Talk:Josephine M. Mitchell

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 01:40, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that when mathematician Josephine M. Mitchell married another University of Illinois faculty member, the university revoked her tenured position so her husband could keep his untenured one? Source: "You are strongly encouraged to quote the source text supporting each hook" (and [link] the source, or cite it briefly without using citation templates)

• Reviewed: Smithe Redwoods State Natural Reserve

Created by David Eppstein (talk). Self-nominated at 16:56, 20 April 2021 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:
• Other problems:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Had not heard of this case, but was aware of others. Anti-nepotism rules were normally used against married women. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:50, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Library donation

The sentence "When a flood destroyed the mathematics library of Charles University in Prague, she and her husband donated their own extensive library to replace it." may be incorrect, as the flooding referred to is presumably the more severe 2002 European floods#Czech Republic of August 2002, rather than the 1997 Central European flood. As Mitchell died on December 28, 2000, and her husband on February 6, 2002, the donation may have been made on their behalf posthumously, rather than directly by Mitchell and her husband. The actual text of the ref cited (from 2003) is ambiguous: "In one special way, they have already provided unusual support for mathematics: Their rather magnificent collection of books and journals was sent to Charles University in the Czech Republic, where recent floods had destroyed the entire library." (my emphasis) Bahudhara (talk) 06:25, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Exactly the same thought (and conclusion) occurred to me, on checking the source. My interpretation, and it is no more than that, is that the American Mathematical Society made the decision to transfer property donated to it. But in any case, the words appearing in the article are not adequately supported by the source. We might well suppose that they would have thought it an appropriate use of their library, although "replace" is likely to also be too strong an assertion. --PaulBetteridge (talk) 09:05, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Please go ahead and correct that part to a more accurate description of what happened. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:10, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

An appropriate change was made by another editor --PaulBetteridge (talk) 22:03, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Doctoral advisor

The article currently lists Mitchell’s Ph.D advisor as Hilda Geiringer, citing the Mathematics Genealogy Project. Several other sources, though, give her advisor as Anna Pell Wheeler (sources: Institute for Advanced Study; AMS). Anybody have a way to verify? —Delirium (talk) 19:10, 10 September 2023 (UTC)