Dear Dr Vaidyanathan,

Good question!  I would think that it would be "B. J. van Wyk". A close example (authentic name) is: van den Berghe, P. L. (Pierre L. van den Berghe).

Dear Dr Vaidyanathan,

The most popularly used citation style is the APA Fifth Edition. In that we will use the below given first for citing the author in text; for the Bibliography however, we will use the citation listed second (presuming that his book is titled XYZ, published in NY city by UNKNOWN in 2014).

(Wyk, 2014)

Wyk, B. J. (2014). xyz. NY: Uuknown.

Hope this helps. Have a great day!!

Thank you for the kind reply!!

Best wishes

Sundar

If one follows the example I furnished earlier -  van den Berghe, P. L. (Pierre L. van den Berghe) - it would be:  van Wyk , B. J. in the references. In the running text, it would be: (van Wyk 2014).

van den Berghe, P. L., & Frost, P. (1986). Skin color preference, sexual dimorphism and sexual selection: A case of gene-culture coevolution? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 9, 87–119. 

In running text: The role of melanin in the perception of faces is usually considered in terms of skin darkening (reduced L*; Frost 1994; van den Berghe and Frost 1986).

"Researchers have long noted that men have darker skin than women (Edwards and Duntley 1939; Hulse 1967; van den Berghe and Frost 1986)..."  Source: Int J Primatol.  2009; 30: 845–857. Ian D Stephen, Facial Skin Coloration Affects Perceived Health of Human Faces.

In the References - van den Berghe, P. L., & Frost, P. (1986). Skin color preference, sexual dimorphism and sexual selection: A case of gene-culture coevolution? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 9, 87–119. 

In my opinion, "van" needs to be there, it makes sense. "van Wyk" is the last name here.  "Brendan Julian van Wyk" is B J van Wyk or van Wyk  BJ

Author in the text would be: (van Wyk 2014) 

Dr. Chithan C Kandaswami :

Thanks for a very detailed reply. I shall follow your advice in my papers.

Because I did not know how to abbreviate, I avoided papers of authors with last name starting from "van...". As I learned now, I shall include their papers in future.

Great help - thanks.

Best wishes,

Sundar

The dilemma is quite accentuated since names are unique to every region. The name MOHAMMED EL GAMAL AL SABAH for example could be a poser. In order to standardize the citations, most of the publishing houses, editors and journals clearly specify the style to be followed: APA Fifth, Chicago Fifteenth Edition, ISO 690, MLA Sixth Edition, etc. Incidentally, MS WORD has the facility to automatically stylize the citation depending on the journal/editor's dictum. There are also free software on the net to convert references to citations depending on the style specified.

I found ZOTERO a very useful software, since it takes care of all these issues, allowing me to concentrate on the paper more. It is free.

On a lighter vein, a typical South Indian name like mine, Rajamanickam Srinivasan, invariably gets written as Rajamanickam, S - giving due credit to my father (Rajamanickam) for having groomed me to be an academic !!

Have a great day. 

Dear Professor:

About surnames getting citations instead of 'first' names, this is very common.

My advisor, (Late) Christopher I. Byrnes (USA), had his papers cited as "C. I. Byrnes" and the co-guide, Prof. Alberto Isidori (Italy), has his papers cited as "A. Isidori".  Among friends' circles, my guide was known as "Chris" & Prof. Isidori is called by his friends as "Alberto".

In my own case, friends call me "Sundar", but my papers are cited as

"S. Vaidyanathan" and my new chaotic systems are now known and cited as "Vaidyanathan systems". This may be a common practice.

Best wishes,

Sundar

Chithan C Kandaswami is absolutely correct in his answer to my query.

A similar name is that of a famous Electrical Engineer - Balthasar van der Pol. While many credit Lorenz for detecting chaos while modelling weather patterns, Henri Poincare and Balths. van der Pol discovered chaos much earlier and they called it as some "irregular noise".  van der Pol also discovered a famous limit cycle, cited in most of the text-books on nonlinear control systems, and it is also a classical example of a Hopf bifurcating system.

Coming to the query & answer, this is how van der Pol's paper (classical one!) is cited by researchers:

van der Pol, B. (1926). On relaxation oscillations. Philosophical Magazine, 6, 978-992.

Why van der Pol chose to publish his paper in a "philosophical" journal may make another question for RG, but as this is a very early work - 1926, I don't know if I'll get many answers to it.

Best wishes,

Sundar

Greetings to you, Dr Vaidyanathan!

Thank you for the very interesting information as well.

Sir C V Raman (Chandra Sekhara Venkata Raman, who was awarded the 1930 Nobel prize for physics, completed his undergraduate program while he was sixteen. His first scientific paper published when he was sixteen (on diffraction bands), incidentally was in the “Philosophical Magazine”, as was his second, on a totally different area of endeavor (a new method that he devised to measure a liquid's surface tension). The Philosophical Magazine was one of the most prestigious scientific journals of that period. Science, in a way, is philosophy even though science is more concerned with the “how of things” whereas the “why” of things in nature appears to more solidly posit in the domain of metaphysics. Asking questions about nature and attempting to glean insights into the nature of things and of natural order are inherent to science (scientific philosophy).

Regards.

Dear Chithan:

Thanks for your interesting answer, esp. info about Sir C.V. Raman!

After reading your mail, I searched to know more about "The Philosophical Magazine" and the Wikipedia entry is highly informative.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Magazine

The Wiki entry starts like this..

"The Philosophical Magazine is one of the oldest scientific journals published in English. It was established by Alexander Tilloch in 1798;  in 1822 Richard Taylor became joint editor and it has been published continuously by Taylor & Francis

ever since." (Wiki)

A small query on citing a surname has led me to learn about the history of Taylor & Francis journals. This is great!

With best wishes

Sundar

Dear Sundar,

Thanks very much for the insights that you have provided.

Taylor & Francis has had some interesting history.

Best regards...

Dear Sundar:

Another very interesting journal is " The Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society" - B Biological Sciences (PHILOS T R SOC ). Philosophical Transactions A is devoted to a specific area of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences.

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/by/year

Warm regards...Chithan K

Dear Chithan:

As a mathematician, I follow the works of Ramanujan and in this context, I am well-aware of the journal you mentioned - funded by Royal Society, UK.

I also suggest you to read the following interesting article titled, "The Royal Society and India". https://royalsociety.org/exhibitions/2007/india/

This article also mentions the great scientists honoured as FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) - this list includes Ardaseer Cursetjee, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Sir J.C. Bose,  Sir C.V. Raman, etc.

The article concludes with a great quote of Jawaharlal Nehru:

 "Who indeed could afford to ignore Science today?

 At every turn we have to seek its aid ... The future belongs to Science!"

Best wishes,

Sundar

Dear Sundar, 

I was sure that as a mathematician you would be following Transactions A. I did not mention what prompted me to send the name of this journal. At one point, I was asking why the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society was publishing science articles just as the Philosophical Magazine did. I had mentioned Biological Sciences B first as intriguing interdisciplinary articles appear. I forgot to mention that Transactions A are also of interest to me since they sometimes publish articles relevant to biological sciences (for instance oxygen biology). Thanks very much for your link on "The Royal Society and India". I shall read it.

Best regards,

Chithan K

OK point understood! Have a great day.

Best wishes,

Sundar