Talk:Robert J. Edwards

Same Edwards?

If this Edwards is an ichthyologist, as the second line on the page states, then it is quite strange that the only taxon names we know he authored, are of spiders. So either this fellow was an arachnologist, or their are two zoologists named Robert J. Edwards, or this one Edwards made a career move after submitting his thesis on Clubioninae in 1951 (published 1958). Because so far the only paper listed is on Araneae, and the author of that paper was indeed a Robert J. Edwards, I'll change 'ichthyologist' into 'arachnologist'. If there is an ichthyologist named Robert J. Edwards, then a separate page should be created on him, preferably with some indication as to what kind of work he did/dows, and where he published. For now I'll also remove the reference to 'Department of Biology, University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, Texas 78539, USA', as this refers to a professor Robert Edwards teaching ichthyology at Texas University. It is highly unlikely (in fact quite impossible) that this is the same person that submitted his thesis in 1951. If the arachnologist is still alive, then he must be well in his nineties, and gone into retirement long ago. Wikiklaas (talk) 02:37, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Seconded, it does look unlikely they are the same person, especially since the ichthyologist's education gives the year of his PhD as 1980 rather than 1951. Looking in the history of this page on Wikispecies, it was actually originally made for the icthyologist, but has now been transformed into a page for the arachnologist of the same name. Wikidata will need to be fixed too if this is how it's going to be used. (Personally, I would revert the arachnologist-related changes and place them onto a new page + item for the arachnologist) However, it's also helpful to note that the ichthyologist has at least described one fish species to my knowledge, Gambusia clarkhubbsi, according to a news article (his institution does not appear in the actual scientific article's abstract online though, unhelpfully). Monster Iestyn (talk) 04:47, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah, mystery solved I think, the University of Rochester Robert J. Edwards (i.e. the "arachnologist", though the obituary doesn't give any real indication he was one; it references the 1951 Ph.D. in Biology though) died in July 2006: [1]. Monster Iestyn (talk) 05:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I have now moved everything for the arachnologist to Robert J. Edwards (arachnologist), and reverted this Robert J. Edwards to the ichthyologist as it was before. Monster Iestyn (talk) 17:04, 5 February 2022 (UTC)