Talk:Leonor Michaelis

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To Cooljoewiki: Why did you change LM's death date back to Oct.10 near the end of the article? When you added Oct.10 the first time, I noticed that the first line of the article says Oct.8, so I checked the External link Biographical memoir with photo (as I noted in my edit summary). This source clearly says Oct.8, both on the front cover page and on page 291. Do you have some other source which gives a different date? I think that Michaelis' co-authors who finished and published his autobiography after his death would be likely to get the date right. Dirac66 (talk) 22:46, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see that one source says October 8 and one October 10. And a quick Google search shows more with each date. So I'll put in both for now, until someone can prove which is correct. Dirac66 (talk) 21:43, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

American biochemist?

So Michaelis lived for 51 years in Germany and Japan, and he is defined as an American biochemist? How is that unbiased? --AngelHerraez (talk) 23:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you have a valid point. Attribution of nationality is often controversial and there is no rule which covers all cases, but Wikipedia does have some policies. WP:OPENPARA for the opening paragraph says

"Context (location, nationality, or ethnicity);

In most modern-day cases this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable."

Michaelis became notable with the enzyme kinetics rate law in 1913, and he only moved to the USA in 1926, so he should be classed as German, at least in the opening paragraph. I checked the article history and the opening sentence was changed from German to German-born American by a numbered editor on 6 March 2010. I will change it back. Dirac66 (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2011 (UTC)