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The edit replacing Atiyah's upbringing in the Sudan, by Cairo-Egypt - the Sudan is where he himself said he was mostly brought up, and learned Arabic at school, in a recent newspaper interview. Charles Matthews 11:56, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Does not belong in the category of top-priority mathematics articles. No historical article does, only substantives ones. Even as regards history of mathematics, the priority of any living person, which should depend on the significance of their role in the development of the field, should be inferior to that of historically prior persons, whose lasting contributions are more clear. Aminorex 14:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Controversy

Professor C.K. Raju, an Indian physicist charged Atiyah of plagiarizing or claiming inappropriate credit to some of his previously published ideas. After ascertaining from three independent experts, that the complaint is valid, Society for Scientific Values (SSV) contacted Atiyah for his views. Atiyah wrote to SSV that while he has not published anything on the subject under question, he had lectured on the subject without being aware of Raju's publications. Now that he is aware of them, he assured that he would certainly cite them if and when he publishes something on the subject. SSV being aware of a prima-facie case of plagariasm has since placed the views of the two parties on the SSV website. This section was removed by user"fowler" without giving any valid reason. Please note that this issue (plagiarizing" has been peer reviewed by a Society for Scientific Values ( hence WP:RS) and thus and entirely valid edit. This is also keeping with BLP since the view of Atiyah is also stated in the section. I would request User:fowler to re-instate the deleted paragraph.-Bharatveer (talk) 05:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)-Bharatveer (talk) 05:10, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I have re-added the case with elaboration of charges as well as required references.-Bharatveer (talk) 07:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid, it doesn't established plagiarism by a long shot. Atiyah is a famous mathematician who gives many talks. The field of retarded differential equations and the origin of quantum mechanics has many contributors; Raju is not the only one, and his contributions are in physics journals, not in mathematics ones. Most likely, Atiyah read one of the papers in the mathematics journals, such as: Template:Harvard reference That paper references two papers by Raju, but they are only two of 39. In addition, that papers mentions Raju nowhere by name, although it does mention many others. Here is an example:

"In the last years many papers, in particular of ’t Hooft , , and , have described a possible way out from some of the mysterious features of quantum mechanics.... In this way, towards the end of eighties, the fractal space-time physics and the theory of the scale relativity was introduced by Ord , Svozil , Nottale and El Naschie , all of them independently but based on the original objections of A. Einstein and D. Bohm, as well as a fractal space-filling curve proposal by Feynman, see ."

Raju, in contrast, is mentioned by number: "The physical consequences of these differences are explained at length in ." Michael Atiyah is one of great mathematicians of the last 50 years; his work on K-Theory with F. Hirzebruch, on the simple solution of the Hopf Invariant One problem with Frank Adams, on the Index Theorem for Elliptic Operators with I.M. Singer and Graeme Segal, on the Lefschetz Fixed Point Formulas with Raoul Bott, on Heat Equation Methods in Index Theory with Vijay Kumar Patodi, and on Gauge-field theory and the Topology of 4-manifolds with Simon Donaldson, Frances Kirwan and Nigel Hitchin is head and shoulders above any future "fame" he likely to gain by "plagiarizing," at the age of 79, the work of a little-known physicist, C. K. Raju. Besides Atiyah has a long history of collaboration with Indian mathematicians, including M. S. Narasimhan and C. S. Seshadri (in addition to Patodi).

Finally, there is no truth to the statement that Atiyah refused to acknowledge Raju's contribution in later published work. The letter to the editor, received Dec 26, 2006 (Notices of the AMS, 2007), (page 2), written by the organizers of Atiyah's talk in Lincoln, already advertises, with Atiyah's approval, some papers of Raju. There is no reason why this page should provide publicity for an uncertain accusation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

And what controversy are we talking about? A Google Advanced Search on "C. K. Raju" and "Michael Atiyah" turns up 16 sites, of which only 12 are relevant; of these, except for the AMS Notices letter mentioned above, all are dubious Indian blog sites, including C. K. Raju's. If you add "controversy" to the search, then only four websites turn up, all Indian blog sites. I note too that not a single mathematician or physicist of repute in India, such as the ones at the Tata Institute in Bombay or the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, has said anything even remotely in support of Raju's claim.

C. K. Raju incidentally is the same nutjob who has been claiming that calculus was invented in India and, through Jesuit contacts, made its way to Europe, where Newton and Leibniz, both "discovered it" and suppressed the evidence of the transmission! I've already dealt with this stuff on the Indian mathematics page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

User:Fowler is requested to restrict his "nutjob"reference to himself. The controversy sections says that an INDEPENDENT Scientific community Society for Scientific Values (SSV) , after PEER REVIEW found out that this plagiarism charge had substance. They placed this case in their official website under Section Cases of misconduct investigated by SSV.Please see

http://www.scientificvalues.org/cases.html .Now User:fowler , please tell me who elevated you to the post of JUDGE in this case and what is your eligibilty.

The Question here is this , under what section of WP rules is this being deleted? It cannot be, in any case due to WP:RS, since this is directly taken from an OFFICIAL website of an INDEPENDENT scientific community and they themselves have had this case PEER REVIEWED.-Bharatveer (talk) 12:41, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Raju, incidentally, has a history of accusing prominent people of plagiarism. Not content with only Atiyah, Newton, and Leibniz in his list, here he is talking about Einstein: "Many scholars before me have questioned Einstein's understanding of the theory of relativity and I would also say that whether Einstein copied the idea from somebody else belonging to that era is a serious probability," says Raju... Relaxing at his favourite joint, the Triveni Kala Sangam canteen, the Head of Centre for Computer Science, MCRP University, Bhopal, calls Einstein "a habitual plagiarist," often accompanied by a fervent turning of pages to exact paragraphs that hold his arguments." From The Hindu newspaper, 2003. Should we also have little sections on Raju in the Newton, Leibniz, and Einstein pages? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:13, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I love this! Apparently, he has also been accusing his fellow-theorists of the "Calculus originated in Kerala" school, George Joseph and Dennis Almeida, of plagiarism! From Little India News: "However, C K Raju, a fellow at the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture, who claims he once collaborated with Almeida, told the Hindu that he made the discovery (that Calculus originated in Kerala) and the two British researchers gained access to his unpublished work during the course of his collaboration with them." (Joseph and Almeida are both from Kerala!) According to the same report, "Joseph denounced the plagiarism allegations as an effort at 'seeking publicity.'" This is getting to be fun! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

And here is a fatuous post by C. K. Raju, where he is repeats tired news, known since the 1930s, when John Maynard Keynes stumbled upon Newton's papers in a Cambridge bookshop, but adds a conspiracy angle, that modern scholars are trying to suppress publication of Newton's hidden manuscripts. The post brought this reponse from the normally mild D. T. Whiteside, late Professor of the History of Mathematics and Exact Sciences at Cambridge, and the author of the 8 volume, Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:17, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Whatever User;Fowler would like to believe. C.K.Raju does not merely "accuse" he has written books to establish his theories. It is indeed very very interesting to know that DENNIS ALMEIDA had to resign from his university job after raju raised his charges. -Bharatveer (talk) 12:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Really? He had to resign? The website of Exeter University's Department of Education (as of July 21, 2008) lists him on the staff. Go to the bottom of the page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:53, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) This material has no place in Atiyah's biography. He is simply one of the most respected living mathematicians in the world and is not surrounded by controversy. The added content was original research and WP:SYNTH. Similar fringe attacks have been made on the page of Edward Witten because of his work on string theory. When Atiyah lectures on his recent work with Gregory Moore of Rutgers (I heard him at the IHES during Alain Connes' 60th birthday celebrations last year), he quite openly admits that it is speculative and possibly wrong in parts: now that he has retired, he says he no longer has to worry anout getting tenure :-) Mathsci (talk) 08:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

User:Mathsci , Can you please explain why this material has no place in biography. This plagiarism charge is as per WP:RS , since this is coming from an INDEPENDENT PEER RIEWED scientific community. It is strange to hear from you that the content added was WP:OR & WP:SYNTH. Can you please explain???-Bharatveer (talk) 12:54, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

P.S. F & F, "Uncle Tom" was the editor of Newton's Mathematical Papers. Somebody else had already done the writing. :-) Mathsci (talk) 08:59, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Mathsci, Thanks for the correction! That was a slip. :) I do know that he was the editor. I haven't actually taken a look at the eight volumes, but know about them only through R. S. Westfall's Never at Rest, and S. Chandrasekhar's Newton's Principia for the Common Reader. The slip may have been a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that "editing" works like that, which involves annotation and interpretation, is a monumental task, similar to Piero Sraffa and Morris Dobb's editing of David Ricardo, and is in many ways a work of critical authorship. Thanks for your clear and supportive post! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:18, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler has a point here. Are we supposed to mention Raju on other scientist's pages as well?? WP:UNDUE wins this case. Yeah we can surely have this in Raju's article. KnowledgeHegemonyPart2 16:20, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

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