万物简史(MP3+中英字幕) 第135期:基本物质(3)
日期:2016-07-19 09:13

(单词翻译:单击)

Scheele's one notable shortcoming was a curious insistence on tasting a little of everything he worked with, including such notoriously disagreeable substances as mercury, prussic acid (another of his discoveries), and hydrocyanic acid—a compound so famously poisonous that 150 years later Erwin Schrodinger chose it as his toxin of choice in a famous thought experiment. Scheele's rashness eventually caught up with him. In 1786, aged just forty-three, he was found dead at his workbench surrounded by an array of toxic chemicals, any one of which could have accounted for the stunned and terminal look on his face.

金勒有个明显的缺点,他对做试验用的什么东西都感到好奇,坚持要尝一点儿,包括一些又难闻又有毒的物质,比如汞、氢氰酸(这也是他的一项发现)和甲腈。甲腈是一种有名的有毒化合物,150年以后,欧文·薛定谔在一次著名的思维实验中选它作为最佳毒素。金勒鲁莽的工作方法最后断送了他的性命。1786年,才43岁的他被发现死在工作台旁,身边堆满了有毒的化学品,其中任何一种都可以造成他脸上那目瞪口呆的最后一个表情。

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Were the world just and Swedish-speaking, Scheele would have enjoyed universal acclaim. Instead credit has tended to lodge with more celebrated chemists, mostly from the English-speaking world. Scheele discovered oxygen in 1772, but for various heartbreakingly complicated reasons could not get his paper published in a timely manner. Instead credit went to Joseph Priestley, who discovered the same element independently, but latterly, in the summer of 1774. Even more remarkable was Scheele's failure to receive credit for the discovery of chlorine. Nearly all textbooks still attribute chlorine's discovery to Humphry Davy, who did indeed find it, but thirty-six years after Scheele had.

要是这世界是公正的话,要是大家都会说瑞典语的话,金勒本来会在全世界享有盛誉。实际上,赞扬声往往都给了更有名的化学家,其中大多数是英语国家的化学家。金勒在1772年发现了氧,但由于种种辛酸而复杂的原因,无法及时发表他的论文。功劳最终归给了约瑟夫·普里斯特利,他独立发现了同一个元素,但时间要晚,是在1774年的夏天。更令人瞩目的是,金勒没有得到发现氯的功劳。几乎所有的教科书现在仍把氯的发现归功于汉弗莱·戴维。他确实发现了,但要比金勒晚36年。

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重点单词
  • insistencen. 坚持,强调,坚决主张
  • attributevt. 把 ... 归于 n. 属性,特征,标志,象征
  • notoriouslyadv. 臭名昭著地,众所周知地
  • elementn. 元素,成分,组成部分,(复数)恶劣天气
  • poisonousadj. 有毒的,恶意的
  • eventuallyadv. 终于,最后
  • remarkableadj. 显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的
  • rashnessn. 轻率,鲁莽
  • acclaimn. 喝采,欢呼,赞同 v. 欢呼,喝采,称赞
  • shortcomingn. 短处,缺点