Tombstone Inscriptions

Summary

A group of scholars, composed of a mathematician, a physicist, a chemist, a biologist, a novelist, and a school teacher, were assembled at a lunch table when the mathematician said, “Suppose, like Archimedes' request that the geometrical figure that led him to the discovery of the formulas for the area and volume of a sphere be engraved on his tombstone, what might each of us wish to have inscribed on our tombstones? I think I would like the figure of my simple ‘proof without words’ of a complicated trigonometric identity to be inscribed on my tombstone.” The physicist said he would be pleased to have his famous aerodynamics equation inscribed on his. The chemist wanted a highly useful chemical formula that he had discovered on his. The biologist wished to have on his the name of a famous vaccine that he had created. The novelist wished to have on his tombstone the title of his book that won a Nobel Prize in Literature. Then, turning to the school teacher, the novelist, anticipating some fun at the teacher's expense, asked “And what you would like to have inscribed on your tombstone?” Without any hesitation the teacher replied, “I would be proud to have inscribed on my tombstone the names of my four students who most distinguished themselves in later life.” Somehow the anticipated fun failed to materialize.