Talk:Guillaume Le Gentil

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Untitled

Is his life really widely considered to be "tragicomic"? The way the article is written is comical, but if written slightly differently, it could've been a complete suffering with no humour. Is it POV?

Well, I guess the fact that he missed something so rare is kinda sad and hilarious. We all have that kind of experience. --Menchi 09:59, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

OK, "unfortunate".

It might be even worse. His date of death was in 1792, smack in the middle of the French Revolution. I wonder if he got guillotined or something. Time for more research. -- Curps 10:24, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

He died at home, peacefully. The Reign of Terror, and the persecution and harrassment of the French nobility, didn't start in earnest until 1793. user:Jsc1973

Portrait

Note that the portrait currently linked to Guillaume le Gentil is actually the portrait of Guillaume de l'Hopital AstroLynx (talk) 14:28, 29 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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There is a Crater on the moon named after him.

I'm not sure if it belongs in a little section afterwards, or what. Maybe I'm not just seeing it, but there is doesn't seem to be any mention of the eponymous crater.

If someone would like to include some reference to him, it would be appreciated. Or I might just add it if I think of a way to word it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Gentil_(crater) Mechachleopteryx (talk) 23:21, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how to edit this talk page, but I meant to say "some reference to this fact" not "some reference to him" Mechachleopteryx (talk) 23:26, 13 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mechachleopteryx: Done. By the way, the best way to edit the talk page is to do what you did, and post another comment saying what you meant. The second best way is to ~~strike the original~~, and correct it that way. Either is acceptable as a way to preserve the original talk page history. Renerpho (talk) 04:39, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Letters

The article states: Due to shipwrecks and wartime attacks on ships, none of the letters he had sent to the Academy or to his relatives had reached their destinations. However, Le Gentil himself wrote of a letter he had sent to France in 1766, and the reply he received in 1767 (Sawyer Hogg, p.89-90). The Academy had discussed Le Gentil's plan to observe the 1769 transit from Manila, found it ill-advised, and suggested in their letter to instead go to Pondicherry. Renerpho (talk) 00:48, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of unsourced (but possibly true) material

@Henri de regnier: I appreciate that you are trying to remove what may well be false information. Unfortunately, as I explained in my edit summaries here and here, the material you are trying to add is in conflict with reliable sources, and the references you were using (geneanet, archive.wikiwix.com) are not suitable as sources on Wikipedia. Before reverting it a third time, and running the risk of escalating this to an edit war, please discuss the material you want to add. If you are unable to find suitable sources, ask for help at the relevant Wiki Projects, listed at the top of this talk page. Thank you. Renerpho (talk) 18:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A translation of the marriage record (p.1, p.2, p.3) may be useful, to see if the problem is actually as claimed. Of course we still need a secondary, reliably published source, that mentions the error. If no such publication exists yet then the correct step would be to create it, and then come back here (not the other way around). If the fact is relevant enough to be in a Wikipedia article then finding a trusted publisher should not be too difficult. Good luck! Renerpho (talk) 01:44, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Swedish Wikipedia article (marked as a featured article on that project) contains a lot more details about le Gentil, including his family.[1] Maybe that article and the sources linked to from there (mainly Sawyer Hogg's book; compare the talk page section about his letters) can help resolve the issue. Renerpho (talk) 03:42, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Birth date

@RowanElder: Thanks for your latest edit, most of which is great!

I have a question about the birth date. The previous version was based on Serge Jodra's Dictionnaire Biographique from 2004, which is available online,[2] and is what the French Wikipedia is using. Considering that there are two different dates floating around (11 September 1725 and 12 September 1725), why should we prefer the one source that goes with the 11th?

There is a plethora of reliable sources that say he was born on the 12th. Examples include the Linda Hall Library[3], Springer's Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers[4], and most importantly, Jean-Dominique Cassini's Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des science et à celle de l'Observatoire royal de Paris from 1810[5]. There are reliable sources for the 11th as well, like Inventaire Condorcet [6] and Quérard's La France littéraire from 1833[7]. Unless we find a scholarly biography of La Gentil that goes back to the primary sources and tries to answer which date is correct (like what we saw with Wilhelm Busch), there's no way to tell who is right.

Considering that the inconsistency dates back to at least the early 19th century, I don't think we should prefer either date. How about "born on 11 or 12 September 1725", followed by the two 19th-century books, and a note that explains that both dates appear in reliable sources? Renerpho (talk) 18:43, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other early sources that give September 12th include Delambre's Histoire de l'astronomie au dix-huitième siècle from 1827,[8] and the 1834 edition of the complete works of Voltaire.[9]

For September 11th, there would be Joseph Jerome Le Francois de La-Lande's Bibliographie astronomique avec l'histoire de l'astronomie depuis 1781-1802[10] from 1803, and the 1797 edition of Connaissance des temps by the Bureau des longitudes[11].

There might be more, and earlier ones for either date, but those are the ones I can find. Renerpho (talk) 19:13, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, great! I wondered where the 12th had come from, since I didn't see the inline source for it and the other existing inline sources for other claims that I checked had also said the 11th.

I think the solution of putting both is excellent. That'll inform readers well. I do not have a reason to prefer the source I added. I simply came here as part of the ditch-digging backlog work of giving an inline citation for each of the deaths on the English Wikipedia's October 22 page, then got interested in more of his story through its picaresque echoes with Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. RowanElder (talk) 23:59, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@RowanElder: You fell into a rabbit hole. I know the feeling :)

Thanks for helping to clean up! As you mention date articles, I've now removed Guillaume Le Gentil from September 12;[12] see also Talk:September 12#Guillaume Le Gentil. Renerpho (talk) 00:33, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you also, both for the sources for the 12th and for this follow-up on September 12 now. RowanElder (talk) 01:22, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]