Talk:Lothar Collatz

Posthumous paper after more than a decade?

A recent addition to the page says that "Collatz's 1957 paper with Ulrich Sinogowitz, who had been killed in the bombing of Darmstadt in World War II, founded the field of spectral graph theory." Is this correct? Sinogowitz was killed in 1945 or earlier, but was the author of a paper from 1957? I guess it's not impossible -- maybe they worked together on it but Collatz didn't get around to finishing/publishing it for a long time -- but maybe this should be double checked? Rwv37 (talk) 11:59, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

I found this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02941924

Under "Additional information" it says (translation by me):

"Dr. Ulrich Sinogowitz died on 9/12/1944 in Darmstadt due to war incidences. Already then [I suppose shortly before] there were plans for a joint work; No. 1, 3, 4 and table I of this paper go mainly back to the former [Lothar Von Collatz], No. 2 and tables II and III to the latter author [Ulrich Sinogowitz]."

So it seems like this paper was in fact published quite some time after Sinogowitz' death. 178.8.193.61 (talk) 01:30, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Mistranslations

@JayBeeEll: First of all, the summary of "replacing misnomer/mistranslation" referred to the use of "Technical University of Berlin", which I was checking, but it clearly does not affect this article (mea culpa). However, the problems here are similar

1. The concept of Technical University is false cognate of Technische Universität or Technische Universiteit, as the German and Dutch words are much broader than the English "Technical". That's why almost all institutions in Western Europe that are called TU (namely institutions in the German and Dutch speaking areas), go by names such as Delft University of Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, etc., etc. TU Berlin used to go by the name Berlin Institute of Technology, but it created issues with the acronym TU Berlin, so now the university only uses the German name (same as ETH, or KU Leuven, or EPFL).
2. The concept of Technical University is mostly used by Fachhochschulen/Hogescholen (you can read in Technische Hochschule about that), which is a completely different type of higher education institution.
3. Finally, while the name Technical University has always been a mistranslation, it was more popular in the past, but it has clearly felt out of favor in the English language during recent years, precisely because of the aforementioned reasons. Nowadays, its impossible to claim that it would be the most common name as at least since the beginning of the past decade "Technische Univesität XY" is more common in English sources (see the cases TU Berlin, TU Dresden, TU Darmstadt, TU Wien], among many others; note that the last one officially uses TU Wien in the English language and not Technische Universität Wien).

That being said, this article had even more blatant problem. Here, it seems that an editor boldly translated every name such as Technische Hochschule XY or Technische Universität XY using the false cognate Technical University without paying the slightest attention to the difference in naming of the institutions (which is not merely a change in naming, but it also influences the ability to offer - and get funding for - begleitende Fächer, which are not of technical nature). That why, in those cases I wrote:

• Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe (now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
• Technische Hochschule Darmstadt (now Technische Universität Darmstadt)
• Technische Hochschule Hannover (now Leibniz University Hanover)

In the cases of TU Dresden and TU Wien, I merely replaced the mistranslation based on the false cognate.

Then, you're fully right about the use of current names in the infobox, but you can check multiple articles and it's common place to use the current name of the institutions both in the infobox (Alma mater and workplace) and in the categories (as there it's not possible to differentiate). That's why I did so, but I certainly see (and agree with your point). SFBB (talk) 21:01, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@JayBeeEll: I just realized you mentioned a possible anachronism in other part of the edit. That is not the case of TH Karlsruhe which received the rights to give begleitende Fächer in 1967 becoming Universität Karlsruhe (Collatz was there between 1935-1937). TH Darmstadt was a Technische Hochschule up until 1997 when it became a TU (Collatz was there between 1937 and 1943). Hanover, in turn, was a TH up until 1968, with Collatz being there between 1943 and 1952. When he recevied honorary degrees by Dresden and Vienna, both institutions were already universities. So that edit was also right .

The only thing that is wrong/anachronistic in my edit (but it was already so before and after the reversion) is that Hanover was known as University of Hanover by 1981. I will correct that right now.

I hope that having clarified these issues, there are no more problems, so I'll bring back the edit, and correct the Hanover case. The infobox one, we can still discuss (because it's a criteria thing; the others are plainly wrong). SFBB (talk) 00:42, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi SFBB, thanks for your response. I am not an expert on the names of German or Austrian universities; I am willing to trust you that certain of these names have, in the article, been translated into English in nonstandard or inappropriate ways, and I have no objection to changes that address this problem. In general, I have found that the reorganization and renaming of universities creates a confusing situation on Wikipedia as far as stitching together historical information from different institutions in a meaningful way; and this definitely leads (along with gnomish editors who don't check what they're doing) to widespread anachronisms. Thanks to a robust system of redirects, there is no reason whatsoever to leave these anachronisms in place; I have fixed the ones in the infobox for which the correct adjustment seemed clear to me from the article. Hopefully my use of German-language names for these universities is satisfactory to you. --JBL (talk) 18:34, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@JayBeeEll: I fully agree, and the only reason why I edited differently is because that seems to be the standard. I don't think there is a solution for the categories, though. SFBB (talk) 19:39, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

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