In the alternative universe of American poetry, Murray, had she lived, might have joined a distinguished generation that included Elizabeth Bishop, whose own biography — the bouts of illness, the deracinated childhood, the early intervention of a famous mentor (in Bishop's case, Marianne Moore Murrayray's calls to mind.
And it is now time — bittersweet though it felt Wednesday — for the next, and for now much less distinguished, American generation to take on that burden.
Sam Gardiner, who has died aged 79, was a distinguished member of the generation of Northern Irish poets that also included Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon.
Roy McEwan, managing director of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, said: "Sir Charles was one of the most distinguished conductors of his generation.
Lord Hunt of Tanworth, who has died aged 88, was an exceptionally competent and effective administrator, and one of the most distinguished among a gifted generation that entered the civil service immediately after the second world war.
Maurice Peston, Lord Peston, who has died aged 85, was one of the most distinguished economists of his generation, but he did not regard the discipline to which he devoted much of his life as the dismal science.
The centre, a humanities research library and museum which is part of the University of Texas at Austin, said it had acquired an archive belonging to "one of the most distinguished novelists of his generation".
She died of complications from head and other injuries suffered last Tuesday when she was struck by a car as she crossed a street in Hamden, Conn., said her husband, Dr. Pasko Rakic, a fellow neuroscientist at Yale. "Pat Goldman-Rakic was one of the most distinguished neuroscientists of her generation," said Richard C. Levin, Yale's president.
Bernoulli family, Two generations of distinguished Swiss mathematicians.
His parents were Chasidim, members of a spiritually intense Orthodox Jewish sect, and descended from generations of distinguished rabbis.
Johnson, cuttingly described by the Financial Times as the least distinguished foreign secretary in generations, merely has to open his mouth to further denigrate the UK internationally.
