1 . In 1812, the year Charles Dickens was born, there were 66 novels published in Britain. People had been writing novels for a century — most experts date the first novel to Robinson Crusoe in 1719 — but nobody wanted to do it professionally. The steam-powered printing press was still in its early stages; the literacy (识字) rate in England was under 50%. Many works of fiction appeared without the names of the authors, often with something like “By a lady.” Novels, for the most part, were looked upon as silly, immoral, or just plain bad.

In 1870, when Dickens died, the world mourned him as its first professional writer and publisher, famous and beloved, who had led an explosion in both the publication of novels and their readership and whose characters — from Oliver Twist to Tiny Tim — were held up as moral touchstones. Today Dickens’ greatness is unchallenged. Removing him from the pantheon (名人堂) of English literature would make about as much sense as the Louvre selling off the Mona Lisa.

How did Dickens get to the top? For all the feelings readers attach to stories, literature is a numbers game, and the test of time is extremely difficult to pass. Some 60,000 novels were published during the Victorian age, from 1837 to 1901; today a casual reader might be able to name a half-dozen of them. It’s partly true that Dickens’ style of writing attracted audiences

from all walks of life. It’s partly that his writings rode a wave of social, political and scientific progress. But it’s also that he rewrote the culture of literature and put himself at the center. No one will ever know what mix of talent, ambition, energy and luck made Dickens such a singular writer. But as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches, it is possible — and important for our own culture — to understand how he made himself a lasting one.

3 . MOTHER OF TEN THOUSAND BABIES

“Life is precious.... To a person nothing is more precious than their life, and if they entrust me with that life, how could I refuse that trust saying I’m cold, hungry, or tired?” These words of Dr Lin Qiaozhi give us a look into the heart of this amazing woman, and what carried her through a life of hard choices.

As a five-year-old girl, Lin Oiaozhi was deeply affected by her mother’s death. At age 18, instead of following the traditional path of marriage like the majority of girls, she chose to study medicine. “Why should girls learn so much? Finding a good husband should be their final goal!” her brother complained, thinking of the high tuition fees. She responded, “I’d rather stay single to study all my life!”

Eight years later, Lin graduated from PekingLin Qiaozhi (1901-1983) Union Medical College (PUMC) with the WenhaiScholarship, the highest prize given to graduates, She immediately became the first woman ever to be hired as a resident physician in the OB-GYN department of the PUMC Hospital. Within six months, she was named a chief resident physician, a position that usually took four years to achieve. After working for a few years, she was sent to study in Europe and then, in 1939, in the US. She greatly impressed her American colleagues, who invited her to stay. DrLin, however, rejected the offer. She wanted to serve the women and children at home. In 1941, Dr Lin became the first Chinese woman ever to be appointed director of the OB-GYN department of the PUMC Hospital, but just a few months later, the department was closed because of the war. Thinking of all the people still in need of help, Dr Lin opened a private clinic. She charged very low fees to treat patients and often reduced costs for poor patients. At times she was even seen riding a donkey to faraway villages to provide medical care.

The new People’s Republic of China saw Dr Lin Qiaozhi playing a key role. In 1954, she was elected to the first National People’s Congress and, over the next several decades, she held many important positions. Her heart, however, was elsewhere. She was more interested intending patients, publishing medical research on care for women and children, and training the next generation of doctors. “The OB-GYN department cares for two lives,” she told new staff in her department. “As doctors, we should be responsible for the patients and treat them as our sisters.”

Though Lin Oiaozhi never married, she was known as “the mother of ten thousand babies”, having delivered over 50,000 babies in her lifetime. DrLin did not retire until the day she died, 22 April 1983. Since she had no children of her own, she left her savings to a kindergarten and a fund for new doctors. And even as she lay dying, her final thoughts were for others.“I’m ready to go,” she said. “Don’t try to rescue me any more. Don’t waste the medicine any more.”

4 . Today, poetry and science are often considered to be mutually exclusive career paths. But that wasn’t always the case. The mathematician A da Lovelace and the physicist James Clerk Mahwah were both accomplished poets. The poet John Keats was a licensed surgeon. Combining the two practices fell out of favor in the 1800s. But translating research into lyrics, haiku, and other poetic forms is resurging (再现) among scientists as they look for alternative ways to inspire others with their findings.

“Poetry is a great tool for questioning the world,” says Sam Illingworth, a poet and a geoscientist who works at the University of Western Australia. Through workshops and a new science-poetry journal, called Consilience, Illingworth is helping scientists to translate their latest results into poems that can attract appreciation from those outside of their immediate scientific field.

Stephany Mazon, a scientist from the University of Helsinki in Finland, joined one of Illingworth’s workshops. In the workshop, she was grouped with other scientists and tasked with writing a haiku, a 17-syllable-long poem, which spotlighted water, a fluid that featured in all of the group members’ research projects. “It was a lot of fun, and surprisingly easy to write the poem,” Mazon says. She plans to continue writing. “We do a disservice(伤害) to ourselves to think that scientists can’t be artistic and that art can’t be use a to communicate scientific ideas,” Mazon says.

That viewpoint is echoed by Illingworth, who thinks science communication initiatives are too often dominated by public lectures with their hands-off PowerPoint slides. “Actually, when science communication involves writing and sharing poems, it invites a two-way dialogue between experts and nonexperts,” he says. Scientist-poet Manjula Silva, an educator at Imperial College London, agrees. Poetry provides a way to translate complex scientific concepts into a language that everyone can understand, Silva says.

Scientists and poets are both trying to understand the world and communicate that understanding with others. The distinction between scientists and poets is less than people might think. We’re all just people with hopefully really interesting things to say and to share.

5 . Crime fiction books have been popular with readers for many decades-so popular, in fact, that at a recent London Book Fair sales of the genre (类型) overtook general fiction for the first time ever, a development that had been widely anticipated. Commercial success, of course, does not impress everyone and there are those who believe crime fiction should not be held in such high regard. Well-known in this group is Sebastian Franklin, who has argued that most crime fiction books look more like crossword puzzles than literature. However, increasingly this is a minority opinion as crime fiction is becoming recognized as a rich and dynamic literary genre in around the world.

Crime writing really came to the public’s notice in the 1920s and 1930s with the books of the British author Agatha Christie. Christie was a productive writer, publishing more than 60 detective novels over a 50-year period, beginning in 1920.

Without a doubt, there are certain elements that tend to be repeated in Christie’s books. The stories generally focus on a well-off circle of people, whose peaceful lives are thrown into chaos by an unexplained crime. The location is often a restricted space of some sort: a train, an island, a boat, or a village. This is quite different, for example, to the world of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who often has the entire city of London as his hunting ground.

The books are also action-packed just like today’s most popular thrillers (惊悚小说). Christie mastered the art of the page-turner: events unfold so quickly and unpredictably that we keep reading to find out what happens next. The most significant consequence is that it is so simple to overlook vital clues.

It is worth reading a Christie book a second time just to notice how carefully she hides crucial information about the criminal’s identity.

A survey of contemporary crime writing shows that Agatha Christie’s legacy (遗产) is more important now than at any time previously, at the very point when crime writing has become the most popular of all book genres.

6 . Today, poetry and science are often considered to be mutually exclusive career paths. But that wasn’t always the case. The mathematician A da Lovelace and the physicist James Clerk Mahwah were both accomplished poets. The poet John Keats was a licensed surgeon. Combining the two practices fell out of favor in the 1800s. But translating research into lyrics, haiku, and other poetic forms is resurging (再现) among scientists as they look for alternative ways to inspire others with their findings.

“Poetry is a great tool for questioning the world,” says Sam Illingworth, a poet and a geoscientist who works at the University of Western Australia. Through workshops and a new science-poetry journal, called Consilience, Illingworth is helping scientists to translate their latest results into poems that can attract appreciation from those outside of their immediate scientific field.

Stephany Mazon, a scientist from the University of Helsinki in Finland, joined one of Illingworth’s workshops. In the workshop, she was grouped with other scientists and tasked with writing a haiku, a 17-syllable-long poem, which spotlighted water, a fluid that featured in all of the group members’ research projects. “It was a lot of fun, and surprisingly easy to write the poem,” Mazon says. She plans to continue writing. “We do a disservice (伤害) to ourselves to think that scientists can’t be artistic and that art can’t be use a to communicate scientific ideas,” Mazon says.

That viewpoint is echoed by Illingworth, who thinks science communication initiatives are too often dominated by public lectures with their hands-off PowerPoint slides. “Actually, when science communication involves writing and sharing poems, it invites a two-way dialogue between experts and nonexperts,” he says. Scientist-poet Manjula Silva, an educator at Imperial College London, agrees. Poetry provides a way to translate complex scientific concepts into a language that everyone can understand, Silva says.

Scientists and poets are both trying to understand the world and communicate that understanding with others. The distinction between scientists and poets is less than people might think. We’re all just people with hopefully really interesting things to say and to share.

9 . PRACTITIONERS

What did Jacqueline and James have in common?

10 . PRACTITIONERS

Who was the first African American with a medical degree?