1 . Barbara McClintock was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. She made important discoveries about genes and chromosomes(染色体).

Barbara McClintock was born in 1902 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her family moved to the Brooklyn area of New York City in 1908. Barbara was an active child with interests in sports and music. She also developed an interest in science.

She studied science at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Barbara was among a small number of undergraduate students to receive training in genetics in 1921. Years later, she noted that few college students wanted to study genetics.

Barbara McClintock decided to study botany, the scientific study of plants, at Cornell University. She completed her undergraduate studies in 1923. McClintock decided to continue her education at Cornell. She completed the master’s degree in 1925. Two years later, she finished all her requirements for the doctorate degree.

McClintock stayed at Cornell after she completed her education. She taught students botany. The 1930s was not a good time to be a young scientist in the United States. The country was in the middle of the great economic depression. Millions of Americans were unemployed. Male scientists were offered jobs. But female geneticists were not much in demand.

An old friend from Cornell, Marcus Rhoades, invited McClintock to spend the summer of 1941 working at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It is a research center on Long Island, near New York City. McClintock started a temporary job with the genetics department. A short time later, she accepted a perpetual position in the laboratory and got continual incomes. This gave her the freedom to continue her research without repeatedly asking for financial aid.

By the 1970s, her discoveries had had an effect on everything from genetic engineering to cancer research. McClintock won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for her discovery of the ability of genes to change positions on chromosomes. She was the first American woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize.

1. When did McClintock get a doctorate degree?

A．In 1921.

B．In 1923.

C．In 1925.

D．In 1927

2. In the middle of the great economic depression in the US, ________.

A．male scientists were in great demand

B．male scientists were out of work

C．female geneticists were not in demand at all

D．young female scientists might have trouble finding a job

3. Which of the following jobs was beneficial to McClintock’s research?

A．A permanent position in the laboratory.

B．A temporary job in the genetics department.

C．A job as a botany teacher.

D．A job to research cancer.

4. Why was McClintock awarded a Nobel Prize?

A．Because she received a degree in genes and chromosomes.

B．Because she contributed to genetic engineering and cancer research.

C．Because she made important discoveries about genes and chromosomes.

D．Because she was the first American woman who studied genes and chromosomes.

2 . Directions: Read the passage carefully. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

Einstein's Opinions on Creative Thinking

“The greatest scientists are artists as well,” said Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists and an amateur pianist and violinist.

For Einstein, insight did not come from logic or mathematics.     1     As he told one friend, “When I examine myself and my methods of thought. I find that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge. All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

But how did art differ from science for Einstein? Surprisingly, it wasn't the content of an idea, or its subject, that determined whether something was art or science, but how the idea was expressed. If what is seen and experienced is described in the language of logic, then it is science. If it is communicated and recognized intuitively, then it is art.     2     That's why he said that great scientists were also artists. Einstein first described his intuitive thought processes at a physics conference in Kyoto in 1922 when he indicated that he used images and feelings to solve his problems and found words, logical symbols or mathematical equations later.

    3     “If I were not a physicist,” he once said, “I would probably be a musician. I often think in music and I see my life in terms of music. I get most joy in life out of music. Whenever I feel that I have come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in my work. I would bury myself in music, and that would usually solve all my difficulties.”

Music provided Einstein with a connection between time and space which both combine spatial and structural aspects. “The theory of relativity occurred to me my intuition and music is the driving force behind this intuition”, said Einstein. “My parents had me study the violin from the time I was six.     4    .”

A．There is no doubt that my theory was a great breakthrough then.

B．Instead, it came from intuition and inspiration

C．For Einstein, it was the humanities that mainly contributed to his achieve-ments.

D．Einstein also owed his scientific insight and intuition mainly to music.

E．My new discovery is the result of musical perception.

F．Einstein himself worked intuitively and expressed himself logically.

3 . Katherine Jonson,winner of the presidential medial of freedom,refused to be limited by society5 expectations of her gender and race while expanding the borders of humanity’s reach--President Barack Obama,2015

Using little more than a pencil,a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country,Mrs.Johnson, who died at 101,calculated the precise path that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and,after Neil Armstrong's history-making moonwalk,let it return to Earth Wet throughout Mrs.Johnson's 33 years in NASAN& Flight Research Division and for decades afterward,almost no one knew her name.She was just one of those unheralded women who,well before the modern feminist(女权)movement,worked as NASA mathematicians.But it was not only her gender that kept her long marginalized and long unsung Katherine Johnson,a West Virginia native,was also African-American.

But over time,the work of Mrs.Johnson and her colleagues--countless calculations done mainly by hand,using slide rules,chart paper and inefficient desktop calculating machines--won them a level of acceptance that for the most competitive race.

“NASA was a very professional organization,”Mrs.Johnson told The Observer of Fayetteville,N.C.,in 2010. “They didn't have time to be concerned about what color I was.”Nor,she said,did she.”I don't have a feeling of inferiority,”Mrs.Johnson said on at least one occasion.”Never had.I m as good as anybody,but no better.”

To the end of her life,Mrs.Johnson refused praise for her role in sending astronauts into space,keeping them on course and bringing them safely home.”I was just doing my job,”Mrs.Johnson repeatedly said so.But what a job it was--done,no less,by a woman born at a time when the odds were more likely that she would die before age 35 than even finish high school.

1. The underlined word “unheralded”most probably means______.

A．not adequately paid

B．not previously mentioned

C．not officially rewarded.

D．not fast promoted

2. It was ___________ put together that made Mrs. Johnson a miracle.

A．her skin color, her gender and the facilities

B．her gender, her intelligence and the facilities

C．her skin color, her gender and her intelligence

D．her intelligence, her skin color and the facilities

3. From Mrs. Johnson's comments on NASA and her own job, we can conclude that ____________.

A．she was confident and modest

B．NASA shows no interest in staff's races

C．She was superior to most women in her age

D．NASA is professionally organized and supportive

4. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A．Woman Made Calculations

B．NASA Marginalized Mathematicians

C．Gender Divided Organizations

D．Mathematician Broke Barriers

4 . Directions：Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Tributes poured in last week to the world-famous British physicist Stephen Hawking, whose insights     1     modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions. He died at the age of 76 on March 14.

Hawking was given only a few years to live after being diagnosed with ALS at the age of 21. The illness left him in a wheelchair and largely     2     to speak expect through a voice synthesizer. Nevertheless, Hawking completed his doctorate on the origins of the universe three years later and became a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Caius College.

Hawking’s first major     3     came in 1970. With mathematician Roger Penrose, Hawking used Einstein’s theory of relativity to     4     the origins of time and space to singularity, a single point of zero size and infinite density where all the laws of physics would have broken down. Their work gave mathematical expression to the Big Bang theory. Hawking was the first to try to     5     relativity with quantum mechanics. In 1974, he put forward that black holes leaked radiation, now known as“Hawking radiation,”and would eventually disappear with a tremendous explosion. The proposal     6     to one of the most passionate debates in modern cosmology—before Hawking, it was widely accepted that black holes were completely black and would     7     forever.

In 1982, Hawking was among the first to show how tiny changes in the distribution of matter might give rise to the     8     of galaxies in the universe and lay the seeds of stars, planets and life as we know it.

For 30 years, Hawking was Cambridge’s Lucasian professor of mathematics, arguably Britain’s most distinguished chair and a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton. He received 12 honorary degrees and was awarded a Companion of Honor by Queen Elizabeth in 1989. The 1988 publication of A Brief History of Time won Hawking international     9    . The book, through which the professor brought complex science to a    10     audience, has sold at least ten million books in 40 languages.

5 . Leonardo da Vinci was one of the great creative minds of the Italian Renaissance(文艺复兴), not only hugely influential as an artist and sculptor but also immensely talented as an engineer, scientist and inventor.

Da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 near the Tuscan town of Vinci. He was apprenticed(便当学徒) to the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence and in 1478 became an independent master. In about 1483, he moved to Milan to work for the ruling Sforza family as an engineer, sculptor, painter and architect. From 1495 to 1497 he produced a mural of The Last Supper in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

Da Vinci was in Milan until the city was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family was forced to flee. He may have visited Venice before returning to Florence. During his time in Florence, he painted several portraits, but the only one that survived was the famous Mona Lisa (1503-1506).

In 1506, Da Vinci returned to Milan, remaining there until 1513. This was followed by three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king Francis I, Leonardo moved to the Chateau of Cloux, near Amboise in France, where he died on 2 May 1519.

The fame of Da Vinci’s surviving paintings has meant that he has been regarded primarily as an artist, but the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks show the most brilliant of minds. He wrote and drew on subjects including geology, anatomy (which he studied in order to paint the human form more accurately), flight, gravity and optics, often moving from subject to subject on a single page, and writing in left-handed mirror script. He “invented” the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute some 500 years ahead of their time.

If all this work had been published in a form easy to understand, Da Vinci’s place as a pioneering scientist would have been beyond dispute. Yet his true genius was not as a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two – an ‘artist-engineer.’ His painting was scientific, based on a deep understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light and shade. His science was expressed through art, and his drawings and diagrams show what he meant and how he understood the way the world works.

1. How many years did Da Vinci spend in Milan altogether?

A．2 years.	B．23 years.
C．7 years.	D．16 years.

2. Which of the following places may Da Vince not have visited?

A．Florence	B．France
C．Venice	D．Rome

3. What does the word “anatomy” in Paragraph 5 mean?

A．The scientific study of the structure of human or animal bodies.

B．The scientific study of people, their societies, cultures, etc.

C．The study of ancient societies by examining what remains of their buildings, tools, etc.

D．The scientific study of the stars and planets.

4. Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?

A．Da Vinci passed away at the age of 67 in France.

B．Da Vinci tended to focus on several subjects on one single page in his notebook.

C．Da Vinci had designed the helicopter centuries before it was actually invented.

D．Da Vinci was more of a scientist than an artist because he was a pioneer scientist of his age.

6 . Most people know that Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the first person to win it twice. However, few people know that she was also the mother of a Nobel Prize winner.

Born in September, 1897, Irene Curie was the first of the Curies’ two daughters. Along with nine other children whose parents were also famous scholars, Irene studied in their own school, and her mother was one of the teachers. She finished her high school education at the College of Sévigné in Paris.

Irene entered the University of Paris in 1914 to prepare for a degree in mathematics and physics. When World War I began, Irene went to help her mother, who was using X-ray facilities (设备) to help save the lives of wounded soldiers. Irene continued the work by developing X-ray facilities in military hospitals in France and Belgium. Her services were recognised in the form of a Military Medal by the French government.

In 1918, Irene became her mother’s assistant at the Curie Institute. In December 1924, Frederic Joliot joined the Institute, and Irene taught him the techniques required for his work. They soon fell in love and were married in 1926. Their daughter Helene was born in 1927 and their son Pierre five years later.

Like her mother, Irene combined family and career. Like her mother, Irene was awarded a Nobel Prize, along with her husband, in 1935. Unfortunately, also like her mother, she developed leukemia because of her work with radioactivity (辐射能). Irene Joliot-Curie died from leukemia on March 17, 1956.

1. Why was Irene Curie awarded a Military Medal?

A．Because she received a degree in mathematics.

B．Because she contributed to saving the wounded.

C．Because she won the Nobel Prize with Frederic.

D．Because she worked as a helper to her mother.

2. Where did Irene Curie meet her husband Frederic Joliot?

A．At the Curie Institute.

B．At the University of Paris.

C．At a military hospital.

D．At the College of Sévigné.

3. When was the second child of Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot born?

A．In 1932.	B．In 1927.
C．In 1897.	D．In 1926.

4. In which of the following aspects was Irene Curie different from her mother?

A．Irene worked with radioactivity.

B．Irene combined family and career.

C．Irene won the Nobel Prize once.

D．Irene died from leukemia.