "During his last years Carleman suffered from bad health. Serious neuralgic pains in his legs often caused him insomnia. Towards Christmas 1948 a jaundice occurred, which quickly ended his life. Carleman died on 11 January 1949 in Stockholm."
• WP: "During his last years Carleman suffered from bad health, and neuralgic pains often caused him insomnia. At the end of 1948 a jaundice occurred, ending his life."

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:26, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Kiefer for your strong contribution condensing further my condensed first version. Concerning your love to the reference which describes what Feller wrote in a very private letter about what he had a heard another person (who?) had heard from the mouth of a drunken man. Feller would not be happy to read or being a main source of that in biography over a distinguished mathematician, I am sure. Do you not have a better primary source than that? I kindly suggest again that you delete that reference. The Wiener reference already describes Carleman missuse of alcohol in the article. What people are talking in drunken stage or when they are sleeping is not relevant at all to me and should not be for Wikipedia readers either. Hopefully, we will find the same opinion on that. Best wishes! 78.72.118.230 (talk) 17:59, 18 December 2011 (UTC) 78.72.118.230 (talk) 17:59, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Wiener is a primary reference, which is referenced e.g. by Maligranda. The Feller quotation is from an archive that is referenced by an academic historian's well-received monograph, a secondary source; the phrase "and by William Feller" is short. You should write the historian and suggest his deleting the quotation from a second edition.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Your answer indicates that source critisism and quoting like that in the referencve should be quite acceptable or normal in that genre of history writing.I really hope you are wrong. And that we also apply an higher standard of source critisism in writing biographies about our most important mathematicians at Wikipedia. High-ranked modern history researchers apply the method of Leopold von Ranke, where history writing is based only upon proved facts. Subjective, or nationalistic views, gossip etc are deleted and must not influence the result. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 13:03, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Certainly high standards of scholarship must be applied before this kind of comment is included in a professionally written biography. However, in this particular case the facts seem to be well-known, and we have to assume the professional historians exercised their best judgment when including them. We can hardly second-guess the historians. Similar remarks apply to character failings of such mathematicians as Andrey Kolmogorov. I was profoundly shocked when I first learned about this, but it seems to have been confirmed. Tkuvho (talk) 13:10, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes Tkuvko, the mathematical genius is not perfect in all senses. As you and I,they are human beings. From an article I recently read, high-creative persons have more frequently bipolar disorder (4-10-factor), some have schizofreni with disturbed perception of realities, others as result of drugs, cultural influence etc. I have not learned much of Wiener´s and Kolmogrov´s problems from Wikipedia. What Kolmogrov is accused of? Concerning second-guessing historians, we can in this case see what low quality his source has in that context and, of course, we can choose not using it because of that. Wiener´s statement is enough as comment of Carleman´s alcohol problem.

Going back to this article, it has been improved significantly the last weeks by Sasha and others. From having been dominated by Wiener´s and Feller´s gossip and slander, Carleman´s extraordinary mathematical achievments are now in focus, even if some more has to be done. Thanks - and wishing all of you Happy Christmas! 78.72.118.230 (talk) 14:50, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Kalmar IP,

Do not wish Happy Christmas to editors unless you know that their religion is Christian (of an appropriate denomination).

Please stop repeating "gossip and slander". If you have new information relevant to this article, then please bring it. Repeating yourself does not help.

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:01, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

As you might have guessed, my dear, that Happy Christmas was mainly directed to those who are Christians and all those - probably more - who celebrate it as a nice, peaceful mid-winter family tradition with children´s glittering eyes. As a comparison, I have received some "Shalom" and "As-salāmu `alaykum" with respect and pleasure. 78.72.118.230 (talk) 16:09, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

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