Talk:Maria Spiropulu

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I've written a new article about Maria SpiropuluOmnium 00:38, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Notable?

Please explain why this researcher is notable (WP:BIO) to be included in wikipedia or this article will be marked for deletion. feydey 01:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I guess this is really established right now. However I would like to add, that for such young person an H-index of 31, justifies the notable evaluation. Energon 17:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Interpretation of this H-index without knowing that of her typical colleague on CDF is problematic. The H-index does not take into account number of authors, and most CDF papers have on the order of 500 authors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.225.94.66 (talk) 07:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Notable!

Dr. Maria Spiropulu is a researcher of worldwide fame, and a leading figure in the experimental search for new - beyond Standard Model- physics. She was an Enrico Fermi Fellow at the EFI/University of Chicago, she has led experiments for the Tevatron collider in Fermilab, she has puplished many related research papers, about collider signatures of supersymmetry, extra dimensions and braneworld scenarios, and currently she's the co-leader of a research group looking into supersymmetric particles, extra dimensions and other phenomena beyond the standard model at CERN. To any person who has the slightest idea about what's going on in modern High Energy Physics (HEP), all these research activities are "top of the line", and will propably lead, in a few years, after the experiments in the LHC are completed, to a new revolutionary understanding of our Universe. Furthermore, allready there are hundreds of references in the web about Maria Spiropulu, including articles in the New York Times, Scientific American, MSNBC, and scientific magazines from all over the world. She has also participated in NOVA's popular scientific documentary "The Elegant Universe". Furthermore, she's one of the most famous and distinguished greek scientists, and there are many greek people, esspecially professors and students, who are interested about her life and work.

In this wikipedia article, I have collected biographical informations about Maria Spiropulu from many different sources, including Dr. Spiropulu herself, so that whoever is interested about her life and career, can find all these informations gathered and summarized here. Through the article's links, one can also learn about what's going on in modern physics, since Dr. Spiropulu's field of research embraces also string theory, which is a current candidate "theory of everything", and interellates almost all known topics of physics, from HEP to Cosmology. Deleting this article, whould be like closing a small window to the future of science. Omnium 30 December 2005

My main concern is that there are millions of scientists and researchers, what makes her notable and special. Please mention her published articles and books in the article with resources. feydey 01:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I know that there are thousands of scientists and researchers out there, but only a few of them are working on such revolutionary topics, such as experimental proofs of spatial extra dimensions, and even fewer are leading research groups at CERN, Europe's premier particle-physics lab! Nevertheless, I consider your threat of deletion to be rather unencyclopedic, since this article meets all Wikipedia's stardards of conduct for the notability of people: Maria Spiropulu is more well known and well published than any average college professor, she's a published author who has written articles in periodicals with a circulation far more than 5000 (see Publications), and she has achieved renown for her involvement in physics. This article also passes Wikipedia's alternative tests, such as the Google Test (Maria Spiropulu gets hundreds of hits on Google, Yahoo and other well known search mechanisms) and esspecially the 100 year test. Omnium

Good job clearing that up and adding those references to the article. P.S. Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. feydey 16:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Hello,

a comment from an insider : M.Spiropulu, although known for her charisma, does not have any revolutionary or particularly original contribution to particle research at this level of her career. Her field of specialty is shared by many other people. She also has not lead any large scale experiment, for example. If she derserves an article here, I can name a few dozens of others, who do not appear here either. At this stage, here level of contribution to our field is much less than the other scientists listed in Category:Particle_physicists.

I just want to make a comment on both the "insider" above and the original worries of user Feydey from an "outsider" of the field like myself. We all came to this link for different reasons and were interested to find out who this person is. Even more we spent our valuable time writing on the talk page... These simple facts make this article useful to at least exist.Elikarag (talk) 03:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment from an outsider: I see no reason for this wiki to exist, all of the provided information is common for a faculty member's webpage, and M.Spiropulu is not a primary author on any notable works, and as a result, has not won any notable awards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjrd (talk • contribs) 04:12, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I think there might be a small misunderstanding here about how authorship works in large experimental collaborations in high energy physics. Scientific publications may have hundreds or even thousands of authors, listed alphabetically, to give credit to all who contribute to the experiment. However a particular analysis on the data is often carried out by only one or a few people. Admittedly it can be difficult to track down documentation of the lead investigators on a particular experimental result, but in the case at hand the AAAS has already done the homework and given credit where credit was due. Tirebiter78 (talk) 23:28, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The Era of Dimensional Exploration

Imagine for a moment that you're back at the beginings of the 20th century, when Marie Curie was conducting her novel experiments on radioactivity. If Wikipedia existed back then, wouldn't you like to see an article about that researcher, even before she achieves the great discoveries that would make her famous a few years later? Should we always write articles about scientists only if and after they receive a nobel prize? Aren't their early modest efforts that lead to such great discoveries notable? Place yourself now, 100 years later, in the early 21st century. Of all the ambitious scientific researches which are taking place right now, which one or two are the most promising, revolutionary (and notable for Wikipedia), the true analogs of Marie Curie's discovery of radioactivity? The answer is supersymmetry and extra dimensions. In Maria Spiropulu's words: "Finding supersymmetry is more important than finding life on Mars" and "The discovery of extra dimensions, will beat the superlative of any human achievement" but, as she adds "it needs a strong and long experimental program". Dr. Spiropulu is now at the battlements of such an experimental program, and I think that's plenty a reason to make her notable and special.

I would like to mention a historical example, pointing out the significance of extra dimensions. With the discovery of America by Columbus, followed by the age of Ocean Exploration, the western civilization made a giant leap, accompanied by both scientific and technological progress (not without embarassing sideffects though, such as the slaughter of the native Americans). That entire new era of our civilization though, was based on a single fact: the experimental proof of astronomical theories which dated back from ancient Greece to Copernicus, and asserted that the surface of the Earth isn't flat, but curved, forming a nearly spherical shape. That intellectual leap faced hard opposition from common intuition, because it required the stunning realization that we live on a planetary surface, embeded into three, rather than two spatial dimensions. Later on, the exploration of the Oceans forced navigators and cartographers, for the purpose of mapping the islands and continents of our planet, to abandon the use of flat Euclidean geometry, and adopt the Riemannian geometry of curved spaces.

Today, modern theories of physics assert that, not only the Earth's surface, but the entire Universe is curved and embeded inside a higher dimensional spacetime. They assert that our cosmos may be far more complex and bewildering, than we ever imagined, consisting not only of 4, but perhaps 11 spacetime dimensions. Can you imagine what the implications of the discovery of such extra spatial dimensions would be? Perhaps a new era would begin for our civilization: "The Era of Dimensional Exploration" or something like that. Do you imagine the effects of such a discovery in technology, economy, or even art? Exploring the geography of the extra dimensions, and learning to use their spectacular properties for our benefit, might even solve the energy problem, and help us travel with superluminal velocities to the edges of the Universe (that is, if our civilation won't selfdestruct during the next 50 critical years). That's why I consider researchers like Maria Spiropulu, not only as succesors to Marie Curie, but also succesors to Columbus, Magelanus, Gagarin and Armstrong. They will propably be the "navigators" who will lead the way, through the dark, unexplored "ocean" of extra dimensions. Omnium 1 January 2006

Imagine you were back in the early 20th century, and the world was deprived of a Wikipedia with an article on René-Prosper Blondlot, highly important at the time because of his brand-new discovery of N-rays. Good thing as it turns out, because within a few years, N-rays were generally held to be a discredited phenomenon. On the other hand, we know about Marie Curie today because she played an undeniably central role in an objectively significant discovery. Without making any judgment of Spiropulu's overall body of work, there are few who would claim she has played an historically significant role in the development of theories or experimental signatures of extra dimensions in particle physics. This article will likely seem quite out of place with a little historical perspective.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.88.174 (talk) 18:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC) 

Inaccurate Comments?

I have questions regarding two passages in this biography:

One of the most important moments of her career, was when the CDF collaboration reported the discovery of the top quark in 1995.

Was she actually involved in the discovery of the top quark? Although she is on the author list for the paper, it would be more informative if the article provided either more detail of her involvement (especially a reference) or that this sentence was removed.

Throughout her career she has maintained an enthusiasm, which allows her to look at things each day from a different perspective, through a student-like approach on her object of research. She encourages students to “bug” teachers, never stop asking them questions until they get the answer, even though that means that she might also be “bugged” in such a manner, from time to time. That’s one of the greatest virtues, a scientist can have.

This is hardly NPOV, and contains what could only very loosely be described as biographical detail. --Jollygreengiant 21:52, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Name spelling

The name should be spelt SPIROPOULOU. Is there any reason for the current version? Politis 13:52, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there is. Maria is worldwide known as "Spiropulu". Her papers bare this name. So, it will be difficult to search for her work and publications without this in mind. Spiropoulou is not an uncommon name in Greek, while the Spiropulu spelling clearly distinguishes from it. Energon 17:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Inspiration

Maria you're an inspiration to us all! (A postgraduate Aristotle University Student)

Major Revisions Needed

This article has been written from a personal and biased point of view, and is in need of major revision. The original author, Omnium, is clearly not well-versed in the field of high energy particle physics, as exemplified by his attribution of essentially the whole of modern particle physics to Professor Spiropulu. Omnium is also entirely incorrect about the rarity of scientists searching for extra dimensions and supersymmetry; these are decades-old ideas that many hundreds of people are searching for, and while Spiropulu has done important work in the field, they are incremental advances, not foundational. With absolute respect to Dr. Spiropulu, it seems to me that her accomplishments are good, but not particularly noteworthy over any faculty member at a major research institution; her publications, awards, and contributions are essentially prerequisite to become a Caltech professor. Quantities like citations and H index are inapplicable to experiments like CDF (~500 members) and CMS (~3,000 members); every author is listed on every paper, resulting in every member's name appearing on hundreds of papers per year. As a member of CMS, she has held intra-collaboration level leadership positions, such as convener of the supersymmetry group, but there are many other such conveners that do not have Wikipedia entries (the convenerships rotate on a time scale of 1-3 years, usually with two conveners at any time, and there are several such groups, such as the Higgs group, Standard Model group, or Exotics; hence there are several dozen conveners of equal "stature"). Her most significant award, the AAAS Fellowship, was awarded to 701 scientists this year alone; is this prestigious enough to justify academic notability?

I will start by removing insignificant biographical tidbits, and rewording the article into a style more appropriate for a scientific biography (i.e., it's not a timeline of her life; focus on her academic history and accomplishments). The inclusion of many personal details about Dr. Spiropulu's life, such as wanting to be a pilot as a child or being in a band, are irrelevant, unimportant, and inappropriate for a biography about a physicist. Again, however, the notability of this person really does need to be reconsidered. The references provided do not demonstrate any particular notability; a "fan appreciation society" and Spiropulu's own professional biographical page certainly do not. The only reference of which Spiropulu herself is the subject is the NYTimes article by Dennis Overbye. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DryRun (talk • contribs) 23:13, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Here is a summary of my revisions:

1. Removed the fan appreciation page from the external links. In addition to being a poor-quality website, it's, well, kind of creepy.

2. Removed the list of Spiropulu's publications. I added a reference to Spiropulu's personal website at Caltech; this article is not a place to copy-and-paste her resume.

3. Removed insignificant biographical details: undergraduate research history (not notable), details unrelated to physics (martial arts, being in a band, the things she wanted to be when she was a child).

4. I was unable to find the actual paper in which "she reported, along with Kevin Burkett of Harvard, that any extra-dimensions, if they exist, must be curled up into circles smaller than a hundredth of an inch" on CDF's list of publications (http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/preprints/index.html). This quote comes from Dennis Overbye's little write-up on Spiropulu, but the original paper should be referenced here. Additionally, this sentence makes a common error that regularly pisses off high energy physicists: the result is the work of a 500-person collaboration, not Spiropulu and Burkett, and should be cited accordingly. To do otherwise disrespects the contributions of everyone else on the collaboration.

5. I removed parts of the article that generally describe aspects of high energy physics. Supersymmetry, extra dimensions, and the LHC having four times as much energy as the Tevatron are topics of general knowledge, and would perhaps be appropriate as part of a dedicated section on the topics of her research. However, this gets back to the notability issue: if one describes her research, it should demonstrate personal notability, as opposed to being a member of a 3,000-person collaboration and one of 10,000 people working on high energy physics at CERN. DryRun (talk) 00:39, 10 March 2013 (UTC)DryRun

Notable

Wikipedia:Notability (academics) makes this an easy call, by stating: "Academics/professors meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable." And then, under condition 3: "...a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE)." Spiropulu was elected Fellow of the AAAS in 2008, and the article has a direct link to the AAAS News Archive showing this. I am pretty sure that the AAAS is a major scholarly society, and IEEE elects about 300 Fellows a year, so AAAS numbers are comparable. Jlykken (talk) 21:50, 30 March 2013 (UTC)