need help with some German authors of a mathematics reference book

The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics has 4 editors & 2 advisors, all identified in the work only by initials and last names. I'm trying to clean up the entries associated with them and flesh out the author information. Unfortunately, most have LT works titled in German, which I don't read, and three have had some weird things done to them in LT.

Could someone please:
• Untangle H. Küstner from H. Kästner (those are both the same page, but 2 different surnames get you there!), and perhaps add a "Herbert Küstner" to the resulting Author page for "H. Küstner". (See https://zbmath.org/authors/kustner.herbert for evidence of "H. Küstner"'s first name & authorship of The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics.) If it helps, "Herbert Küstner" also wrote Fünfstellige Logarithmen der natürlichen Zahlen und der Winkelfunktionen bei dezimalgeteiltem Altgrad (per https://zbmath.org/?q=ia%3Akustner.herbert+dt%3Ab), although in LT that work is (sometimes?) assigned to the Küstner-Kästner mash-up.

• Combine H. Kästner & the "Herbert Kästner (unknown)" from Herbert Kästner. (See https://zbmath.org/authors/kastner.herbert for evidence of "H. Kästner"'s first name & authorship of The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics.) There is a German wikipedia page for the mathematician "Herbert Kästner" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_K%C3%A4stner).

Also:
• Hans Reichardt includes 2 people who have been combined, "Hans Reichardt — Main Author" (with 6 works, 5 of which seem to be about the ancient world and 1 of which is Vorlesungen über Vektor- und Tensorrechnung, a scholarly math book. The other person is just "Hans Reichardt" with 0 works.

According to the Preface of The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics, the man who was an advisor for it was a professor at Humboldt Univ. in Berlin; according to (https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Reichardt/), the author of Vorlesungen über Vektor- und Tensorrechnung was at Humboldt Univ. Can I uncombine plain "Hans Reichardt" from the other, move Vorlesungen über Vektor- und Tensorrechnung to plain "Hans Reichardt", and then tie plain "Hans Reichardt" to The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics? Or do I have to leave the 0 works "Hans Reichardt" combined in with "Hans Reichardt — Main Author", and make a 3rd Hans Reichardt for the mathematician?

Problem 1: Because of how LT author pages were set up, and that back then umlauts were not allowed in URLs, the author URLs just skip special characters. Those two author names cannot be separated.

Problem 2: You cannot have two authors on the same work with the same name. I have run into this before with a children's book written by two cousins. On the work you can use the full names in other authors instead of the initials, as long as they are not the same.

Problem 1: Because of how LT author pages were set up, and that back then umlauts were not allowed in URLs, the author URLs just skip special characters. Those two author names cannot be separated.

Problem 2: You cannot have two authors on the same work with the same name. I have run into this before with a children's book written by two cousins. On the work you can use the full names in other authors instead of the initials, as long as they are not the same.

Leave the combined names of Hans Reichardt. Use author division to separate out the two different authors. You should do the research to make sure your division is correct. Just because books are or are not on the same topic is not really enough.

>3 MarthaJeanne: Problem 1: Because of how LT author pages were set up, and that back then umlauts were not allowed in URLs, the author URLs just skip special characters. Those two author names cannot be separated.

Ick! But OK, I accept that those two author names are forever welded together in LT.

Problem 2: You cannot have two authors on the same work with the same name. I have run into this before with a children's book written by two cousins. On the work you can use the full names in other authors instead of the initials, as long as they are not the same.

But Herbert Kästner and Herbert Küstner, aka H. Kästner and H. Küstner, are two separate people and they were both editors of The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics. Here are the notes I typed up as I was trying to grasp what was going on with all the people on this book's title page and craft a good query:

• H. Kästner (Editor)
- Herbert ( https://zbmath.org/authors/kastner.herbert )
- b. 1936; researcher 1958-2001 at Mathematical Institute of the University of Leipzig ( https://www.suhrkamp.de/person/herbert-kaestner-p-2345 )
- studierte Mathematik an der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_K%C3%A4stner )

• H. Küstner (Editor)
- Herbert; b. 1917; d. 1994; ( https://zbmath.org/authors/kustner.herbert )
- Ph.D. Universität Leipzig 1940 ( https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=65724 )

So, can something be done to tie The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics to the "Herbert Küstner" ( https://www.librarything.com/author/kuumlstnerherbert ) who is the author of ( https://www.librarything.com/work/24619399/t/F-uuml-nfstellige-Logarithmen-der-n... )? And then I can put in his birth/death dates and PhD on that author page?

I used links instead of touchstones in that question because there are 2 works ( https://www.librarything.com/work/2782983/t/F%C3%BCnfstellige-Logarithmen-der-na... and https://www.librarything.com/work/24701641/t/F%C3%BCnfstellige-Logarithmen-Der-n... ) whose authors are incorrectly named "Herbert Kästner" ( https://www.librarything.com/author/kstnerherbert-1 and https://www.librarything.com/author/kstnerherbert , respectively) even though the book covers show "Küstner".

Can "Herbert Kästner (1)" and "Herbert Kästner (unknown)" be disassociated from those works written by Herbert Küstner? Can anything useful be done to tie "Herbert Kästner (unknown)" to more copies of The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics, since he's already tied to some?

>3 MarthaJeanne: Leave the combined names of Hans Reichardt. Use author division to separate out the two different authors. You should do the research to make sure your division is correct. Just because books are or are not on the same topic is not really enough.

Good advice, especially after hours of digging around trying to learn more about these 6 people! I'll look into those books about the ancient world to see what I can learn about their author, to either rule him out as the author of the mathematical works or not. But ... after the sun rises!! (Possibly after the sun rises twice 😀)

I moved the 2 unknowns to 1 and 3. (A supplemental volume belongs with the originals. Separate name must mean different person.) So we now have Herbert Kästner (3) : Herbert Küstner. Yes, it's a bit weird, but the information is there.

You can ask to have it made possible for the same name to be allowed twice on the same book. It would probably very difficult to implement. The question is not whether the two people are separate people, but how to make that work.

My example is https://www.librarything.com/work/22639806/book/163430435, where the author and illustrator are cousins with the same name. Your example at least has several copies in LT.

(Just asking out of curiosity, because I have a couple of works where the editor also wrote part of the work)

Would assigning different roles to the two authors with the same name help in any way? (I guess not).

Nope. See my example. One is author, the other illustrator.

This would need to be taken into account. It is much, much more likely that the same person has different roles on the same book than that two people with the same (or looks the same to the computer) hace worked on the same book.

>8 MarthaJeanne: Thanks for confirming my guess.