Subject: Re: [HM] Question from Richard (Dick) Askey
From: John Harper (John.Harper@MCS.VUW.AC.NZ)
Date: Mon Jan 31 2000 - 16:28:32 EST
On Sun, 30 Jan 2000, Tom Apostol wrote:
>
> Richard Askey sent me the following message:
>
> ... In a number of recent books and papers, G. H. Hardy is referred to
> as Godfrey Harold Hardy, and occasionally as Godfrey Hardy. No one
> called him Godfrey and only a few people called him Harold.
I suspect but don't know that his English mathematical colleagues would
have called him Hardy. Only in contexts where his full name was essential
would anyone have said Godfrey Harold Hardy. When I applied for a visiting
position at a Cambridge college in 1977, both the Master and my local
colleague (we knew each other's work but had not yet met) began letters
"Dear Dr Harper"; when the award was approved they changed to "Dear
Harper" and "Dear John" respectively.
At least Hardy wasn't a late 20th century woman, where one would have to
investigate whether to put Ms or Miss or Mrs or nothing at all for those
who aren't Dr or Prof (or Dame or Sister or Rear-Admiral or ...), and if
she's married, whether to use her maiden name or her husband's surname.
Peers cause strange complications. I have seen John William Strutt, Lord
Rayleigh, referred to as J.W.S. Rayleigh. Then there's Augusta Ada,
Countess of Lovelace, whose contemporaries may well have referred to her
as Lady Lovelace but I suspect never as Augusta Ada Byron King Lovelace,
which I have seen in material emanating from the USA, where that method of
naming a married woman may perhaps be correct. (Etiquette books will also
reveal that how one addressed a countess when speaking to her was
different from how one addressed a letter to her.) The 3rd and 4th Earls
of Rosse were both astronomers. Each published papers on astronomy while
still the heir to the earldom and therefore known by a courtesy title.
Bibliographers are therefore reduced to writing Oxmantown, Lord
(subsequently 3rd Earl of Rosse) or Oxmantown, Lord (subsequently 4th Earl
of Rosse) if they want people to (a) find their papers and (b) distinguish
the authors. I recommend a careful reading of the Lord Peter Wimsey books
to those wishing to make mistakes less often.
John Harper, School of Mathematical and Computing Sciences,
Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
e-mail john.harper@vuw.ac.nz phone (+64)(4)463 5341 fax (+64)(4)463 5045
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