March 9, 1982

Some of the big names on Wall Street - all major stockholders in the Marathon Oil Company - are lining up on opposite sides of the fence on the question of whether Marathon should complete a $6 billion merger with the United States Steel Corporation. Marathon's stockholders are scheduled to meet Thursday in the company's Findlay, Ohio, headquarters, to vote on the merger, and a spot-check of leading shareholders showed yesterday that the outcome is far from certain. Even whether the meeting will be held is a cliffhanger. Judge Carl Rubin of United States District Court in Cincinnati is reviewing 11 class-action suits by Marathon stockholders, including the Dreyfus Fund, which controls 700,000 shares, seeking to block the meeting on the ground that the merger terms are too low. Whether Judge Rubin will hold up the meeting is still in doubt.

SOME time this month, the woodchuck wakes for good. Instead of emerging from its burrow for a brief look-see, as it is apt to do on Feb. 2 or any other randomly chosen day in midwinter, the woodchuck - along with bats, ground squirrels, hedgehogs, dormice and several other rodents and insectivores of cold and temperate zones -has come to the end of his winter hibernation and rejoins the world of the full-time mammals. Unlike, for example, bears, which merely doze and can awaken suddenly on provocation, true hibernators shut down shop for the duration. The metabolism of these animals drops to nearly nothing. Body temperature falls nearly to freezing. Heartbeat slows - in ground squirrels, for example, from 350 beats per minute to three or four. Stuffed with fat stored in the summer, they doze through months of snow and ice, which might otherwise starve them to death by depriving them of forage. In spring they emerge, thinner than before but ready to start a new season.

Because of an error by the New York City Department of Health, a listing of restaurant violations on Feb. 28 incorrectly described the status of the Roy Rogers restaurant at 1286 Broadway. The restaurant was found free of violations.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is close to a deal with a Japanese company for the purchase of 325 subway cars, sources close to the talks said yesterday. It would be the first purchase of foreign-made passenger cars for the New York system. The talks with the manufacturer, Kawasaki, are only one of several sets of negotiations with foreign manufacturers. If successfully completed, the negotiations could result in the purchase of 1,150 foreign-made cars for the IRT system over the next five years.

Stanley Kramer, one of Governor Carey's policy makers on transportation issues, has left the administration to run for the House of Representatives. Mr. Kramer, who resigned Feb. 1, is the first of Mr. Carey's appointees to leave office since the Governor said he would not run again. Roger Vaughan, the director of the Office of Developmental Planning and Mr. Carey's expert in the area of telecommunications, will be self-employed after May 7. Mr. Vaughan, who has worked for Mr. Carey since July 1980, has two book contracts. And Jill Schuker, Mr. Carey's press secretary, is expected to leave soon. ''There is nothing definite at this point,'' she said, but she is known to have several job offers.