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Chris Baer said: “Based on long reading in scientific/technical literature (cataloging thousands of unpublished
research reports), the use of initials is a really convention imposed upon people writing professionally in many sciences, the military, and business. Therefore it is not, strictly speaking, used "purposefully" as an author's choice. It is somewhat like
the fact that the sciences use a different footnoting/citation convention. In private business communications, the convention was first initials for letters and nothing but initials for memos, which creates a lot of problems of identification for researchers
and catalogers.”
But in this case, it is the opposite. The author uses her given name in her scientific work, and her initials in her fiction. I think we can assume that this is, in fact,
the author’s choice.
Steve McDonald