1 . Charles Robert Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 in Shropshire, England. Darwin’s childhood passion was science, and his interest in chemistry, however, was clear; he was even nicknamed ‘Gas’ by his classmates.
In 1825, his father sent him to study medicine at Edinburgh University, where he learned how to classify plants. Darwin became passionate about natural history and this became his focus while he studied at Cambridge. Darwin went on a voyage together with Robert Fitzroy, the captain of HMS Beagle, to South America to facilitate British trade in Patagonia. The journey was life-changing. Darwin spent much of the trip on land collecting samples of plants, animals and rocks, which helped him to develop an understanding of the processes that shape the Earth’s surface. Darwin’s analysis of the plants and animals that he gathered led him to express doubts on former explanations about how species formed and evolved over time.
Darwin’s work convinced him that natural selection was key to understanding the development of the natural world. The theory of natural selection says that individuals of a species are more likely to survive when they inherit(经遗传获得) characteristics best suited for that specific environment. These features then become more widespread and can lead eventually to the development of a new species. With natural selection, Darwin argued how a wide variety of life forms developed over time from a single common ancestor.
Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, in 1839. When Darwin’s eldest daughter, Annie, died from a sudden illness in 1851, he lost his belief in God. His tenth and final child, Charles Waring Darwin, was born in 1856. Significantly for Darwin, this baby was disabled, altering how Darwin thought about the human species. Darwin had previously thought that species remained adapted until the environment changed; he now believed that every new variation was imperfect and that a struggle to survive was what drove species to adapt.
Though rejected at the beginning, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is nowadays well accepted by the scientific community as the best evidence-based explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on Earth. The Natural History Museum’s library alone has 478 editions of his On the Origin of Species in 38 languages.
1. What made Darwin reconsider the origin and development of species?| A．Examining plants and animals collected. |
| B．His desire for a voyage to different continents. |
| C．Classifying samples in a journey to South America. |
| D．His passion for natural history at Edinburgh University. |
| A．used natural selection to develop new species |
| B．enjoyed being called nicknames related to science |
| C．learned some knowledge about plants when studying medicine |
| D．argued with others over the diversity of life forms for a long period |
| A．That he had ten children in all. | B．His youngest son’s being disabled. |
| C．That he lost his eldest daughter. | D．His marriage with Emma Wedgwood. |
| A．Darwin’s passion for medical science | B．Darwin’s theory and experiments |
| C．Charles Darwin’s changing interest | D．Charles Darwin’s life and work |
The last time a female British scientist won the Nobel Prize for chemistry was in1964. Her name was Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin.
Hodgkin was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1910, as the eldest of four daughters of John Crowfoot and his wife Molly. The girls were sent back to England when the First World War broke out. By the time she was 11 years old, Dorothy’s schooling had been a bit hit and miss. But she had spent a term
At every stage her parents, particularly her mother, encouraged her ambitions. No one ever said to her, as they did to other clever girls at the time, that
Hodgkin was the most important leader and innovator in her field. The impact of her work led to her becoming the only female British scientist
Accurate knowledge of the shape of penicillin was very important in understanding how it
Hodgkin’s work also had a huge impact on the treatment of diabetes. In 1969, after 35 years of hard work, she figured out the 3D shape of the insulin (胰岛素) molecule. Insulin is an important hormone (激素) used by the body to process sugars in food. Understanding
Hodgkin was not only an exceptional scientist but also was, and continues to be, an inspirational role model to generations of researchers, both male and female.
How Did Yuan Longping Revolutionize China’s Rice Production?
①Yuan Longping was born in 1930 in Hubei. As a child, he was very interested in plants and other living things. He grew up to be a curious and hard-working plant scientist. Yuan wanted to solve the problem of food shortages, so he began conducting experiments to improve rice yields per hectare (10,000 m2).
②Plants come in many different varieties; for example, some types of rice have long grains, while others have short grains. For centuries, people have been crossing different plant varieties to create hybrids. Such plants proved to have desirable qualities from both parents. Yuan believed that it was possible to do the same with rice. He tried different ways of creating rice hybrids, only to discover that his attempts were unsuccessful.
③Even though it often seemed too difficult to complete this task, Yuan didn’t give up. After many years of hard work, his experiments finally bore fruit. This was a major discovery since no one had previously been able to cross two different kinds of rice. It had a huge impact: the first hybrid rice variety increased China’s rice production by 100 million tonnes in little over a decade.
④Yuan didn’t stop there — instead, he continued experimenting and created super hybrid rice with yields over 15 tonnes of rice per hectare. Thanks to Yuan’s work, China became self-sufficient in rice. Our country continued to increase its rice yields to become one of the biggest food donors in the world. In 2019, he received the Medal of the Republic for his outstanding contributions. At the age of 90, Yuan Longping still hasn’t retired. With a growing global population, the world needs to produce enough food to feed everyone, and Yuan is working to make this happen.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4 . What Makes a Nobel Laureate?
Are there any predictors that point to who will be selected as Nobel laureates?
Is brilliance in childhood a predictor? When the 2006 chemistry laureate, Roger Kornberg, was asked what he wanted for Christmas, he said, “A week in the lab.”
Experts often recommend that people specialize in one field of work or research to maximize their chances of success.
There remains one quality that is essential. It is what Leon Lederman (physics, 1988) called “compulsive dedication.”
| A．What distinguishes Nobel laureates is passion for their work, work that engages their hearts as well as their heads. |
| B．But early privilege is not essential. |
| C．The typical Nobel laureate in science is a male born into a middle-class family. |
| D．In many Nobel laureates’ autobiographies, they pay tribute to an outstanding mentor. |
| E．In fact, Nobel laureates are mostly down-to-earth and discreet. |
| F．Yet recently published researches indicate that successful innovators take a broader path. |
5 . Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou helped by ancient Chinese remedy
Tu Youyou, in China, is being called the ”three noes“ winner: no medical degree, no doctorate (博士头衔), and she’s never worked overseas. However, it was she that was the first female Chinese scientist who had won the Nobel Prize. When it comes to her work, she is totally devoted.
In 1967, malaria (疟疾) spread by mosquitoes was killing Chinese soldiers fighting Americans in the jungles of northern Vietnam. A secret research unit was formed to find a cure for the illness and Tu was instructed to become the new head of Mission 523. She went to the southern Chinese island of Hainan to study how malaria threatened human health. For six months, she stayed there, leaving her four-year-old daughter at a local nursery. Her husband had been sent away to work at the countryside at the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, a time of extreme political disorder.
Despite much failure, finally, she with her team members found a brief reference to one substance, sweet wormwood (in Chinese Qinhao), which had been used to treat malaria in China around 400 AD.
The team tested the drug but they didn’t succeed until Tu Youyou returned to the original ancient text. After another careful reading, she heated the extract without allowing it to reach boiling point.
Without any hesitation, Tu Youyou volunteered to be the first human recipient of the new drug.“As the head of the research group, I had the responsibility,” she explained to the Chinese media. Tu Youyou is typically described in China as a “modest”woman. Her work was published anonymously (匿名地) in 1977, and for decades she received little recognition for her research.
In any case, Tu Youyou is consistently praised for her drive and passion. One former colleague says Ms Tu is “unsociable and quite straightforward”, adding that “if she disagrees with something, she will say it”.
Another colleague who has worked with Tu Youyou for more than 40 years, describes her as a “tough and stubborn woman”.
She is actually stubborn enough to spend decades piecing together ancient texts and apply them to modern scientific practices. The result has saved millions of lives.
1. The “three noes” in the first paragraph refers to the fact that __________.| A．Tu Youyou has no noble family background |
| B．Tu Youyou has no good interpersonal relationship |
| C．Tu Youyou has no top recognition in science |
| D．Tu Youyou has no overseas working experience |
| A．She was instructed to be the head of Mission 523. |
| B．She got the chance to study how malaria threatened human health. |
| C．She had to leave her four-year-old daughter at a local nursery. |
| D．She could go to work with her husband at the countryside. |
| A．they had not read the ancient books carefully |
| B．they had not followed Tu’s suggestions |
| C．they had lacked sufficient economic support |
| D．they had heated the extract to the boiling point |
| A．To be warmhearted enough to help her colleagues at work |
| B．To work hard whenever she come across any difficulty |
| C．To be devoted to her career and full of passion |
| D．To be stubborn enough to spend decades researching |
6 . Professor Heinz Wolff, who has died aged 89, was a bioengineering pioneer. He established the discipline, named it and, in a 60-year career, made significant contributions to medical research. But to the British public, he was best known as the dotty scientist who fronted The Great Egg Race, a BBC show in which colour-coded teams were set engineering challenges (the first was to transport an egg in a vehicle powered by rubber bands). With his trademark bow tie, half-moon glasses and Mittel-European accent, he looked really like Professor Branestawn, as described by W. Heath Robinson. Yet while he cheerfully exploited his reputation as a “peculiar egghead”, he was very serious about his work and inspired thousands of young people to consider scientific careers.
Born in Berlin in 1928, Heinz Wolff was the son of Jewish parents. His mother died in 1938, and the next year the family fled. They arrived in Britain on the day war was declared. “We really cut it rather fine,” he said on Desert Island Discs in 1998. After leaving school, he worked as a technician at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where he invented a machine to count red blood cells, and then at the National Institute for Medical Research’s pneumoconiosis research unit in Cardiff, where he designed a means of measuring dust levels in coal miners. He went on to study at University College London and graduated with a first in physics and physiology. Then, in 1983, he founded the Institute for Bioengineering at Brunel University. His particular interest was in technologies to improve the lives of older people, but he was also heavily involved in space research and worked as an adviser to the European Space Agency.
Wolff had made his first appearance on TV on Panorama in 1966, encouraging Richard Dimbleby to swallow a “radio pill”. On The Great Egg Race, which ran from 1979, his task was to get opponent teams representing organizations such as the chemical company ICI. Challenges included building a hovercraft from a lawnmower, and inventing a bicycle that could ride on water. Marks were awarded for entertainment value and technical accomplishment. The show ended in the mid-1980s, but Wolff continued to judge scientific competitions, on TV and elsewhere. A natural entertainer with an inexhaustible curiosity about the world, he said he’d be happy to dress up as a clown if it got children interested in science.
1. The word “dotty” (paragraph1) is closest in meaning to ________.| A．strange | B．serious | C．famous | D．genius |
| A．His family left Berlin after World War II began. |
| B．He used to major in physics and physiology. |
| C．He invented a machine while in University College London. |
| D．His interest lay in helping those living in war-stricken areas. |
| A．he could keep being curious about the world |
| B．he could combine entertainment and technology |
| C．he could help arouse children’s interest in science |
| D．he could appear on TV to judge scientific competitions |
| A．Representing a chemical company. |
| B．Designing a method to count red blood cells. |
| C．Being the first scientist to front TV shows. |
| D．Setting up the subject of bioengineering. |
At what age do you hit the peak of your career?
When John Goodenough won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2019 at the age of 97, scientists breathed a sigh of relief. Many had worried that the committee would not get around to honouring his groundbreaking work on lithium-ion batteries from 1980.
Goodenough was
The answer has changed over time. Science laureates
Differences
Now, however, the ages of peak achievement in each field are much closer, though physicists still tend to be slightly younger than average. Physicists need fewer papers to make a big contribution, which may be
Regardless of discipline, future Nobel laureates in science are most productive from late youth to early middle age. Perhaps that is when they find themselves at the sweet intersection of fresh ideas and the means to pursue them. The median age of first-year PhD students in the OECD, a club of mainly rich countries, is 29. Promising young researchers who want to start their own labs often get funding around five years after they graduate.
Surprisingly, writers, who depend less on doctoral degrees and grants for lab equipment, also do their best work as they enter middle age. Some Nobel laureates in literature,
Perhaps people destined to do prizewinning work become happier, and therefore more creative, as they enter
8 . The Greatest Living Briton
Voted the Greatest Living Briton, Tim Berners-Lee was born in East Sheen, an unremarkable part of southwest London. He grew up in a family where computers and mathematics were seen as a fun, everyday part of life. His parents had met while working on the Ferranti Mark 1, the first commercially available computer. From an early age, he picked up on their enthusiasm and recalls early conversations with his father about the potential of computers.
Berners-Lee left school to study at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he built his first computer from an old television. Gaining a first class degree in physics, he went into software development for a number of different companies, before finally ending up at CERN in Switzerland.
It was at CERN that the ideas which would make him famous began to take shape.
By 1989, CERN had the biggest Internet site in Europe. Berners-Lee’s vision was that computers all over the world would be able to talk to each other using a language—hypertext—that he would create. In 1991, he put the first website online. This provided an explanation of the World Wide Web.
Berners-Lee is modest about his achievements. He explains that he was just one of many people at the forefront of computer technology at the time. He also feels that if he had not invented the web, someone else would have done it. However, if that had been the case, the Internet might have been something very different. It might, for example, not have been free.
Berners-Lee is still heavily involved in the World Wide Web. He left CERN in 1994 to set up the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization whose aim is to improve the quality of the web. It is also committed to maintaining the idea that the web should be free.
In 2012, he was honored at the Summer Olympics where he was introduced as the “Inventor of the World Wide Web”. In characteristic fashion, he sent an online message that was instantly spread out on screens both in the stadium and all around the world: “This is for everyone.”
| A．Many people claim that Berners-Lee’s greatest achievement is that the web carries no fees, no charges and no restrictions. |
| B．His goal was to provide researchers with the ability to share their results, techniques, and practices without having to exchange e-mail constantly. |
| C．Berners-Lee also spends a lot of time meeting world leaders and business people promoting the web and its free status. |
| D．In 2004, he was given a special honour for his pioneering work by Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ and he became Sir Tim Berners-Lee. |
| E．Visitors could also learn more about hypertext, find out how to create their own webpages, and how to search the web for information. |
| F．Although the “Internet” already existed in some form, in those days it consisted of separate unconnected networks. |
9 . John Goodenough shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his crucial role in developing the revolutionary lithium-ion (锂离子) battery, the rechargeable power pack that is ubiquitous in today’s wireless electronic devices and electric and hybrid vehicles.
He was the unwanted child of a Yale University professor of religion and a mother with whom he never bonded. Friendless except for three siblings, a family dog and a maid, he grew up lonely in an emotionally distant household. He was sent to a private boarding school at 12 and rarely heard from his parents.
With patience, counseling and intense struggles for self-improvement, he overcame his reading disabilities. He studied Latin and Greek in the boarding school and mastered mathematics at Yale and meteorology in the Army Air Forces after graduation.
At M. I. T.’s laboratory in the 1950s, he was a member of teams that helped lay the groundwork for random access memory (RAM) in computers and developed plans for the first air defense system. In 1976, as federal funding for his work ended, he moved to Oxford to teach and manage a chemistry lab, where he began his research on batteries.
Seeking to improve on the traditional design, Dr. Goodenough crafted the cathode with layers of lithium and cobalt oxide. The arrangement also produced a higher voltage and made the battery far more stable. He succeeded after four years. It was the first lithium-ion battery with the capacity to power both compact and relatively large devices, a quality that would make it far superior to anything on the market.
However, there was little interest in his discovery at first, and Oxford declined to patent it. In 1991, Sony, recognizing the commercial potential of the emerging technology, combined Dr. Goodenough’s cathode (阴极) and a carbon anode (阳极) to produce the world’s first safe rechargeable lithium-ion battery for the marketplace. A revolution in wireless mobile devices thus exploded, populating the planet with smartphones, laptop and tablet computers and clean, quiet plug-in vehicles.
In 2019, when he was 97 and still active in research, Dr. Goodenough became the oldest Nobel Prize winner in history. He received no royalties (技术使用费) for his work on the battery, only his salary for six decades as a scientist and professor at three prestigious colleges. Caring little for money, he signed away most of his rights. He shared patents with colleagues and donated incomes that came with his awards to research and scholarships.
“Goodenough’s original cathode structure is still used in the batteries found in almost all personal electronics,” Helen Gregg wrote in The University of Chicago Magazine. “When he was tinkering with cathodes back at Oxford, Goodenough had no idea of the impact his battery would have, but in fact, he was changing the world.”
1. According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?| A．John invented the first lithium-ion battery with large capacity in 1991. |
| B．John was an orphan brought up in a private boarding school. |
| C．Oxford realized the new battery’s potential before Sony did. |
| D．Sony’s first rechargeable lithium-ion battery is globally accepted. |
① military projects ② frustrations in Oxford
③ school education ④ popularity of John’s battery
| A．①②④③ | B．③④①② | C．③①②④ | D．①③②④ |
| A．innocent | B．pessimistic | C．generous | D．honest |
| A．A man who charged the world | B．The pursuit of education |
| C．Tips from a successful scientist | D．A lonely child in boarding school |
10 . Around 1886 Albert Einstein began his school career in Munich. As well as his violin lessons, which he had from age six to age thirteen. Two years later he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium and after his religious education was given at school. He studied mathematics, beginning around 1891.
In 1894 Einstein’s family moved to Milan but Einstein remained in Munich. In 1895 Einstein failed an examination that would have allowed him to study for a diploma as an electrical engineer at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich. Einstein gave up German citizenship in 1896 and was to be stateless for a number of years. He didn’t even apply for Swiss citizenship until 1899, citizenship being granted in 1901.
By 1909, Einstein was recognized as a leading scientific thinker. He was appointed a full professor at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague in 1911. In fact, 1911 was a very significant year for Einstein since he was able to make predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would appear to be bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun. this would be high significant as it would lead to the first experimental evidence in favor of Einstein’s theory.
When British eclipse expeditions (日食探险队) in 1919 confirmed his predictions. Einstein was idolized (崇拜) by the popular press. The London Times ran the headline on 7 November 1919:
Revolution in science – new theory of the Universe – Newtonian ideas overthrown.
In 1920 Einstein’s lectures in Berlin were stopped by demonstrations which, although officially denied, were almost certainly anti-Jewish. Certainly there were strong feelings expressed against his works during this period which Einstein replied to in the press quoting Lorentz, Planck and Eddington as supporting his theories.
Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for reality rather for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. In fact he was not present in December 1922 to receive the prize being on a voyage to Japan. Around this time he made many international visits. He had visited Paris earlier in 1922 and during 1923 he visited Palestine. After making his last major scientific discovery on the association of waves with matter in 1924 he made further visits in 1925, this time to South America.
In 1949 Einstein became a citizen of the United States, but chose to retain his Swiss citizenship. He made many contributions to peace during his life. In 1944 he made a contribution to the war effort by hand writing his 1905 paper on special relativity and putting it up for auction (拍卖). It raised six million dollars, the manuscript today being in the Library of Congress.
By 1949 Einstein was unwell. A spell in hospital helped him recover but he began to prepare for death by drawing up his will in 1950. He left his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a university which he had raised funds for on his first visit to the USA, served as a governor of the university from 1925 to 1928 but he had turned down the offer of a post in 1922 as he was very critical of its administration.
One more major event was to take place in his life. After the death of the first president of Israel in 1952, the Israeli government decided to offer the post of the second president to Einstein. He refused but found the offer an embarrassment since it was hard for him to refuse without causing offence.
One week before his death Einstein signed his last letter. It was a letter to Bertrand Russell in which he agreed that his name should go on a manifesto urging all nations to give up nuclear weapons.
1. What’s the nationality of Einstein?| A．America | B．Swiss | C．Germany | D．America and Swiss |
| A．the theory of relativity |
| B．predictions on the ray of light |
| C．the photoelectric effect |
| D．his discovery on the association of waves with matter |
| A．He was a Jew |
| B．He wanted to show his opposition to the war |
| C．He was on the way to Japan then |
| D．He was very busy giving lectures |
| A．He raised 6 million dollars by hand writing his paper on special relativity for world peace. |
| B．He was offered the post of the first president of Israel. |
| C．He didn’t leave his scientific papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for he was very identical of its administration. |
| D．Einstein was opposed to the idea of giving up nuclear weapon. |
