News
A very odd couple!
Added on 2025-12-18 12:56:07 by Vos, Chris
Distinguishing authors at a glance can help speeding up research – as mentioned in the April news item. But what with less obvious names such as Van Winkle Palmer and Mayer or Mayer-Eymar?No, Katherine Van Winkle Palmer was never a part of a couple with Karl Mayer, yet they do share similar issues concerning the (in)consistency how their names are spelled in taxon authorities.
When Katherine Evangeline Van Winkle got married, she chose to use Van Winkle-Palmer. Throughout her active life as a palaeontologist, we thus find papers – including new taxa – authored by “Van Winkle”, “Palmer”, “Van Winkle Palmer” and the like. Later authors referring to those taxa also used a variety of ways to write her name.
A similar case occurs with Karl Mayer who – at a certain point in his life – changed his last name to “Mayer-Eymar” to avoid confusion with others. Here too, we find taxa described by K. Mayer (often even as “C. Mayer”) and later by “K. Mayer-Eymar”.
As an editor community we needed to find some consistency in all this confusion to demystify the authorships for those two cases (and there will be others in the future, no doubt) and make things as transparent and easy as possible for our users – and for the users of the many portals and databases which use our MolluscaBase / WoRMS data and methods.
We therefore opted to write authorships of taxa described by Katherine Van Winkle Palmer as “Van Winkle [Palmer]” for names published before she got married in 1921 and as “Van Winkle Palmer” afterwards; those of Karl Mayer are given as “Mayer[-Eymar]” prior to his name change in 1881 and “Mayer-Eymar” afterwards.
Please note that the way we indicate these authorships in MolluscaBase is merely to allow easy, unified identification of the persons describing the respective taxa, but it is not necessarily the way one has to give an authorship in a publication.
The advantage for users is that it is as such much easier to perform queries based on authorships; for example: a search for “Authority” containing “Van Winkle” will now provide all taxa described by Van Winkle Palmer (whereas before, you would have to perform multiple queries using different parts of the name).
Brief biographies of these two authors can be found in the Gallery of Famous Malacologists on Facebook – with gratitude to Riccardo Gianuzzi Savelli:
Van Winkle Palmer: (4) Gallery of famous malacologists | Facebook
Mayer / Mayer-Eymar: (4) Gallery of famous malacologists | Facebook
On behalf of the MolluscaBase editor community,
Chris Vos, F. L. S.
Photographs courtesy of Riccardo Gianuzzi-Savelli.
When Katherine Evangeline Van Winkle got married, she chose to use Van Winkle-Palmer. Throughout her active life as a palaeontologist, we thus find papers – including new taxa – authored by “Van Winkle”, “Palmer”, “Van Winkle Palmer” and the like. Later authors referring to those taxa also used a variety of ways to write her name.
A similar case occurs with Karl Mayer who – at a certain point in his life – changed his last name to “Mayer-Eymar” to avoid confusion with others. Here too, we find taxa described by K. Mayer (often even as “C. Mayer”) and later by “K. Mayer-Eymar”.
As an editor community we needed to find some consistency in all this confusion to demystify the authorships for those two cases (and there will be others in the future, no doubt) and make things as transparent and easy as possible for our users – and for the users of the many portals and databases which use our MolluscaBase / WoRMS data and methods.
We therefore opted to write authorships of taxa described by Katherine Van Winkle Palmer as “Van Winkle [Palmer]” for names published before she got married in 1921 and as “Van Winkle Palmer” afterwards; those of Karl Mayer are given as “Mayer[-Eymar]” prior to his name change in 1881 and “Mayer-Eymar” afterwards.
Please note that the way we indicate these authorships in MolluscaBase is merely to allow easy, unified identification of the persons describing the respective taxa, but it is not necessarily the way one has to give an authorship in a publication.
The advantage for users is that it is as such much easier to perform queries based on authorships; for example: a search for “Authority” containing “Van Winkle” will now provide all taxa described by Van Winkle Palmer (whereas before, you would have to perform multiple queries using different parts of the name).
Brief biographies of these two authors can be found in the Gallery of Famous Malacologists on Facebook – with gratitude to Riccardo Gianuzzi Savelli:
Van Winkle Palmer: (4) Gallery of famous malacologists | Facebook
Mayer / Mayer-Eymar: (4) Gallery of famous malacologists | Facebook
On behalf of the MolluscaBase editor community,
Chris Vos, F. L. S.
Photographs courtesy of Riccardo Gianuzzi-Savelli.
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