He was insistent in understating his achievements, but visitors to Tate Modern and Tate Britain will always owe so much to this man who made his life and success in America, but who never forgot his roots in Britain.
We have not sought to understate the achievements of the NHS – but a 2008 study by Martin McKee and Ellen Nolte, citing OECD data, concluded that the UK had one of the worst rates of mortality amenable to healthcare among rich nations.
The Principia is peculiar in this regard, for a list of its achievements without mentioning their loose ends overstates what it accomplished, but a list of its loose ends risks understating its extraordinary achievements.
Amr Ezz, 27, another of revolt's young leaders, said that calling the revolution a military coup understated its achievement.
To say that he is the most acclaimed countertenor of the day, perhaps the best ever, is to understate his achievement.
With Katherine Michelmore, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan, I have analyzed data held by the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research and found that this measure substantially understates the achievement gap.
That tone is von Schirach's great achievement: understated, resigned, worldly, hard-boiled.
"He texted me and said it was a good achievement - understated as always," Joyce said.
Marcus was an exceptional scientist and, as is true of the best of them, extraordinarily clear in his thinking and naturally understated about his substantial achievements.
His understated manner belied his achievements, which include the creation of the code for Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, and other protocols that make up the Web as we know it today.
He was understating things.
