Dr Ron Gray, from Oxford University, who led the research added that although the differences appeared small, they may well be significant and that lower IQ had been shown to be associated with being socially disadvantaged, having poorer health and even dying younger.

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Mr Gray, formerly of Oxford and now professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, is an extremely clever man.

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The title was held by the late historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, and the 18th Century poet Thomas Gray, who was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.

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The team, at the Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology at Oxford University, were looking for a protein, called gamma-H2AX, which is produced in response to damaged DNA. This tends to be one of the first steps on the road to a cell becoming cancerous.

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Robert L. Mack, Gray's definitive biographer, has observed that a recent edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations draws from 15 stanzas and reproduces 13 of them whole.

WSJ: Meditation on Mortality | Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard | Thomas Gray | Masterpiece by John J. Miller