Talk:Margaret Eliza Maltby

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Identity in STEM

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gowd0006 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by BaileeJackson (talk) 15:34, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Women in Green -- 20-minute assessment (mini-review)

Hello! As requested by Physhist via the June 2024 Women in Green editathon event page, here is a quick 20-minute assessment of the article to help suggest what key improvements might be needed before any formal attempt at submitting the article as a Good Article (GA) nomination. This article looks like it's coming along really well -- no major issues with prose, neutrality or stability, and it has a good number of citations and solid sources. Here's what I think needs work right now:

• A search made via Earwig's Copy-Vio Tool warns that there are sentences/paragraphs in the Career section that should be better paraphrased --> wording is too close to the CWP at UCLA source.
• The bullet list of jobs under "Career" seems unnecessary (all or most positions seem mentioned in the prose content).
• Stylistic inconsistency: the lead paragraph gives the birth/death dates in DD/MM/YYYY format, while the main text & infobox use MM/DD/YYYY format.
• Content question: if Maltby completed her thesis in German, when and how did she learn fluent German? There may be a few other interesting personal details that could be added to ensure the article coverage is broad enough -- I notice the Peggy Kidwell source talks about Maltby's love of global travel.
• With a quick disclaimer that I'm not an expert in image licensing, I do want to pose a question about correct licensing for the three photos uploaded by JaneRayGill75. The photos are from 1908, 1892, and 1918, but the user has labelled them as "Own Work" and claimed the right to release the rights into the creative commons. I'm not sure this is the correct way to license the photos, as the user is clearly not the original photographer and may not have been granted copyright-holding status from the photographer when they were gifted these portraits (it sounds like a family heirloom situation, and I don't know from the details provided whether the family held legal copyright). Some questions: who actually created the photos? Were they ever published anywhere? If the photographer is known, what year did they die? If the photos are previously unpublished, I think Template:PD-US-unpublished would be an appropriate license for at least the 1892 photo, but the other two photos may need more investigation to confirm details around source/authorship and current licensing. The WikiCommons Village Pump is a good place to ask for advice about image licensing questions like these.

Let me know if you have any questions about my comments. All the best, Alanna the Brave (talk) 23:27, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much for these great suggestions! This is very helpful! --Physhist (talk) 08:00, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Margaret Eliza Maltby/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Physhist (talk · contribs) 20:51, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Esculenta (talk · contribs) 16:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I'll review this. I should have comments up within a couple of days. Esculenta (talk) 16:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Here are my initial comments:

Lead

• The lead seems a little thin; perhaps mention her role in obtaining fellowships for female researchers (constrasted with the contemporary difficulty of women receiving these), her introduction of the first course on physics of music. Her "adoption" and subsequent revelations should also be mentioned.
• "Maltby was also the first woman to earn"
• German qualifies as WP:Overlink, but it would be appropriate to have links for solution, electrolytic, resistance

Early life

• "Maltby would later change her name to Margaret in 1889." probably clearer to use the simple past tense (generally more suitable for historical facts in a biographical article) rather than future-in-the-past tense. Also, it's a bit unclear which of the three Maltby ladies are being referred to here. I note that there's some more interesting details in the Behrman (2020) source; that her sisters were quite a bit older, that they named her, and that she disliked the name intensely.
• reading further in Behrman (2020) source, I notice that the article doesn't mention her close and long-lasting friendship with Ellen Swallow Richards. There's also some discussion about her views on marriage that could be elaborated in the article, and would help provide some background context to her later views on the subject. Also maybe highlight the contradiction (pointed out by Behrman) between Laura Gill's position on the "loyalty" of married women academics with the "self-elected home duty" implied by Maltby's "adopted" son?
• more from this source: "Margaret Maltby had asked Philip to burn all of her personal papers upon her death." I think expanding on the "why" of this would help provide important contextual information on some of the difficulties female academic faced.
• unlink science, mathematics
• "After Edmund Maltby's death, the Maltby family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, for educational opportunities." date?

Education

• possible useful links: preparatory school, matriculating, acoustics, Charles R. Cross (physicist), frequency, sound wave, fellowship, physical chemistry, conductor, solvent
• "In 1887, Maltby enrolled at MIT" use full name & link & abbreviate on first use in non-lead text
• "Maltby and Cross's work, published in 1892, showed that less than a cycle was necessary to distinguish a C3 tuning fork from a C4 tuning fork." Does the source mention that this is one octave apart (~130.8 Hz)? If so, might be good to add this for a bit more context.
• "European Fellowship" don't think the latter word needs capitalization

Career

• "Maltby had previously taught at Wellesley as an instructor in physics from 1889 to 1893." are the dates correct? From previous text, she entered the college in 1887 and graduated in 1893; would it have been normal to have a 3rd/4th year student as a physics "instructor"? The Scott (1960) says that she was there from 1889–1893, but does not mention any teaching.
• "At the end of the Fall 1896 term" capitalization not required
• "Maltby suddenly resigned for what she claimed at the time was to recuperate from a serious accident." any more details? Never mind, I figured it out :)
• links: mathematical physics, adjunct professor, chair
• "Unfortunately Maltby's involvement in administration…" see MOS:EDITORIAL
• "1909-1910" (and others) number ranges require an endash, not a hyphen
• "The first edition of American Men of Science, published in 1906, recognized Maltby's name with a star denoting her as one of the country's top scientists." What was the start for? (I assume it's because she was a women, but perhaps it should be said explicitly?) Was she the first women to receive this accolade? This source says her name remained on that list for the next six editions of the publication.
• That same source also says "She was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 1960 her photograph was included in the American Journal of Physics where she was one of eight physicists profiled, and the only woman.", which seems like interesting/relevant info that could be included. Also, it mentions a May 5, 1944 New York Times obit; have you seen this?
• The 1916 source Maltby-Maltbie family history has more information about her relatives
• this source mentions that her work with Nersnt involved a novel application of a Wheatstone bridge for measuring conductivity in electrolytically resistant substances; I think adding this would give a bit more useful context about the nature of her research.

Personal life

• "In her leisure time, Maltby enjoyed listening to music, especially the opera, and travel."

• about the publication: is this a complete list of her pubs? If so, state that explicitly and give a source where the list came from. Otherwise, the heading should be "Selected publications"
• not necessary for GA, but it would be nice to give translated titles, and doi's for the other pubs listed. Some of these are fully available for viewing too (e.g. https://zenodo.org/records/1589399/files/article.pdf?download=1)