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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)