Talk:Murdoch Mitchison

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I think this article is not correctly named. Mitchison is notable for his contributions and publications in the field of yeast genetics; a search of Pubmed will reveal that in every single instance, his first initial J is given—so it is apparent he wishes to be known in this way. Further, he is listed in the The International Who's Who 2004 under his full name. The other references currently in the article that mention him are mostly informal recounts by his colleagues, who one might expect in those instances would not use his full name. Any arguments to the contrary? Sasata (talk) 00:17, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Our policy on article titles is not that of scientific journals or Who's Who. Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; instead we use the name which is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. That is why we have the article titles "Guy Dollman" and not "John Guy Dollman", "Barry Fell" and not "Howard Barraclough Fell", "Charles Godfray" and not "Hugh Charles Jonathan Godfray", "Francis Hemming" and not "Arthur Francis Hemming", "Ray Lankester" and not "Edwin Ray Lankester", "Ludwig Preiss" and not "Johann August Ludwig Preiss", "Richard Southwood" and not "Thomas Richard Edmund Southwood", "Oldfield Thomas" and not "Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas", "Maurice Yonge" and not "Charles Maurice Yonge", all British zoologists. Concerning JMM, a Google book search gives:

•  7 sources using "J. Murdoch Mitchison";
•  6 sources using "John Murdoch Mitchison";
• 58 sources using just "Murdoch Mitchison".

These references may be from "informal recounts", but such recounts are in fact more likely to use the version of a person's name by which they were commonly known. I am inclined not to consider the use in bibliographic references of author names as "referring to" the persons named, but just as identifying them. Otherwise we might have to use "JM Mitchison" as the title, this probably being the most common form in scholarly articles. And note that we would also not use Theor Biol Med Model as title for the journal Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, even though the abbreviated form is more common in bibliographic references. So I think the present title is the correct choice.  --Lambiam 19:15, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• Ok, after trawling through the Google Book results, I agree. Thanks. Sasata (talk) 19:39, 11 February 2011 (UTC)