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Street Philosopher

Cogitating in Cambridge

Seán Moran takes a punt on reality.

On the way to meet my research supervisor at Cambridge University I photographed this idyllic scene. The captain of the punt (gondolier? punter?) was boasting to his international passengers that a single college in Cambridge had produced more Nobel Prize-winners than all of the Oxford colleges put together. I suspect that he was exaggerating, but according to the Times, Cambridge has had 121 Nobel laureates, which is “more than the total for either Germany or France.” (Emma Duncan, 9 July 2021)

Although that young upstart, Harvard, is currently ahead in the Nobel Prize stakes, Cambridge is certainly a formidable knowledge-production centre.

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