Francis, the best editor I was ever to know, was a great and severe teacher, and nothing passed his desk (to reach the desk of the editor in chief) that didn’t make sense. Making sense may sound like a rather low standard, but it was a very high one when applied by Francis. To give him an article in which one sentence fell short was to be loudly summoned to his desk in the middle of the room and given a sarcastic scolding that would leave any department head gnashing his teeth (not because Francis was wrong but because he was so damned right).

I learned perforce to demand sense of every word in every article handed me by one of the writers in my department or by one of the outside scholars who contributed articles. (Our article on relativity was written by Albert Einstein.) And without noticing it, I began to demand sense of everything I knew, which included the received wisdom of our culture.