User:Bduke

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I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live and edit, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

The English Wikipedia has got 6,870,748 articles and 47,847,580 registered users.

This editor has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian on 23 October 2018.

Picture of the day Marie Curie (1867–1934) was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. Born in Warsaw, she studied in Poland until she was 24, when she moved to Paris to earn her higher degrees. In 1895, she married French physicist Pierre Curie, and in 1903 she shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and physicist Henri Becquerel for their pioneering work developing the theory of "radioactivity" – a term she coined. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. She won a second Nobel Prize in 1911, the first person to do so, for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals. She founded the Curie Institute in Paris in 1920, and the Curie Institute in Warsaw in 1932. This photograph of Curie was taken in around 1920 by French photographer Henri Manuel.Photograph credit: Henri Manuel; restored by FMSky and Bammesk Archive – More featured pictures...

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Bduke is a Yorkshireman, but now lives in Melbourne, Australia

Bduke

Editor of the Week for the week beginning August 29, 2021

Bduke has edited Wikipedia since 2005 and has been a quality administrator for many, many years. He has created 157 articles and has about 34000 edits in that time. When he recently requested his mop be retired, he displayed the type of rare integrity and mentorship that other members of the admin corps might take a lesson from.

Recognized for

long and productive service

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Born in Sheffield, England in 1939 and lived there until aged 18, and partly there while at Oxford University until aged 24. 
Has lived in Sheffield, Oxford, Reading, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Lancaster: United Kingdom,
Kano: Nigeria, Port Moresby: Papua New Guinea, Darwin and now Melbourne: Australia, 
and briefly on sabbatical leave in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, and Canberra, Australia.
Retired.
Oxford M A in Chemistry.
Oxford D Phil in Chemistry.
Open University B A in Mathematics.

Loves taking ideas like this from other users.

	Welcome to Bduke's user page
	This is a Wikipedia user page. This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.orgview_html.php?sq=Google&lang=en&q=User:Bduke.

Bduke

— Wikipedian ♂ —
Name	Bduke
Born	(1939-05-02) May 2, 1939 (age 85) Sheffield, England
Name in real life	Brian James Salter-Duke, previously just Brian James Duke
Current location	Arcare Aged Care, Carnegie, Victoria, Australia
Race	Human
Height	5' 7" (1.7m)
Hair	Mostly gone
Eyes	Blue
Family and friends
Marital status	Widowed for more than 10 years, and still thinks about Linden every day
Children	Four, plus two grand children
Education and employment
Occupation	Retired University Professor
Employer	Reading University, England; Newcastle University, England; Lancaster University, England; Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria; University of Papua New Guinea; Northern Territory University, Charles Darwin University, Australia
Education	MA(Oxon), D Phil(Oxon) in Chemistry from Oxford University and BA in Mathematics from the Open University
Primary school	Lydgate Lane Primary School, Crosspool, Sheffield
High school	King Edward VII School, Sheffield when Nathaniel L. Clapton was Head Master
College	The Queen's College, Oxford. Howard Florey was Provost in my last year. Jack Linnett was my main tutor for Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, and my supervisor for Chemistry Part II and my D. Phil. R. M. Acheson was my tutor for Organic Chemistry
Hobbies, favourites and beliefs
Hobbies	Walking and Wikipedia
Account statistics
Joined	This user has been on Wikipedia for 18 years, 9 months and 21 days. 22% This user has been a Wikipedian for 22% of their life.

I think this image explains Wikipedia more than any other image I have seen.

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
That's what we're doing." — Jimbo Wales, 2004^[1]

Bduke
Citizenship	United Kingdom  Australia

My sandbox

Talk page

At Reading, I was an Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry at Reading University. In 1963, my fondest memory is of computerizing the results of the Reading University Head of the River rowing race on the only computer at the university, which I had totally to myself on the appropriate Saturday afternoon. I was filling in for a year for someone who was on sabbatical leave and he had done this for the Reading Head for several years. As a rowing man earlier as a member of the Queen's College Boat Club at the Queen's College, Oxford, who had rowed in the Reading Head, I was delighted to do it.

At Newcastle upon Tyne I worked in Computers Services at what is now Newcastle University intending to move into computer science, but it turned out that most of my work was supporting users from the Chemistry Department which lead to collaborative work with them so I continued to do computational chemistry research, and then decided to return fully to chemistry. While there I walked Hadrian's Wall,

At Lancaster, I was a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Lancaster University. I had a term as the first Principal of County College after the building opened. Earlier, I was the first Senior Tutor in the two years when the College had students but no building. While there I added to the walks in the Lake District that I had previously done from Ennerdale Water.

At Kano I was Professor of Chemistry at Bayero University, a frequent visitor to Ahmadu Bello University at one point weekly as I taught a course there, and external examiner at Ibadan University and the University of Benin.

In Papua New Guinea I was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Papua New Guinea and a member of the Academic Board of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology.

In Darwin, Australia , I was the first Senior Lecturer in the University College of the Northern Territory which, with the Dawkins Report, was then quickly forced to merge with the Darwin Community College to form the Northern Territory University later renamed Charles Darwin University. I became an Associate Professor. Linden and I lived in Humpty Doo, 30 minute drive south from Darwin on a 2 Hectare block. The Humpty Doo Hotel, is one of the most fascinating pubs in at least Australia.

When I moved to Victoria, I lived in Spotswood, later I lived at the edge of Carnegie close to Glenhuntly, but now live in Arcare Carnegie, 47 Rosanna St, Carnegie, VIC, 3163 a care home in Carnegie. This means that others could be using the same internet access as I am.

I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands upon which I have lived, worked and shared knowledge.

Although now 85, I still take an interest in a very minor way in research in the fields of computational chemistry, theoretical chemistry, and quantum chemistry. I first started computing on a Ferranti Mercury in 1960 at Oxford University, where I gained a D. Phil., supervised by Jack Linnett, partly in computational chemistry. I had two very successful sabbatical leaves, the first with Henry F. Schaefer III at the Center for Computational Chemistry at the University of Georgia at Athens, Georgia, and the second with Charles Coulson at Oxford University, both highly successful computational chemists. I am an author of the Valence Bond program, VB2000. I continue to contribute in a minor way to Wikipedia in these areas of computational, theoretical, and quantum chemistry, along with other areas such as general chemistry topics, including chemistry journals, and chemist biographies, Australian topics, and Scouting topics. Scattered about are many userboxes, which show where I am coming from and what I am doing on Wikipedia.

I have made over 34,000 edits, including over 10,000 edits in the main article space, 156 new articles and a bunch of other stuff. For my edit count, see here. I have been less active in the last year or so, but I still check my very long watchlist usually several times every day, and make a few minor edits. This paragraph is now quite a bit out of date, so let me say, as they would in the Northern Territory of Australia where I used to live, that I have made "big mobs" of articles.

As of 29 May 2024, The English Wikipedia has over 47 million registered users, 120,065 active editors in the last month, and 859 administrators. All of these figures are lower that a few years ago. Together we have made more than 1,000,000,000 edits, created more than 55,000,000 pages of all kinds, and created more than 6,500,000 articles. That is more than 14 million edits per month (about 5.2 edits per second on average).

I became an administrator on 16 August, 2007. I am over 80 and resigned as an admin on 5 October, 2020. I intend to keep on editing WP. I am not certain that the data below is correct, as I am no longer an admin.

This user is a member of the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians. The motto of the AIW is conservata veritate, which translates to "with the preserved truth". This motto reflects the inclusionist desire to change Wikipedia only when no knowledge would be lost as a result.

If you have come here because I have reverted an edit of yours: No, I'm not part of a conspiriracy to hide "the truth." I reverted because it didn't meet a policy that Wikipedia includes. The most common policies are disruptive editing, vandalism, policies on the biographies of living persons and verifiabillity and sourcing. No, I'm not biased against you, and I could be wrong.

I have been editing Wikipedia since late 2005, and have averaged about 5 edits per day since then. I have edited over 9500 pages. It seems I am about the 3500th most active Wikipedian! It varies of course from day to day. Is it worthwhile? Yes, Wikipedia is one of the wonders of the modern world, and has made all other encyclopedia`s irrelevant. I am proud to have been a very small part of it. I have been awarded my own day, October 23!! I think I have started about 159 articles on Wikipedia.

"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice". "In theory, it can never work".

Articles I have started: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wikipedia.org/Bduke Click on "Main" to see them. Currently: 156.

Wikipedia Currently has 6,870,748 articles

I came across the poem below, which strongly resonated with me because from 1945 to 1960 as a child and later a university student, the rooks passed over my house in Sheffield in the morning to feed in the fields and then return to their rookery in the evening. I walked on a path through their rookery on the way to church and Sunday school.

Thaw
Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.
— Edward Thomas

It's really pretty simple: → Remain neutral ← → Don't be a dick ← → Ignore all rules←

@ This user can be reached by email.

This user is a Wikipedian.

I have used an alternative account, User:Bduke second account, when I was on a less secure computer, but not recently and I doubt that I will ever use it again. Note that Bduke2 is not me. I confirm I am Bduke on IRC. I have an account on Scoutwiki, where I am also User:Bduke, and I have moved some material from here that is more appropriate there. I have not been active there recently and, indeed, Scoutwiki seems to have been almost dead for many years, but there has been some edits in 2024. It was always bound to be fairly unreliable, while Scouting topics on Wikipedia will just have very many more readers and editors and be more reliable.