Praise for Pioneers in Science

In memory of Marie Curie on her birthday on Saturday, the official website of the Nobel Prize posted a photograph of her notebook saying, “Marie Curie died of aplastic anaemia (再生障碍性贫血) on 4 July 1934, a result of years of     1     to radiation through her work. Even today her laboratory notebook from 1899-1902, is radioactive and will be for 1,500 years.”

The tales of Marie and other scientists of her time are in some sense very     2    .

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, a professor of physics at the Wuerzburg University in Germany, discovered X-ray in 1895. A year later, Antoine Henri Becquerel found that some natural substances     3     rays, too. Later, Marie and her physicist husband, Pierre Curie, gave it a name, radioactivity.

However, the harmful effects of radioactivity were not discovered until decades later. Marie and her     4     scientists dealt with radioactive substances for decades using little or no protection.

Marie’s death is a reminder about the risks pioneers in science     5    . It was only after people handling radioactive substances began to get similar diseases that medical experts asked people to use protection. Today, medical health workers and patients wear heavy     6     covers during X-rays.

It is almost     7     that those exploring new frontiers (前沿) for science are exposing themselves to unknown dangers. There is a(n)     8     for better protection for the pioneers, but that is not possible until the dangers are fully known.

For example, the space suits astronauts wear protect them against radiation. However, only time will tell if there are some other unknown dangers that they need to protect themselves against.

The contributions and sacrifices by such pioneers to the field of science are     9     and deserving of our respect. Because the pioneers not only     10     new frontiers, but also help us better protect ourselves from unknown environments.

Tu Youyou, whose research led to the discovery of artemisinin, a crucial new treatment for malaria, was     1    Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The discovery was extremely difficult. In their research, she and her team examined over 2000 old medical texts, and     2     280000 plants for their medical     3    . They     4     different methods to draw out the extract from the wormwood. First they tested a collection of dried wormwood leaves, and then tried boiling fresh wormwood and using the liquid obtained from this to treat malaria, but both did not work. Finally they     5    drew out the extract by using a lower temperature.