Pining for Pinnacles

Many years ago, I gave this advice to my children:

“If you want to be the best in the world at something, pick a subject no one else is interested in.”

I told them this, not only because I excelled at giving rubbish advice to my children, but also because I had recently become the world’s foremost expert on The History of the American System of Fingerprint Classification, a subject that—as noted above—no one else in the world cared a wit about.

This all came about because I had been pro...