Dear Gerard
I am duly reprimanded .
You are quite correct .
Have a good weekend
John
Prof John R Helliwell DSc
> On 2 May 2014, at 18:16, Gerard Bricogne <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear John,
>
> What is wrong with honouring Sohnke by using his name for something
> that he first saw a point in defining, and in investigating the properties
> resulting from that definition? Why insist that we should instead replace
> his name by an adjective or a circumlocution? What would we say if someone
> outside our field asked us not to talk about a Bragg reflection, or the
> Ewald sphere, or the Laue method, but to use instead some clever adjective
> or a noun-phrase as long as the name of a Welsh village to explain what
> these mean?
>
> Again, I think we should have a bit more respect here. When there are
> simple adjectives to describe a mathematical properties, the mathematical
> vocabulary uses it (like a "normal" subgroup). However, when someone has
> seen that a definition by a conjunction of properties (i.e. something
> describable by a sentence) turns out to characterise objects that have much
> more interesting properties than just those by which they were defined, then
> they are often called by the name of the mathematician who first saw that
> there is more to them than what defines them. Examples: Coxeter groups, or
> Lie algebras, or the Leech lattice, or the Galois group of a field, the
> Cayley tree of a group ... . It is the name of the first witness to a
> mathematical phenomenon, just as we call chemical reactions by the name of
> the chemist who saw that mixing certain chemicals together led not just to a
> mixture of those chemicals.
>
> So why don't we give Sohnke what belongs to him, just as we expect
> other scientists to give to Laue, Bragg and Ewald what we think belongs to
> them? Maybe students would not be as refractory to the idea as might first
> be thought.
>
>
> With best wishes,
>
> Gerard.
>
> --
>> On Fri, May 02, 2014 at 05:42:34PM +0100, Jrh Gmail wrote:
>> Dear George
>> My student class would not find that IUCr dictionary definition helpful. What they do find helpful is to state that they cannot contain an inversion or a mirror.
>> To honour Sohnke is one thing but is it really necessary as a label? You're from Huddersfield I am from Wakefield ie let's call a spade a spade (not a 'Black and Decker').
>> Cheers
>> John
>>
>> Prof John R Helliwell DSc
>>
>>> On 2 May 2014, at 17:01, George Sheldrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> In my program documentation I usually call these 65 the Sohnke space groups, as defined by the IUCr:
>>> http://reference.iucr.org/dictionary/Sohnke_groups
>>>
>>> George
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 05/02/2014 02:35 PM, Jim Pflugrath wrote:
>>>> After all this discussion, I think that Bernhard can now lay the claim that these 65 space groups should really just be labelled the "Rupp" space groups. At least it is one word.
>>>>
>>>> Jim
>>>>
>>>> From: CCP4 bulletin board [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Bernhard Rupp [[log in to unmask]]
>>>> Sent: Friday, May 02, 2014 3:04 AM
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Confusion about space group nomenclature
>>>> ….
>>>>
>>>> Enough of this thread.
>>>>
>>>> Over and out, BR
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Prof. George M. Sheldrick FRS
>>> Dept. Structural Chemistry,
>>> University of Goettingen,
>>> Tammannstr. 4,
>>> D37077 Goettingen, Germany
>>> Tel. +49-551-39-33021 or -33068
>>> Fax. +49-551-39-22582
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