Abstract
IT sometimes happens that an obituary notice in NATURE arouses much criticism, and it is seldom that one does not hear that some one else “could have done it much better”. The point arose at one of the dinners which George Murray Smith used to give to the contributors to the “Dictionary of National Biography”. I remember Dr. Creighton, Bishop of London, remarking, in a speech, that as we were all more or less entitled to a place in that Walhalla, the question could scarcely help arising in our minds as we conversed with our neighbours at table: “Shall I do you, or will you do me?” Why not invite all the leading scientific workers whose deaths you are looking forward to recording in NATURE to write their own obituary notices? Such auto-obituaries would be most useful to your post-mortem panegyrists.
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S., F. Auto-obituaries. Nature 113, 389 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113389a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113389a0
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