Wednesday, November 12, 2025

It's unfortunate that all of the great explorers have already passed away.

This sentence -- created for the purpose of practicing certain subtleties of English pronunciation, its meaning being quite beside the point -- is in one of the textbooks I use, and as things worked out, November 11 was the day I had my students repeating it again and again.

Five days previous, on November 6, James Watson had died. I mostly agree with Bruce's assessment that with his death there are no great scientists still living (Roger Penrose being the one exception I would make).

1 comment:

Bruce Charlton said...

I suppose one big difference about Penrose is that a *very* small proportion of people have heard of him or could say what he did. Watson was like many more in the earlier generations of scientific genius, in that he was a household name and so was his major achievement.

It's unfortunate that all of the great explorers have already passed away.

This sentence -- created for the purpose of practicing certain subtleties of English pronunciation, its  meaning being quite beside the poi...