Talk:George Smoot

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public domain photo?

George's photo on this page http://aether.lbl.gov/www/personnel/Smoot-bio.html is published on the server of a US government institution. Does that make it public domain? My guess is yes, but i'd rather hear more opinions. The photo is here. Boud 12:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Template talk:PD-USGov-DOE. LBL is managed under contract with the Federal government, but LBL employees are not Federal employees, so the federal government copyright exemption does not apply to them. This should be kept in mind both for the image and for the text of the biography (which should not be copied verbatim). Dragons flight 14:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not the Smoot of the Harvard Bridge

Note that he is not the MIT alumnus that is the Smoot used to measure the Harvard Bridge. Don't let that possible misperception into the article. [1] GRBerry 12:40, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I wondered about that. Thanks for saving me the hassle of researching it.

Septegram 18:01, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know which Smoot was used to measure the Harvard Bridge? I wondered the same thing.

See either the Smoot article or the external link at the end of the first edit to this section. GRBerry 13:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oliver Smoot, I believeFZ 18:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Oliver Smoot article says that they are cousins. There is a citation to an NPR interview from a 6 October call-in show with George Smoot on as a guest. Here is the link, I checked it out. 8 minutes into the broadcast George says Oliver is his cousin. I am not adding it to this article, as it is not the reason George is notable (although he did say in the interview that from time to time he has to deny he is the Smoot the unit references). Notary137 16:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Year of PhD

Another editor changed the year of his PhD from 1970 to 1971, citing http://alum.mit.edu/. As an MIT alum, I can go there and validate that. But non-MIT alums can't. As we preference verifiability over truth, I've restored it to 1971, citing a MIT Press release from early this morning, which matches the biography at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As we preference verifiability over truth, I think that the 1970 date should stay until we find verifiable sources that anyone can use. But I expect the MIT alum site to be more accurate. GRBerry 21:40, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Translation

I translated most of the Biography section from the French article, so please copyedit in case I made any mistakes. - SpLoT 03:43, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's the first time I see one of my wiki article translated elsewhere. Thanks. Alain Riazuelo 23:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. It was a nice article anyways. Except for my rather awkward translation. - SpLoT 09:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually most of the material was borrowed from English bios I found on some LBL or NASA website (I put them in the references section). So it's probably better if you directly go to those sources rather than translating my own translation, especially when dealing with technical terms (last scattering surface and not surface of last diffusion, for example). Alain Riazuelo 09:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't realize this at that moment. But still, nice french article. - SpLoT 03:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Better picture?

C'mon folk, there's gotta be a better picture of this guy. At the very least crop out the booze. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible, feel free to look. I think free > fair use though. --Falcorian ^(talk) 04:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I went back through my pictures, and I found only one with Smoot in it. It might be perferable (although it's a little out of focus). Please feel free to recrop it and whatnot (I can even post the larger version I took it out of if someone would like to try). --Falcorian ^(talk) 07:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the booze has got to go. Would you see anything like this in a physial encyclopedia??? ask123 (talk) 15:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is my picture, so I'm biased... but can someone please explain what's inherently bad about Dr. Smoot pouring himself a glass of champagne in celebration of winning the Nobel Prize? I kind of feel that the picture being from that historical moment adds a certain amount. -- SCZenz (talk) 16:32, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Religious

Is any information about him religious beliefs to put in infobox?--Vojvodae ist 09:47, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard him say, and I don't see any sources after a quick google search. --Falcorian ^(talk) 17:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, he did refer to the seeds for future galaxy superclusters as "fingerprints from the Maker" and also said the creation of the universe was "finely orchestrated". He was recently asked if he was religious and he responded by saying: "I try not to answer that question and the reason is there are a lot of people so desperate to believe but they don't want to figure it out for themselves and they want an authority to tell them the correct answer. I think that is not right. It's a personal relationship people should have with God." Hard to say if he's religious or not, but he certainly seems like some sort of theist. 208.96.110.56 (talk) 18:01, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]