HISTNEUR-L: The History of Neuroscience Internet Forum

Re: Peyton Rous

• Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1998 10:05:52 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
• To: histneur-l@library.ucla.edu
• From: Russell A> Johnson <rjohnson@library.ucla.edu>
• Subject: Re: Peyton Rous
• Message-ID: SIMEON.9812231052.A@bio-s-his004.library.ucla.edu

Adele:

Ah, another Name Authority story!  (Apologies to the list--but this is 
something some of us librarians--and historians?--happen to enjoy.)

Various sources have him listed as Francis Peyton Rous (e.g. 
_Dictionary of American biography_; Garrison-Morton 2637) or (Francis) 
Peyton Rous (e.g. _World who's who in science: a biographical 
dictionary of notable scientists from antiquity to the present_) or 
Peyton Rous (the Nobel resource cited earlier; the OCLC name authority 
file; bibliographic records on OCLC--such as his 1929 Linacre lecture; 
and his 1971 biography published by The Rockefeller University Press 
[with his "Peyton Rous" signature reproduced on the cover]).  I don't 
have his landmark 1910-1911 papers, demonstrating a viral cause of 
certain fowl tumors, in _Journal of experimental medicine_, here (those 
volumes are in remote storage), but he is cited for them in _Index 
Medicus_ (v. 9, 1911) as P. Rous.  

Apparently he did go by Francis or Frank early on; this is something 
the folks at Johns Hopkins could answer, if anyone wants to pursue this 
(off-list?) further.  The 1971 biography reproduces several of his 
"Flower of the Month" columns in the Baltimore _Sun_, written in 1900 
at age 20 and signed "F. Peyton" or "Frank Peyton."  The bulk of his 
scientific writings apaprently were written under the byline "Peyton 
Rous" and he came to sign as such.  In which case, I'd call him Peyton, 
with an aside about the "Francis" bit.


Flogging that horse,

Cheers,

Russell