In Biomedical Digital Libraries journal, I have read an interesting paper which proposes unique identifiers for the authors of publications in Biomedicine.
This need comes from the growing amount of scientific publications, and the ever increasing difficult task of identifying the authors of those works.
Because of women incorporation in research and worldwide scientific contribution, the Anglo-Saxon inspired system of annotation based on a first name and one surname is not currently suitable for following authors trajectory. Things can get more difficult when authors may change the names they use along their lives. For instance, in some cultures, women usually adopt the surname of their husbands when they get married.
In order to show this, we can search in Pubmed Hernández A. and Lee C. These are not two very prolific researchers in different Biosciences fields, but simply, there are many people who may respond to this query.
Using a unique, unequivocal and personal identifier for each author, which could be centralized and registered in servers such as Pubmed (but preferably shared with other sites), could be a possible solution for this kind of problems.