Donna Strickland, one of this year's Nobel Laureates, was not considered "notable enough" for Wikipedia as late as this May—reported by a number of sites, including the Independent. I dug into this a little. Here's the data—
This is the first deletion, back in 2014. A bit hard to read between the lines, but the basic story that an admin had Stickland's page "speedy deleted"—i.e., deleted without debate. The method was something called Copyright Jujitsu.
In particular, the admin had the page deleted not because of notability, but because it included a photograph of Strickland that had ambiguous copyright status. This is a method that people developed to get rid of content they didn't want, but also didn't want to debate.
"Copyright Jujitsu" because it is usually used against spam from companies; a PR officer uploads promotional material to Wikipedia. Instead of debating whether it's neutral, the admin can say "we'd love to have it, but the material appears to violate your company's copyright".
Usually the PR office and the IP office are separate in a company, and the idea of releasing promotional material under public domain is such a legal nightmare that the PR person goes away.
