> If I wanted to be a scientist, learn Greek. This last one isn't a serious suggestion – in the 1970s or 1980s, reasonable advice would have been to learn Germ

> If I wanted to be a scientist, learn Greek. This last one isn't a serious suggestion – in the 1970s or 1980s, reasonable advice would have been to learn German. Plenty of research papers were being published in German back then. (I was advised to learn German by a postgraduate student, who said he had examinations in German at an English university.)