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William Feller was Jewish, and various editors have produced three different sources that say this. Wikipedia is about citing sources ( WP:V). To suggest that because he was baptised he was not Jewish is original research so is banned under WP:NOR. -- Brownlee 10:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
The first of these sources has been disputed, but no valid reason has been given. No source has yet been produced saying that Feller was not Jewish. There is a source that his mother was not, but it is original research to deduce from that that he was not. -- 20.138.246.89 12:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
This makes no sense. If you are only allowed to cite a source that gives a source, you are led to an infinite regression (well, source A cites source B which cites source C but C has no reference.) Lots of Jews have been christened, e.g. Benjamin Disraeli, but nobody would delete them from lists of Jews. Insisting that you have to have a source that someone's father is Jewish is clearly a breach of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. The guiding principle is of course WP:V; we have sources that say he was Jewish, and no sources that say explicitly that he wasn't. End of story. -- 20.138.246.89 17:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
WP:NOR? Where exactly has original research been used? You really are just throwing these around at random.
"Lots of Jews have been christened" makes as much sense to me as "Lots of Christians go to a synagogue." Clearly if the person was christened their religion was not Judaism, but Christianity. Whether that person had an ancestor who was Jewish (like Disraeli) in the past is completely irrelevant to the addition of categories such as "Jewish mathematicians". We know for a fact that Feller's mother was a Catholic. We have no idea of the extent of Feller's Judaism on his father's side (if any). The only source presented here states "Because of his Jewish background...expelled by Nazis" This could easily mean that Feller only had one Jewish grandparent (which was enough for the Nazi regime) but since we have 0 sources claiming if Feller's father was, in fact, Jewish...and we have an official biography that states that Feller's religion and Feller's mother's religion was NOT Judaism, adding him to Jewish categories is POV-pushing. What makes him more of a Jewish mathematician than a Catholic one? Especially when he himself didn't even practice Judaism! This is getting very silly and starting to get unconspicuously racy. I'm removing the categories as they are totally unnecessary anyway. If his Judaism is this secretive no ones gonna look him up as a Jewish mathematician anyway.
LaGrange
08:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I can help here. There are sources that say, explicitly and unambiguously, that he was Jewish.
LaGrange overlooks "...Tornier had collaborated with Willi Feller (who was Jewish)...". Under WP:V, we must therefore accept that he was Jewish unless there are credible sources that say that he was not.
To say that because one source says that his mother was not Jewish, or that he was christened, is evidence that he was not Jewish is a violation of WP:OR because it is not an explicit assertion, only a deduction. Since we have statements that he was Jewish, it is totally irrelevant that we have no statements about his father.
In the same way, if we had a statement that someone was Christian and another that he attended synagogue, ot would be OR to say that he was Jewish. We have no source whatever about what religion he practised.-- Brownlee 10:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
But what makes him a Jewish mathematician is the statement that he was Jewish. To remove sourced information because an editor deems it "totally unnecessary" is a violation of NPOV.-- 20.138.246.89 14:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Read the entertaining discussion if Feller with a non-jewish mother but possibly jewish father should be called jewish or not. Does not that type of conclusion also depend on whether he was a distingushed scientist or only a man with low or criminal reputation? 78.72.118.230 ( talk) 13:00, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
The book " Mathematicians fleeing from Nazi Germany" discusses several letters by Feller discussing his "Jewish descent"; Richard von Mises mocked Feller for being 75% Aryan. (Both on page 155) Feller discusses Torsten Carleman's anti-semitism, particularly his habit of suggesting that foreigners and Jews be shot (page 135). Feller is quoted asking Courant for a note stating that Feller was "a good Christian" (on pages 32-33) during the year 1931 when he applied for German citizenship. Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 00:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
When drinking, Carleman would tell his assistants that Jews and foreigners should be executed.
Page 135: Siegmund-Schultze, Reinhard (2009).
Mathematicians fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual fates and global impact. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. xxviii+471.
ISBN
978-0-691-14041-4.
MR
2522825. {{
cite book}}
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(
help)
What is a Feller explosion test? I could find no information or references about it besides this Wikipedia article... 58.107.215.254 05:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Try here [4] for example. It should be "Feller's explosion test" with an apostrophe and "s", if you do that it comes up in searches. Utternutter ( talk) 02:56, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Gian-Carlo Rota lists "Feller" along with "Courant-Hilbert" and "Dunford and Schwartz" as the most revered books in mathematics, whose very mention brings religious feelings in the hearer (or something like that), in his review of Richard Stanley's Enumerative Combinatorics. (However, I agree with the leader of the Statistics Project that WP is better keeping to an encyclopedia tone!) Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz ( talk) 00:39, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
In the section on Work, the article says that Feller worked (among others) on the "theory of measurement." This almost surely should be "measure theory" (a big difference). I did not correct this since I am not sure he actually worked in measure theory per se (aside from the fact that some of his probability work can perhaps also be considered as work in measure theory). It would be important to make corrections. Mateat ( talk) 23:51, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
It would seem to me that we should put Feller in various X descent cats based on his original nationality, and then just put in in the category Yugoslav emigrants to the United States. He does not belong in Category:Crotian emigrants to the United States because this is only for people who emigrated from both-1990 Croatia. Feller came to the US from Denmark, but his national allegiance at the time of getting citizenship was to Yugoslavia. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:36, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
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