Talk:Steven Chu

St. Petersberg Times

I corrected the link for "The St. Petersberg times" to go to "St. Petersberg Times" which redirects to the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the The St. Petersberg Times) because this is where the source cited actually came from. Perhaps the article should be changed to say that the article/source are from the Tampa Bay Times? I'll let a better editor figure that out. Mnuber (talk) 21:40, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Possible GA push

This article is really pretty well referenced. We might be able to make a GA push for it. Though if we do, we might want to wait till after he's actually confirmed as Energy Secretary to submit the GA nomination. Between now and the confirmation, I do think journalists will be digging into his past and who knows if anything controversial might surface. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 21:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Anybody else interested in this? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 14:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Is this significant enough to mention?

In the Personal Life section:

Chu was the keynote speaker for Boston University's commencement ceremony on May 20, 2007. He is an early signatory to Project Steve, an educational campaign supporting the conventional scientific understanding of evolution.

Does this really deserve mention in the article? He's probably been a speaker in many many engagements, being a Nobel Prize winner. And he's probably a signatory to a lot of things. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 16:28, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Probably not. I moved it to the Honors and awards section before I noticed your message here, but I wouldn't mind if it were deleted. — Sebastian 07:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Does anybody have any objection to removal? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 12:41, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I think it's probably worth keeping Project Steve somewhere. Voluntarily taking a stand for evolution teaching is relevant to his new career in government. Certainly the science blogosphere went happy-crazy over a Project Steve signatory in the US cabinet. A Geek Tragedy (talk) 17:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I removed the commencement ceremony, but kept the Project Steve. (I kept it in the Energy and global warming section, not because it has to do with either, but because that section is basically the section for "Other stuff he did that has some bearing to his new career in government".) — Sebastian 19:32, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Senior Picture from the University of Rochester

I have his senior picture from undergrad. Would that be of any use for this page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjeye (talk • contribs) 01:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Reducing coverage of institutions already covered in their own articles

I'm cutting down coverage of details of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Energy Biosciences Institute, the Bio-X program/James H. Clark Center, and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, because these are not specifically connected with Steven Chu. — Sebastian 04:46, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

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I find Sebastian Helm's modifications somewhat disingenuous. While he stated he'd like to keep information related to other institutions on other sites, he reincorporated the incorrect statement regarding who voiced which concerns about the EBI. The truth is that many people - not just faculty - have voiced concerns, and about more than just 'selling out' as SebastianHelm modified the text to read. I am reinstating these.

Furthermore, I do not see the harm in including a few more words here and there. But if we are going to keep as little information as possible about other institutions in this page, then there is still more cutting to be done. 5p0gSp (talk) 05:49, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

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You are right that my modifications were not perfect, and I admit that they were indeed motivated by cutting back some of your edits. We have an ethical and legal responsibility to write such articles about living persons with the greatest care and attention to neutrality. While I appreciate the contributions of a knowledgeable editor such as you, your edits unfortunately didn’t meet this requirement. After your recent edits, the article was devoid of any mention of his role in establishing and funding the Kavli Institute, and, at the same time, criticism of another project is overstated and covered in several sentences.

The deletion of the Kavli Institute sentence was hardly justifiable. With your interest in Steven Chu, there’s no reason why you could not simply enter “Steven Chu Kavli Institute” in your search engine and confirm the sentence with reliable sources like this. And with your knowledge of the need to adhere to references, you should be aware that writing “This has drawn controversy with a wide range of people”, does not confirm to our policies when none of your four references actually mentions “a wide range of people”. That said, I agree with you that the wording “some of Berkeley's faculty”, which I reincorporated, was not adequate either. I will edit the article accordingly. You now claim there are “many people”. Could you give a reliable source with an estimate of how many there are?

Because I made mistakes myself in this, and because, above all, we seem to share some core values, such as care for the environment, consumer protection and transparency of public institutions, I will not take the usual path of officially warning you. I prefer to first engage with people in an open, personal dialog. Please respect this as well as our policies, particularly the admonition to write for the enemy. If we can meet at this common ground, then I’m sure we will have a good cooperation ahead. — Sebastian 21:43, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Personal life

Resolved

I am Steven's second cousin - our grandfathers were brothers. Relationships in Steven Chu's lineage were incorrect. The work cited is in error, it should perhaps have used the word "maternal" rather than "mother's".

This wording was: "His mother's grandfather earned advanced civil engineering degrees at Cornell University and his mother's granduncle studied physics at the Sorbonne before they returned to China."[2]

The correct relationship is: "His mother's father earned advanced civil engineering degrees at Cornell University and his mother's uncle studied physics at the Sorbonne before they returned to China."[2]

His mother's uncle was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Shu-hua —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.111.225 (talk) 17:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Pauline —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.111.225 (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

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Hello Pauline!

Thank you for your patience and your explanation! You are absolutely right! I just misread the source. 真不好意思！ What was I thinking when I reverted your first correction?! — Sebastian 04:19, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Two sections combined

I took the liberty of combining the section on his career and the section on his personal life, as they are both not that big. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Publications

Ok, according to his bio at Stanford - [1] - he has been published 195 times. I don't think it is practical to list all of them, and I'm not sure why the ones currently in the article[2] were specifically selected to be included. Any suggestions on how to handle this? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 14:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

So, unless there is objection, I will be removing that section, but I'll also make sure there is an external link to a list of his publications. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:01, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Project Steve

I've deleted the following from the article:

• He is an early signatory to Project Steve, an educational campaign supporting the conventional scientific understanding of evolution.

It was placed in the section about his views on energy and global warming. If anybody can find a more appropriate place for this (and certainly not the intro!) please feel free to re-insert. But to me that seems like a rather trivial piece of information. His views on evolution has not been brought up as an issue in the news media, as far as I know. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 19:23, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

References

Painting Roofs White

In the introductory paragraph, the article reads, "US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday the Obama administration wanted to paint roofs an energy-reflecting white to increase the average global albedo."

While probably important to put somewhere in the article, does this really need to be stated in the introductory paragraph? Also, the sentence dates itself, and will become wrong next Tuesday. Should it be moved to the Energy and global warming section, or the Energy Secretary section?

Max Baroi 12:59 AM PST, May 28, 2009 —Preceding undated comment added 08:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC).

I've taken it out of the intro. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 18:05, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

GA?

Anybody interested in pushing this to GA status? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 14:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Broken Links and Coal

Links 4 and 5 are broken. Given Chu is supporting coal: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/market_news/article.jsp?content=D9I4D1G03 his stated stance against fossil fuels seems dubious. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.47.71 (talk) 13:16, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

The link is broken. A13ean (talk) 01:04, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Quote at the end

Two anonymous editors added in a mention to a statement that Chu made, apparently to the WSJ: "We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money". This was played up a bit in a few conservative blogs, but it is unclear to me if it merits inclusion in this article. At any rate, its current placement is a bit awkward. A13ean (talk) 01:04, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

In the absence of other input, I will remove the quote. A13ean (talk) 20:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Time to add Solyndra Controversy

In the spirit of Wikipedia having tens of thousands of 'controversy' sections in its articles, we need one about Solyndra, since Chu was the man who made the final decision. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.183.191.86 (talk) 18:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Information from this article should be included: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/energy-secretary-chu-takes-full-responsibility-solyndra/story?id=14967189#.TsUcIpusf3W — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.231.177.18 (talk) 14:42, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm shocked! Shocked to discover that wikipedia does not mention Chu's role in the Solyndra scandal. [3] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.28.8.239 (talk) 02:33, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Scroll lock key

The page was vandalized today with the edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.65.249.4 (talk) 00:01, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The latest xkcd features a fictional reference to a questionable edit to this article. Please be kind. --Tasty monster (=TS ) 09:03, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this. I was just about to post a warning. This page needs to be monitored for vandalism for the next 24 hours or so. Ekulio (talk) 09:25, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

But what if he did invent the Scroll Lock key and now everyone's going to de-credit Steven Chu for his invention on the basis that any reference to it is simply the result of citogenesis? I suppose that's one of the drawbacks of citogenesis: If you mention citogenesis and cite as an example a fact that actually is true, you'll be cited on wikipedia as proof that opposing citations are false or circular. In other words, the effect can work in reverse as well, preventing true facts from being on Wikipedia. And that "citonecrosis" is potentially worse because a factual error based on its absence it's less detectable. Yes. I just tried to coin that term.--Trypsin (talk) 09:35, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

You're smarter than that, Trypsin. The simple solution is to rely only on sources that predate the insertion of the statement in the article -- preferably, sources that predate the article's creation. (And no fussing about 'predation' and 'predator' -- this is obviously "predate" the antonym of "postdate", not the synonym for "prey".) DS (talk) 18:23, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I just checked wikipedia's scroll lock article. That page is pretty much already a disaster as far as citations go...the first citation is a forum thread. 14.207.221.195 (talk) 10:45, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

• Permalink to xkcd cartoon in question. FYI. --64.85.214.78 (talk) 11:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Hahaha, I actually came here looking for a few vandalism-related laughs or to see if this article was vandalizable. Instead, I got a kick out of this discussion. Thanks! And yes, I'd recommend monitoring this article.

• Just removed another "humorous" (sic) edit in this vein. Time to semi-protect this for a while? Oh, Randall, we give you a Hugo nomination, and this is what you give us in return?  ;-) --JohnPomeranz (talk) 17:55, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Both articles are now semi-protected for two weeks. Any accounts which re-add that information are hereby deemed to be "throwaway" accounts, and will be blocked indefinitely. DS (talk) 18:15, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Might it be worth putting up some sort of msgbox? I picture something along the lines of this:

-- Erik Siers (talk) 01:56, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

A msgbox like that must not be put up unless we have a source establishing that Secretary Chu did not create Scroll Lock key. The Scroll Lock article makes no mention of who created it; we do not yet know whether or not it was Secretary Chu. Dsjoerg (talk) 14:51, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

I removed the scroll lock thing the other day, but someone added it back. Has any new evidence surfaced to suggest that this thing is actually true, rather than still being something that was completely made up for an XKCD comic? My searches only return references to the comic. Has something changed? 134.114.64.250 (talk) 23:32, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

No, it's just some idiot who found that strip recently. DS (talk) 20:05, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

View on gas prices

Chu is quite notable for telling the Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." (Those levels are currently about $9.54 per gallon.) Four months after he stated that this was his view, President Obama appointed him Secretary of Energy.

But I fear that if I add this to the article, liberal Wikipedia editors will immediately censor it. What to do? 174.24.93.182 (talk) 06:02, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Why show name in Chinese characters and pinyin?

He's American. Shouldn't Chinese spellings be limited to people who are Chinese? The use of the Chinese spelling suggests that he's Chinese, which is misleading. Yes, he's of Chinese ancestry, but does Wikipedia show Chinese spellings for all Chinese-Americans? What's the Wikipedia standard? Omc (talk) 20:14, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia standard is that we mention other names a person may go by. And in this case, as in the case of many Chinese people - Chinese American or otherwise - they have both English and Chinese names. So that's why we also include his Chinese name. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

The Chinese name listed doesn't appear in the source that's cited. I vote to remove it unless it can be shown he actually goes by that name. —Designate (talk) 16:01, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

A brief search only turns up one hit, which maybe be based on this page. Unless we find some sort of official record of this, it should probably come out. a13ean (talk) 17:01, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

My brief search net me at least five sources. SinoVision, Sina Corp, Xinhua News Agency, Peking University, and National Science Council. I've added them to the article. Cheers. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 16:07, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

But aren't those articles just transliterating his name into Chinese because they are Chinese-language sites? I'm sure you could find a Chinese transliteration for Joe Biden's name, but we wouldn't include it in the first sentence. Similarly I'm sure you could Japanese or Korean sites that have their own transliterations for Chu's name. Unless this was really a name he has personally used throughout his life (e.g., Jackie Chan's Chinese name) we can't just include it purely because of his ethnicity. He doesn't even speak Chinese. Would we include transliterations for a white American of Greek/Hebrew/Russian ancestry if they barely lived outside the US and only spoke English? —Designate (talk) 21:47, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I remain convinced by these sources. In Chinatown in Washington DC, I learned its possible to transliterate Fuddruckers, but that doesn't tell us anything. a13ean (talk) 00:58, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

No, that is not just a transliteration of his English name. Transliterations of "Steven" are usually "史提芬" or "史蒂芬" ([4][5]), which sounds like "si di fan". Like I said, this is another name which Steven Chu has, not a transliteration of his name. That's why it should be included. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 19:28, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

True or not, that's original research unless secondary sources specifically address the fact that Chu has an odd transliteration. But even if the transliteration is unusual, that doesn't mean it belongs here. We would never, ever include a Chinese newspaper's name for a white American who had never lived in China and didn't speak Chinese. There would be no reason to do that. We can't have a double-standard just because of his ethnicity. Whatever reason these newspapers have for using a nonstandard version of his name, it's irrelevant to the English Wikipedia unless secondary sources pick up on it. The lead paragraph is the basic summary of a person's biography; this is mere trivia. —Designate (talk) 22:05, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Once again. That's not a transliteration of his name. It is another name that he has. And the fact that multiple Chinese newspapers use it, instead of a transliteration of his name, is enough to show that it is his Chinese name. There is no double-standard here because most white Americans do not have Chinese names - Chinese newspapers usually just transliterate their names. And since this is another name that he goes by, I disagree that it's mere trivia. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 06:57, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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Possible biased or disputable assertion?

(This is my first-ever attempt at Wikipedia commenting, so please be kind.)

I thought that Wikipedia entries are supposed to try to be neutral and objective, but I think that one sentence in this article pushes more into opinion: "Demonstrating his naïveté and being out of touch with the working poor and middle class Chu stated in a Wall St Journal interview..."

Without researching the history of this incident further, I'm not really prepared to rewrite the sentence but I think it would at least sound more objective if it said something like "Chu was criticized for being naïve and out of touch [citation] with the working poor and middle class when he stated..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smithchuck (talk • contribs) 21:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

DOE Loan Program and Chu's resignation

"In 2011 after the scope and magnitude of the failure of Chu's Loan Guarantee program began to become publicly known a scathing internal White House memo suggested "...that the president be strongly encouraged to make major leadership changes as soon as possible,..." Chu resigned as energy secretary on April 22, 2013."

The DOE Loan Programs Office was created in 2005 by Congress, predating Chu's tenure by 4 years. A rewrite of the possessive may be appropriate for clarity.

The sentence is structured to suggest a dominant causative relationship between Chu leaving after Obama's first term and the memo on Solyndra's bankruptcy, which is speculative. Would suggest elaborating on criticism of DOE loans and the memo in the section discussing his DOE tenure.

I would also suggest that criticism of the loan program be slightly modified for NPOV. As far as I am aware, the loan program still exists and has had positive return on investments, so "the scope and magnitude of the failure" seems unbalanced. Also, would recommend attributing "scathing" to ABCNews, since they were the ones to describe the memo as such, and none of us have actually seen the memo. — Y phelan (talk) 22:19, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Image from this article to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Professor Steven Chu ForMemRS headshot.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on 24 September 2018. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2018-09-24. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 08:48, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Picture of the day

Steven Chu (born 1948) is an American physicist and former government official. Born in St Louis into a family with Chinese ancestry, Chu studied at the University of Rochester and then earned a PhD in physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He became a researcher, first at Bell Labs and then later as a professor at Stanford University. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with two colleagues, for the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light". In 2009, Chu was appointed United States Secretary of Energy in the first administration of president Barack Obama, a position he held until 2013.Photograph: Royal Society uploader

Info Box: Alphabet Soup

Under Dr. Chu's name and above his photograph are the abbreviations of three professional societies Dr. Chu belongs to -- two of which are not of his country, the U.S.A.

This is my fist encounter with such information placed in that spot. I've only seen aristocracy information placed so. I understand that such abbreviations are acceptable for certain professions outside of the US, but this is the first Wikipedia page where I have encountered this information placed in the Info Box.

Before all kinds of professionals start to list their professional associations under their names in the Info Box, what is the Wikipedia guideline/etiquette regarding such information displayed thusly? MissMaryMack14 (talk) 06:12, 22 May 2023 (UTC)