Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kiichiro Hurukawa

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. In this debate the arguments for deletion appear very weak in comparison to the keeps, and as such, this is being closed as keep. (X! · talk) · @081 · 00:56, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kiichiro Hurukawa

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There are thousands of asteroids named for people and it is WP:SYN to say he is prolific by looking at one list of people. MBisanz ^talk 04:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. — Gongshow ^Talk 04:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. — Gongshow ^Talk 04:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom, this individual lacks non-trivial coverage from reliable third parties. JBsupreme (talk) 08:58, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: The Italian version of this article has a more complete list of his accomplishments. It does not, however, provide any context for them, making it a bit thin even by stub standards. —Quasirandom (talk) 14:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - the man has spent a large portion of his career advancing science and astronomy. That seems worthy of a short blurb in the hallowed halls of Wikipedia. Raymondwinn (talk) 07:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But where are the sources that discuss his advancements? MBisanz ^talk 07:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or merge. The deletion rationale sets up false premises for the discussion. People are of course not notable for having an asteroid named for them, they have asteroids named for them as a recognition of achievements, contributions, etc, i.e. because they quite likely are notable within a society of sorts. The bold statement that there are "thousands of asteroids" named for people, needs a source, I think it is merely an empty statement supporting a weak rationale. Just found a list found List of minor planets named after people (there are less than 800) - Kiichiro is absolutely good company there. It was painstaking work to discover asteroids in the old days, before CCDs and image software, meticuoulsy examining photographic plates for the most minute faint stripes. The examples below clearly demonstrate that naming can be a special recognition by that (admittedly highly specialist) scientific society - it is also obvious that asteroids are not named after the discoverer (possbily different story with comets e.g. SL9). This implies that he is notable .
- (3220) Murayama = 1951 WF. Discovered 1951 Nov. 22 by M. Laugier at Nice. Named in honor of Sadao Murayama, observer of Mars, authority on meteorites, and director of the earth-science section of the National Science Museum, at Ueno Park, Tokyo.
- (3295) Murakami = 1950 DH. Discovered 1950 Feb. 17 by K. Reinmuth at Heidelberg. Named in memory of Tadayoshi Murakami (1907-1985), professor of astronomy at the Hiroshima University, president of the Hiroshima Jogakuin College. He studied meteors extensively and encouraged many meteor observers in Japan. He contributed much to the teaching and popularization of astronomy in Japan, not only by lecturing at universities, but also by writing many books and articles over a period of fifty years. His father, Harutaro Murakami, studied lunar theory and is known for his work ’Theory of the Perturbation of the Moon’.
- and now our fellow (3425) Hurukawa = 1929 BD. Discovered 1929 Jan. 29 by K. Reinmuth at Heidelberg. Named in honor of Kiichiro Hurukawa, astronomer at the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory, known for his identifications and orbit computations and for his participation in the observational program of minor planets with the Kiso Schmidt. Source [1]

The fellow is Japanese, so we have the usual WP:BIAS issues and inevitable problems with transliterations of foreign names. Alternative spelling in kunrei-shiki is Kiitiro Hurukawa. Gbooks returns 7 hits for the first "Kiichiro Hurukawa", 20 for the second "Kiitiro Hurukawa", and I wounder if "Iichiro Hurukawa" would also be possible. No doubt, the best search parameter is 古川麒一郎, which returns 624 Gbooks hits, I have no idea of Gbook's coverage of Japanese texts, but it sure indicates notability to me. Sifting though a simple Gsearch for the name in Japanese identifies this ref [2] the Gtranslate version, under "science committee", the name is now Ichiro Furukawa (!!!) - and he is a professor in Tokyo. WP:PROF may therefore apply. Applying common sense however, would say that a Japanese fellow with an international profile as indicated by English Gbook hits is likely to be included in an encyclopedia there - and that we should allow WP:WikiProject Japan time to sort that out. Unfortunately the few people over there are busy, there is currently a frenzy sourcing BLPs by the hundreds, but I have posted a note. This little research took me more than a good hour, that's very likely 60-fold the time it took to nominate it.[3] We will probably see more AfD nominations of other asteroid discoveres, so to cut along story short I suggest to merge the information into List of discoveres of asteroids with a redirect - an option the nominee should have considered out of respect for WP:PRESERVE. Power.corrupts (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article was deleted and restored, if I had redirected it, that could have been seen as an attempt to make an end run around the deletion process by eliminating an article which at least one other person felt should be restored. MBisanz ^talk 15:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see no indication that this article was deleted and restored. 1) Are you referring to a renegade and out of process deletion orchestrared by user:Scott MacDonald et al. about 20 Jan 2010, not visible to non-admins? If so, why did you feel compelled to renominate for AfD after being sourced by user:DESiegel on the 22Jan 2010? 2) Which redirect target were you thinking of?, again I see no hint. Power.corrupts (talk) 21:43, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is visible to anyone here. I was thinking of 3425 Hurukawa as a good target. MBisanz ^talk 22:21, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to go AfD for a merge proposal. I assumed that your AfD nomination meant that you wanted the article deleted, but your rationale doesn't say so explicitly of course. I read it as a WP:N concern, and so did JBSupreme. A merge with no loss of information is merely window dressing, a technical and bureaucratic tweak, to have an entirely harmless BLP appear as a non-BLP, just to have the count down by one - to me it appears that the tail is wagging the dog. Articles are not deleted for being stubs, and I believe there is potential for an article like Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth, the Italian version of the article is moving in that direction, but we need an interested Japanese-speaking editor to penetrate the sources in that language. Power.corrupts (talk) 08:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I agree that although one does not necessarily become notable for discovering one asteroid, one does for discovering a large numer, 49 in this case according to the itWP article--I added them. We do not have to use our own opinion, for him it is shown by having an asteroid named for him--an asteroid he did not discover, named for him by a very distinguished astronomer. I think that shows recognition by the profession, and meets WP:PROF. DGG ( talk ) 06:53, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.