CCL:Spelling of v(V?)an der Waals('?)

["Leslie Glasser" <GLASSER -AatT- AURUM.CHEM.WITS.AC.ZA>]

 Dear Colleagues:
 Huang Tang (below) has it right.  Native language speakers work on
 (often faulty) instinct!  The apostrophe indicates possession,
 and should be reserved for the "possessor" of the entity.
 Furthermore, a singular ending "s" takes " 's ", as in
 Charles's Law
 (except in special cases which we need not go pursue here).
 >  However, I personally believe that "van der Waals'
 >parameters" is a bad usage, unless the parameters were actually
 >discovered/derived by van der Waals and named after him (obviously
 >not), as in the said equation.  With or without an apostrophe, as in
 >"Washington apple" and "Washington's apple", carries
 different
 >connotations associated with it, at least to my ears (I might as well
 >be wrong,  because I'm not a native English speaker).
 >Huang Tang
 On the capitalisation issue; in Dutch and related Germanic languages
 (and vdW was Dutch), the initial letter of multi-worded names is not
 capitalised: Ludwig von Beethoven, not Ludwig Von Beethoven, for
 example.  Hence, vdW should only be capitalised at the start of a
 sentence.
 Leslie ==============================================================
 (Prof.) Leslie Glasser                     Dept. of Chemistry
 E-mail: glasser -AatT- aurum.chem.wits.ac.za      Univ. of Witwatersrand
 Tel: Intl + 27 11 716-2070                 P. O. WITS 2050
 Fax: Intl + 27 11 339-7967                 South Africa
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