Talk:George Gamow

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To Ortolan88

May I put the whole Gamow's bibliography in the wikipedia from your x-ref? It would be quite interesting after all to add some links on the titles of his works. I've made this (in fact just a fairly assortment) of the work of Janez Strnad. I do believe that such listings tell us some stories too. What do you think? -- XJamRastafire 08:56 Aug 22, 2002 (PDT)

Well, it's fabulous, but it's not my bibliography. I just Googled it up. There's an ongoing discussion on the Wikipedia-L mailing list about reusing material and crediting it and so forth. The gist of the discussion seems to be to get permission from the person who compiled it and give them credit when using it. You'd also have to mark it up, etc. If you were on the mailing list, you could ask their opinion. Otherwise, respond here and I'll raise it. Ortolan88

When was Odessa moved from Russia to Ukraine? AFAIK it's always been in Ukraine, the only difference is that Ukraine was in the Soviet Union, and now it isn't. -phma

I modified the text to say that Odessa was then part of the Russian Empire, which hopefully clears things up. The Ukrainian-ness of the city in the past can be debated, but that's another story... --Iceager 05:22, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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I marked this article as a stub. There is a lot of room for improvement here. Cema 09:25, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Someone needs to discuss Gamow's prediction of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, perhpas his most important contribution to cosmology.

Question About Infinities

I read Gamow's book on the mathematics of infinity when I was in high school. There is a point that still bothers me, decades later. Maybe somebody here can help. I "get" the diagonal proof that the infinite number of real numbers is higher than the infinite number of integers. I also understand that there is a third order of infinity: the number of ways you can draw a curve is apparently higher than either of the others. But IIRC Gamow seemed to leave open the possibility that there were even higher orders of infinity yet to be proven to be such. Thus my question. A lot of time has passed since he wrote the book. Have there been any further orders of infinity discovered or is the number stuck at three? --Christofurio (talk) 11:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

From memory Gamow was referring to the work of Georg Cantor, see Cardinal number#History which includes the paragraph:

Cantor also developed a large portion of the general theory of cardinal numbers; he proved that there is a smallest transfinite cardinal number ($\aleph _{0}$, aleph-null), and that for every cardinal number there is a next-larger cardinal $(\aleph _{1},\aleph _{2},\aleph _{3},\ldots ).$

This would indicate that there is an infinite sequence of "orders of infinity". I think the first three were just the ones for which Gamow gave simple explanations. Dirac66 (talk) 16:01, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Fred Hoyle's Professor Gamma

Dmoskovich, I am removing the section that says Hoyle's Professor Gamma was inspired by George Gamow. Putting it back with a citation needed tag isn't enough. When challenged it is up to the editor adding the material to provide a reliable source. See WP:UNSOURCED. "Self-evident" isn't enough for material to be in Wikipedia.

Gamow and Hoyle both worked on nucleogenesis, but they were not collaborators. They were on opposite sides of the big bang vs steady state universe controversy. Hoyle never accepted the big bang. Gamow's αβγ paper argued that all the elements were created in the first moments of the big bang. Gamow was wrong, and it was Hoyle who showed how stars and not the big bang could create the elements beyond helium. Carbon had to be able to be built up in the triple alpha process to get beyond the instability of lighter elements. Hoyle calculated that was possible only if carbon 12 had an excited state at 7.68 MeV, the so-called Hoyle state. While at Cal Tech he convinced William Fowler to have the Kellog Lab group look for it. The state exists, and once in about 2500 times, instead of breaking up into the smaller nuclei it emits two gamma rays and ends up in the stable ground state of carbon 12.

In 1965 Gamow made fun of Hoyle's steady state ideas in his popular Mr Tompkins series. Hoyle appears in an opera (materializing out of empty space) in Mr Tompkins in Paperback. It is possible Hoyle had Gamow in mind in the Professor Gamma series and was making fun of him. Or he was thinking of his own nucleosynthesis work. In any case a source is needed. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Was he a Ukrainian originally?

He was born in the Russian Empire (short: Russia). He worked in Leningrad, Soviet Union. So what makes him a Ukrainian-American physicist? Just that that he was born in the city which is now in Ukraine? It's kind of not enough. I don't see Trotsky called a Ukrainian Marxist in Wikipedia, despite Trotsky being born in what is now Ukraine. Alexxzz123 (talk) 20:11, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this is a bit inconsistent throughout Wikipedia. What makes a person Soviet but not Ukrainian or not Russian? In the case of Gamow, Ukrainian language and people existed during Russian Empire while ethnicity of a person not always matches with the ruling people. So, if there is a written evidence or reliable resource saying that he was Ukranian, this should be fairly reflected in the article. 2001:16B8:6652:8800:8C6D:FC06:54D:A5AB (talk) 23:51, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

'Gamow' is the wrong spelling

Gamow (adopted by himself when he got out of USSR) is the wrong Latin spelling of his original name Гамов. Гамов is transliterated as GAMOV. Gamow is the German or Danish spelling because in those languages -V is read -F and -W is read -V. He adopted 'Gamow' when he lived in Germany and Denmark, but when he moved to the USA he didn't bother to adopt the correct spelling of his original name, Gamov. Some English speakers mispronounce 'Gamow' as Gam-'hau'. — AnnaBruta (talk) 15:24, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

We probably need to include the pronunciation as many sites do. Wikipedia Commons and the article about him at George Washington University use George Gamow (pronounced "GAM-off").

References

StarryGrandma (talk) 20:06, 27 March 2022 (UTC)