Talk:John Westley (biochemist)

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Because of the name conflict there is currently no directly available list of his publications to verify notability. In addition, there is not proof of his position, or that he even got a PhD or had any awards to confer notability. We need this information with proper, independent sourcing. Otherwise his notability becomes very unclear.

Ldm1954 (talk) 07:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm very well aware of these shortcomings, and because of them I dragged my feet for months before posting the article after someone suggested to me (anonymously, from an IP address) that there ought to be an article about him. On the whole I'm not keen on following up anonymous suggestions, but in this case it seemed legitimate. I certainly agreed that he was an important enough figure for an article, but I knew almost nothing of him as a person. Efforts to find this information yielded nothing, other than his date of birth as given in his book.

I decided that the best thing was to write the article and see what response it got. I have managed to find an email address for just one çf his former coauthors: I wrote to her, an active professor at the University of Chicago, yesterday, too recently to expect an answer just yet. I'm hoping she can point me towards some suitable sources. There must be records of his existence at the University of Chicago, but their public website is very unhelpful.

I'm surprised, however, that you are sceptical about Westley's public record, which is readily available from, for example, Google Scholar and Web of Sciences. Surely these are independent and reliable sources? Which other John Westleys at the University of Chicago have published papers on enzymes?

I'm also surprised at your mention of an "name conflict": what name conflict? No one is going to think that his scientific publications were the work of an 18th century theologian with a similar (but different) name. The only other John Westley I could find proved to be a typographical error for another John Wesley, an actor.

Athel cb (talk) 08:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I recognize the problem, which I only tagged mildly as needing citations; the page felt genuine as it had little fluff and no peacock. When I searched "John Wesley" on Google I don't find him quickly, instead there is Ldm1954 (talk) 09:25, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

My response somehow got cut, to continue: I suggest contacting the UC librarian. Librarians like finding things, and a few times at different places they have dug things up for me. Good luck, I know how hard this can be. Ldm1954 (talk) 09:27, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

https://academictree.org/chemistry/peopleinfo.php?pid=732845

His full name might be "John Leonard Westley". From https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1954/annualreports/ar_1954_appendix4.pdf he received a NSF Grad fellowship to work in Denver in 1954, and from https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22John+Leonard+Westley%22 he was on the UC fencing team 1948-49. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:38, 6 December 2024 (UTC)