Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ATLAS of Finite Groups

ATLAS of Finite Groups

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ATLAS of Finite Groups (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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I couldn't establish that this meets WP:NBOOK / WP:GNG. Boleyn (talk) 12:14, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: I'm the author of this article (under the handle Gro-Tsen, which I've lost access to for technical reason which are beside the matter here), so although I've stopped contributing to Wikipedia for anything other than trivial corrections, I feel I should say a word. First, this AfD nomination exactly exemplifies the reason why I've stopped contributing: namely, that all processes are buried in bureaucratic procedures of extraordinary complexity and rigidity (a system which effectively gives far too much power to those people who have the time for these procedures rather than actually writing articles). To merely contribute to the discussion one is supposed to read a 5000+ word long page which in the end still doesn't tell me how I'm supposed to write and format a comment like this and I'm probably doing it wrong.

Anyway.

The notability criteria for books are insane in my mind because they are clearly written by people who had absolutely not thought about the very existence of science books: the criterion “the book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to a notable or significant motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement” for example, clearly fails to take into account the possibility that the book made a significant contribution to a scientific field (the words “science” or “scientific” don't even appear in the criteria), which is the case here. So, no, the book is not notable, as far as I can tell, under the kafkaesque criteria as they stand.

However, disregarding these criteria, if anyone cares about the reason why this book should be considered notable, in my mind (and why I thought it was necessary to start an article about it), they are as follows:

(1) The ATLAS isn't just a book about finite groups, it's profoundly intertwined with the history of the Classification of finite simple groups. This is for example witnessed by the fact that Mark Ronan's 2006 book Symmetry and the Monster (a popular science book about said classification and its history) devotes an entire chapter (chapter 14) to the ATLAS, its history and its importance in the general story of the Classification.

(2) Specifically, the ATLAS was the first to contain the character table of the Monster group (and possibly also the Baby Monster) before the group was even known to exist.

(3) The ATLAS isn't just a book, it's also an indispensable scientific tool, which is the reason why it has now been extended to a web site and a package of the GAP software.

(4) The ATLAS poses a particular epistemological problem to mathematicians as it contains the result of computations which have not been published, so relying on it in proofs is problematic. See this MathOverflow question for discussion about this. So entire scientific papers are devoted to trying to do without the ATLAS or to the question of how to reproduce its information. For example, this paper (published in Contemporary Mathematics) is specifically devoted to the question of checking the contents of the ATLAS.

(5) The ATLAS is extraordinarily famous and influential in the field of finite groups. Asking a group theorist whether they know the ATLAS is similar to asking a biologist whether they know the Origin of Species. I don't have direct evidence for this, but the first paragraph of the paper mentioned in the previous point quotes Jean-Pierre Serre as saying that he “can’t think of any other book published in the last 50 years which had such an impact”.

(6) Merely as a physical object, the ATLAS is remarkable for its size and format.

Now I won't be contributing any further to this discussion because, again, the tediousness of having to do this kind of bureaucratic justification is exactly what drove me away from Wikipedia. But please feel free to either ignore or else reuse the above facts (and, if the consensus is to keep the article, incorporate them in its content).

-- 2001:41D0:FE6F:4800:0:0:0:1 (talk) 13:32, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Keep based on the existence of two book-length volumes dedicated to the book - one in 1995 and one in 2015, both of which are now cited in the article. Guidelines say to consider how influential a book has been in its area, and even as a person unfamiliar with the topic I can tell from the quality of google scholar results that this is a book for people have reverence. So I appreciate you putting this in context, and I think the two results will illustrate its impact but any additional cites talking about its influence could help sway fence-sitters. Oblivy (talk) 15:26, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Owen× ☎ 13:33, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

  Everything that Gro-Tsen writes here is one hundred procent true. "The Atlas" is well known among mathematicians and absolutely central in the finite groups community. It is also rather unique. One should understand that finite groups, and more particularly the classification of finite groups is one of the central problems in mathematics. The quote from Jean Pierre Serre is spot on, and Serre is an extremely highly regarded Abel prize winning mathematician.

  There is absolutely no reason to delete the article on this book, and in fact I whole heartedly agree with him that being a highly influential scientific work, is clearly an excellent criterion for being a notable book.

  Put it in other way: Conway's Game of Life has a Wikipedia Article. As fun and well known as it is, the Atlas towers well above the Game of Life in his achievements. RogierBrussee (talk) 14:16, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• Keep, highly notable work in the field of group theory. Google Scholar is not great for turning up contemporary scholarly reviews from the 1980s, but here are three: [1], [2], [3]. It's discussed at length in Siobhan Roberts's biography of Conway, and it was the subject of conferences and their proceedings in 1998 and 2015. Jfire (talk) 15:10, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
• Keep -- Meets WP:NBOOK criterion #5 due to being co-written by John Horton Conway, certainly one of the top mathematicians of the 20th/21st Centuries, and likely longer than that. Central and Adams (talk) 15:56, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
• Keep. Obviously notable. --Zundark (talk) 16:58, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 19:32, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
• Keep thanks to Oblivy's improvement, adding citations and fulfilling WP:HEY. Apologies to Gro-Tsen for being Kafkaesque. Toughpigs (talk) 19:39, 29 April 2024 (UTC)