Talk:Maryna Viazovska

This article was nominated for deletion on 31 March 2016. The result of the discussion was keep.

A news item involving Maryna Viazovska was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 6 July 2022.

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Contested deletion

The speedy deletion proposal is nonsense. The article explicitly states that Maryna Viazovska has solved two famous mathematics problems that have remained unsolved while many generations of mathematicians worked on them. --Michael Hardy (talk) 16:20, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And the not so speedy deletion discussion seems to be settling upon keeping it. Time to remove the ugly banner at the top? Tayste (edits) 01:45, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, don't. That will be done (assuming the decision is to keep the article) when the AfD is closed, which can only be done by a non-participant in the discussion. Until then it needs to stay there. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:22, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Removed the link to wrong Bondarenko in the Bibliography. 93.72.38.196 (talk) 20:07, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

first Ukrainian?

Vladimir Drinfeld was born and worked in Kharkov and might hold a Ukraine passport. If Viazovska is an ethnic Ukrainian or native speaker of Ukrainian she would probably be the first medalist from those categories. 73.16.169.108 (talk) 03:46, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the source simply made a mistake, because Drinfeld grew up in the Ukraine SSR at least. I removed it, but an anon stuck it back in. Bumbubookworm (talk) 03:53, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to a more precise statement that is actually known to be correct. 73.16.169.108 (talk) 19:15, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Transliteration

David Eppstein, both now and in 2017 you have claimed that there is a source for "Sergiivna", but I don't see any. At least neither of the footnotes next to the name contain the transliteration. Besides I am not really sure how she can be using an old transliteration for patronymic when patronymics aren't used in official documents in English (at least not in a passport). As a general rule of thumb currently all Ukrainian proper names are supposed to be transliterated using https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/55-2010-п , unless she has denounced her Ukrainian citizenship or indeed grandfathered another transliteration. I see that you also referred to talk page in 2017, but I fail to locate a relevant discussion on this from that time. Base (talk) 14:58, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the old discussion at User talk:David Eppstein/2016b#Maryna Viazovska. The conjecture from then was that her passport dated from a time when Ukraine briefly used a different transliteration system. But the actual decision was based on the use of a source with the transliteration Sergiivna, [1], and the lack of any source for the other transliteration. Somewhere in the flurry of recent edits, probably someone failed to recognize what that source was being used for and removed it. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:11, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

David Eppstein, hmm, that discussion just comes to conclusion on what transliteration was current at time when she could have received her passport, but I do not see it as relevant for patronymic, because as I mentioned patronymics are not included in the passports (either at all, or they are included only in Ukrainian), here is an example of a passport form from 2007, that indeed uses g for г: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/858-2007-п/ed20070626#Text . As to the source you mention, well, it is a source, but it is a source from 2009, so it predates the cabinet resolution 55-2010, and indeed it uses the old transliteration. That said I am not sure that it is strong enough. When it comes to first names and surnames it is possible for people to grandfather non-standard transliteration, but as far as I am aware people have to submit a proof that it was used in previously issued documents so, for example a Євген, that used to have a passport saying Ievgen can get a new one with Ievgen basing on the old passport and not with Yevhen as he would normally do, see last FAQ item at https://dmsu.gov.ua/faq/transliteracziya.html ("transliteracziya", oh the irony…). But I am quite sure that this conference link would not be sufficient as a proof, as it is not even a paper, but just a conference webpage (most likely filled out by a student desperate for a chance to resit a test, but that is my speculation) with quite a mix of languages and transliterations (e.g. no idea why Алибеков Гаджи Алибекович is in Russian there) — it is too sloppy to be reliable on this matter. --Base (talk) 15:44, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It remains the case that we have an actual source for that transliteration and no source other than original research for any other transliteration. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:25, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would not call applying an official transliteration an original research. It is akin to applying multiplication table to obtain a product of two numbers and we routinely do that in infoboxes and such (e.g. the unit conversion). That said one can also use the official transliteration verification tool, https://dmsu.gov.ua/services/transliteration.html, you can input into surname and Марина Сергіївна into the name and obtain a mock image of a passport with the transliteration applied to the name. --Base (talk) 19:42, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was already convinced in 2016 that the current official transliteration system would use "Serhiivna". But you're missing the point. What name does Viazovska herself use? We have no sources that she uses "Serhiivna", and by now many for "Sergiivna". They could all be wrong, or circular reporting, but we have nothing else to go on. It is not your transliteration, but your justification for why it must be correct, that is original research. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:56, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Associated Press [2], MacTutor [3], and the ICM's World Meeting for Women in Mathematics [4] all use "Sergiivna". It's possible that they all got it from our article, but that's only speculation, and as DE says, we've nothing else to go on. I suppose we could write to Lausanne and ask for a public statement to be made through the EPFL's press office resolving the matter, but that seems rather excessive. XOR'easter (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is unlikely the latter can help, as patronymic is not a part of the official name in English… --Base (talk) 12:30, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Chair of number theory

Article says

Since January 2018 she has held the Chair of Number Theory as a full professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

But I think this isn't quite accurate. The "Chair of number theory" is not a professorship-- it's more like a division of the math department which comprises the different department members (faculty, students, etc.) who specialize in number theory. There is similarly a chair of analysis, a chair of geometry, etc. I don't know the best way to translate or phrase it but basically she is a professor of mathematics in the number theory division of the math department. This is a normal way to organize math departments in Europe. She says in one of her videos that she doesn't really specialize in number theory though. She works across a lot of different areas, and her best-known result (8-d sphere packing) is very analytic in flavor. Can someone more fmailiar with the intricacies of European academia check the phrasing and maybe fix it? Or I might try. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 07:35, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The EPFL uses terminology that I have not seen before. It appears that they use the term "Chair" to refer to a teaching and research group, on equal footing with a Lab; see this page listing their Laboratories and Chairs. Maryna Viazovska's page in the online people directory gives her position as "Full Professor, Chair of Number Theory", but that of Vlad Serban gives his position as "Assistant, Chair of Number Theory", so there it clearly merely indicates the unit, not a professorship. In various French news articles she is described as "titulaire de la chaire d’arithmétique"^[5][6][7] (note: not "de la chaire de la théorie des nombres"), which would mean, in English, that she holds the chair of arithmetic. --Lambiam 18:50, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Arithmetique is just the French mathematical word for number theory, I thought. E.g. Jean-Pierre Serre wrote a yellow Springer book in English, with the title "Arithmetic", about number theory of course. English-speaking logicians also use the term, e.g. Peano arithmetic, Arithmetic hierarchy, etc. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 05:51, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see the EPFL calls her "responsable de la chaire de théorie des nombres".^[8] --Lambiam 06:57, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading sentence

In the section Contributions this sentence appears:

" In contrast, Viazovska's proof for 8 and 24 dimensions is "stunningly simple"."

I am writing to say that Viazovska's proof in 8 dimensions was wonderful.

But "her" proof in 24 dimensions — also wonderful — is a joint result, and so it ought to be referred to that way, and not as if it were the work of Viazovska alone.

I hope someone familiar with this situation will correct this misleading sentence.