What are people's views on this?  To be specific: suppose a PhD student has produced a piece of original mathematical research. Suppose that student's supervisor suggested the problem, and gave a few helpful comments, but otherwise did not contribute to the work.  Should that supervisor still be named as a co-author, or would an acknowledgment suffice?

I am interested in two aspects of this. Firstly the moral/etiquette aspect: do you consider it bad form for a student not to name their supervisor?  Or does it depend on that supervisor's input?  And secondly, the practical, career-advancing aspect: which is better, for a student to have a well-known name on his or her paper (and hence more chance of it being noticed/published), or to have a sole-authored piece of work under their belt to hopefully increase their chances of being offered a good post-doc position?

[To clarify: original question asked by MrB ]


Question: How to mount a ham?
Answer: This should help, it's not precisely exact, but you can probably figure it out from here.