《自然》發佈年度十大科學人物:中國天才少年曹原居首

“The stories of these ten people capture some of the most memorable scientific events in 2018,” says Nature's chief features editor, Rich Monastersky, “and they force us to confront difficult questions about who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.”

《自然》特稿版主編裏奇-蒙拿斯特斯基表示：“十大人物的故事濃縮了2018年度最難忘的科學事件，這些事件迫使我們思考我們究竟是誰、我們從哪裏來、以及我們要去向何處的難題。”

Physicist Yuan Cao was only 21 when he helped discover a trick to make graphene capable of conducting electricity without resistance, launching a new area of physics.

中國物理學家曹原協助發現了讓石墨烯實現超導的方法，當時他年僅21歲。該研究成果開創了物理學一個全新的研究領域。

Cao admits that his situation is unusual, but says he isn’t special. After all, he did spend a full four years at university: “I just skipped some of the boring stuff in middle school.”

曹原承認自己的情況並不常見，但說自己並不特別。畢竟，他在大學裏還是待滿了四年，“我只是跳過了中學階段比較無聊的時期。”

Cao loves to take things apart and rebuild them. At heart, he is “a tinkerer”, his supervisor says.

他的導師說，曹原在內心深處是個"修補匠"，喜歡把東西拆開重裝。

“Every time I go in, it’s a huge mess, with computers taken apart and pieces of telescope all over his desk.”

他說：“每次我進他的辦公室，裏面都亂糟糟的，桌上堆滿了計算機和自制望遠鏡的零件。”

Despite his youth and shy manner, colleagues say that Cao’s maturity shines through in his persistence.

儘管年輕又害羞，同事們都說曹原的成熟表現在堅持不懈上。

“He wasn’t happy, but he just rolled up his sleeves and continued working,”

他的導師說："他不開心，但他只是捲起袖子繼續幹了。"

“There are so many things we can do,” says Cory Dean, a physicist at Columbia University in New York City. “The opportunities at hand now are almost overwhelming.”

"我們能做的事情太多了。"位於紐約的哥倫比亞大學物理學家克里·迪恩說道，"手邊的各種機遇都有點應接不暇了。"

Palaeogeneticist Viviane Slon helped make one of 2018’s most surprising discoveries when she and her colleagues sequenced DNA from a 90,000-year-old bone and found that it came from the offspring of a union between a Neanderthal mother and a father from the extinct human group known as Denisovans.

古遺傳學家薇薇安·斯隆與同事在對一個9萬年前的骨骼進行DNA測序時，發現該骨骼來自於尼安德特人母親與已經滅絕的丹尼索瓦人父親的後代。這也是2018年度最出人意料的發現之一。

Another physicist, Jess Wade, made news through her remarkable efforts to raise the profile of women and people of color in science, including by writing hundreds of Wikipedia entries for female scientists.

物理學家傑斯·維德爲提高女性和有色人種在科學界的地位付出了巨大努力，包括爲女性科學家創建數百條維基百科詞條。

Robert-Jan Smits made waves in publishing by launching Plan S, a bold effort to make more scientific papers open access.

羅伯特·簡·史密斯發起的“S計劃”是一項推進科研論文開放獲取的大膽倡議，掀起了科學出版業的巨浪。

Open data was also central to the work of Barbara Rae-Venter, who used public genome data to help identify the Golden State killer, who committed multiple murders in California during the 1970s and 1980s.

此外，開放數據也是芭芭拉·李-溫特的工作重心，她通過公開的基因組數據，協助警方逮捕了曾在上世紀七八十年代犯下數起兇殺案的“金州殺手”。

Another data set preoccupied astronomer Anthony Brown, whose team coordinated the release of a massive trove of information from the Gaia spacecraft, which has tracked more than a billion stars.

另一位潛心研究數據集的天文學家安東尼·布朗率領團隊，發佈了蓋亞探測器對10億多顆恆星的大規模追蹤數據。

Meanwhile, Makoto Yoshikawa led the Hayabusa2 mission at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to visit a dumpling-shaped asteroid to collect samples and then return them to Earth.

與此同時，由日本宇宙航空研究開發機構的吉川真領導的“隼鳥2號”任務，造訪了一顆形狀類似餃子的小行星（Ryugu“龍宮”），並準備將採集的樣本帶回地球。

Climate researcher Valérie Masson-Delmotte had a key role in the stark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned that nations might have only a dozen years before Earth’s temperature reaches a point that would transform ecosystems and destroy many coral reefs.

氣候研究專家瓦萊麗·馬鬆-德爾莫特在政府間氣候變化專門委員會發布的重要報告中起到了關鍵作用。該報告警告稱，距離地球氣溫達到轉變生態系統、破壞大量珊瑚礁的程度只剩下十幾年的時間。

Bee Yin Yeo, Malaysia’s minister of energy, science, technology, environment and climate change, is featured for leading environmental efforts to reduce single-use plastics.

馬來西亞能源、科學、技術、環境及氣候變化部長楊美盈帶頭倡導了減少一次性塑料使用的環保行動。

Chinese scientist He Jiankui captured global attention last month when he announced he had edited the genomes of twin baby girls. This drew widespread condemnation over concerns that he had ignored ethical considerations and exposed the infants to potential risks.

中國科學家賀建奎上個月宣佈編輯了一對雙胞胎女嬰的基因組，引發全球關注。他的做法受到了普遍批評，人們譴責其無視倫理，並將雙胞胎女嬰置於潛在風險之中。

He, who is now not speaking to the press, disappeared from the world stage as quickly as he had emerged.

賀建奎現在已不在媒體發聲。他在世界舞臺上匆匆登場，又匆匆消失。