Talk:Stillman Drake

Untitled

Our own User:Dandrake is son of Stillman Drake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ancheta Wis (talk • contribs) 20:57, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Title

I don't understand the title. Why two names?--Jonpro 05:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Does anybody understand what this query was supposed to mean? I mean, like most of us have 2 or three names, unlike e.g., Suharto and other prominent people of Indonesia. Dandrake (talk) 12:24, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

An improved version of what I said: perhaps the question is why two surnames? Answer: Because that was his name. Actually his birth name was Bryant Stillman Drake, three surnames together. Why that? Because that was his father's name! (I don't think he ever used a Junior.) BTW there are still some people with the surname of Stillman, but I've never pinned one down to ask where they came from and what was their geneology. ~2026-24583-78 (talk) 05:52, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Reluctant

Stillman Drake was very reluctant to admit that Galileo could make a mistake. As a result, Drake said that Galileo's failure to recognise Neptune as a planet was due to Galileo's lack of a proper stand for his telescope. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.212.97 (talk) 13:23, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, like people were discovering new planets (in the modern sense, let us not fall into the fallacy of thinking the word has not changed in meaning in 400 years) all the time - Not. BTW as an amatateur student of Galileo's work, I have never heard of this "lack of a proper stand" thing. Can we put a Citation Needed notation in a comment like this? Dandrake (talk) 12:32, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

See "Galileo's observations of Neptune", Charles T. Kowal and Stillman Drake, Nature, 287, 311-313, (1980). — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-25541-25 (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

It might be the case that you have to pay £29.95 to read the whole article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeneralRelativity888 (talk • contribs) 10:47, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

1957

Stillman Drake's 1957 book omits passages that put Galileo in a poor scientific light. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.11.103 (talk) 14:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[Citation needed] are there any standards whatsoever for the mainenanance of comments, or is Wikipedia just an extension of the Internet's gladiatorial combat?

Dandrake (talk) 12:42, 25 December 2025 (UTC)dandrake

No citation is needed. Reading the book already mentioned will confirm the remarks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeneralRelativity888 (talk • contribs) 10:55, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Koyre

The work of Koyre which you need to cite is: Koyre, A., An Experiment in Measurement, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1953), 97:222-237 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.28.255.67 (talk) 13:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

1967

Mary P. Winsor said that Stillman Drake was given a job at the University of Toronto in 1967 by his friend John Abrams. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.84.67.159 (talk) 12:14, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Big freaking surprise. So what? BTW Johnny Abrams (as Stillman called him) was a significant scholar in his own right, and arguably deserves his own Wikipedia entry. Is anyone in Toronto game for this? Dandrake (talk) 12:38, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Apologies for my dyspeptic previous comment. Abrams was indeed an old friend, and when 'Johnny' had a position at Toronto, he worked to get Drake a position there, as full professor with tenure - a condtion that was a prerequisite for pulling up stakes in the financial world in San Francisco. ~2026-24583-78 (talk) 21:07, 30 April 2026 (UTC)