Six Lessons We Can Learn from Geniuses

By Mary Helen

“天才出自勤奮”這句話是多數(shù)人都知道的真理。當(dāng)然，除了勤奮之外，我們還可以向天才們學(xué)到其他成功之道，如：我們在迎接新的挑戰(zhàn)時需要具備創(chuàng)新的思維，通過證據(jù)來形成理論，當(dāng)萬事俱備時，再借助一點點的運氣……天才難以定義，當(dāng)你的不懈努力有了結(jié)果，可能就是走向天才的第一步。

What can we learn about genius from these minds? We’ve come up with1come up with： 想出。six lessons.

Lesson one: New challenges require new ways of thinking

Part car, part jet fighter, part spaceship, Bloodhound SSC aims to be the first land vehicle to break the 1,000mph barrier.2Bloodhound SSC： 獵犬超音速汽車，SSC為supersonic car的縮寫，是由英國斥巨資打造、號稱世界上跑得最快的車；mph： 每小時英里數(shù)；barrier：（數(shù)字、限度、水平等的）關(guān)口，難關(guān)。One of the key challenges has been to design the wheels. How do you create the fastest wheels in history, make them stable and reliable at supersonic speeds3supersonic speed： 超音速。, and with limited resources?

After much deliberation, and devising ideas that pushed the boundaries of material technology,4deliberation： 考慮；devise： 設(shè)計，發(fā)明。Mark Chapman, chief engineer of the Bloodhound project said the team decided to take a step back and change the way they were trying to solve problems. “There’s very little we’ve actually developed that’s new,” he says, “what’s unique is how we apply technologies.”

They adopted an approach called the design of experiments—a mathematical technique of problem solving through doing lots of little experiments and then looking at the statistics all glued together.5他們采用了一種名為實驗設(shè)計的手段，即用數(shù)學(xué)方法來解決問題，把通過很多小實驗得到的數(shù)據(jù)匯總在一起去研究。glue together： 膠合，聚集?！癆ll of a sudden, where we’d been knocking our head against the wall for maybe two, three, four months, we came up with a wheel design that would hold together and was strong enough,” he says.

Lesson two: Let evidence shape your opinion

Like his peers, geophysicist Steven Jacobsen from Northwestern University believed that water on Earth originated from comets.6peer： 同事，同行；geophysicist：地球物理學(xué)家；Northwestern University： 美國西北大學(xué)，是一所知名私立研究大學(xué)；comet： 彗星。But by studying rocks, which allow scientists to peer back in time,he discovered water hidden inside ringwoodite, which lies in the Earth’s mantle,7peer back： 回顧，此處peer 為動詞，意為“凝視”；ringwoodite： 尖晶橄欖石；mantle： 地幔。and which suggests that the oceans gradually made its way out of the planet’s interior many centuries ago.

“I had a pretty hard time convincing others,” he admits. Yet two key pieces of evidence uncovered this year seem to support his point of view. Time will tell whether the new theories are true, and there may be further twists8twist： 意想不到的轉(zhuǎn)折。to the tale. “But thinking about the fact that you may be the first person to see something for the first time doesn’t happen very often,” he says. “When it does it’s thrilling.”

Lesson three: It really is 9 perspiration： 汗水，努力。9% perspiration9

Sheila Nirenberg at Cornell University is trying to develop a new prosthetic device for treating blindness.10Cornell University： 康奈爾大學(xué)，是一所位于美國東北紐約的研究型綜合大學(xué)；prosthetic device： 假肢器官。Key to this was cracking the code that transmits information from the eye to the brain.11這個技術(shù)的關(guān)鍵就是破解眼睛與大腦之間的信息傳遞密碼。crack：破解?！癘nce I realised this, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep—all I wanted to do was work,” says Nirenberg.

“Sometimes I’m exhausted and I get burnt out12get burnt out： 心力交瘁，累壞。,” she adds.“But then I get an email from somebody in crisis or somebody who’s getting macular degeneration13macular degeneration： 黃斑變性，這是國際眼科界公認(rèn)的最難治療的眼病之一。, and they can’t see their own children’s faces, and it is like, ‘How can I possibly complain?’ It gives me the energy to just go back and keep doing it.”

Lesson four: The answer isn’t always what you expect

Sylvia Earle has spent decades trying to see the ocean with new eyes. Her “dream machine” is a submarine that could take scientists all the way to the bottom of the deepest ocean floor.What sort of material could best withstand the types of pressure you would encounter thousands of feet below the ocean surface?“It could be steel, it could be titanium, it could be some sort of ceramic, or some kind of aluminium system,”14titanium： 鈦；ceramic： 金屬氧化物；aluminium： 鋁。says Earle.“But glass is the ultimate material.” By her estimates, a glass sphere about four-to-six inches (10-15cm) thick should be able safely explore the ocean depths she dreams of exploring.15estimate： 估計，估算；sphere： 球體。

Glass is the oldest material known to man and one of the least understood, says Tony Lawson, Earle’s engineering director at Deep Ocean and Exploration Research Marine. “It has a higgledy-piggledy molecular structure a bit like a liquid, rather than the ordered lattices often found in other solids.”16“（玻璃）中的混亂的分子結(jié)構(gòu)有點兒像液體（中的分子結(jié)構(gòu)），而不像在其他固體中通常會發(fā)現(xiàn)的那種規(guī)則格子?！県iggledy-piggledy： 混亂的；molecular structure： 分子結(jié)構(gòu)；ordered lattice： 有序晶格。As a result, when glass is evenly squeezed from all sides—as it would be under the ocean—the molecules cram17cram： 這里指“緊緊地擠在一起” 。closer together and form a tighter structure.

Lesson five: A little luck goes a long way

It was hailed as one of the biggest success stories in the history of space exploration—20 years of planning ended earlier last year with the Philae lander rendezvousing with Comet 67P over 300 million miles (480 million kilometres) away from Earth.18hail： 歡呼；Philae lander： 菲萊登陸器，2014年11月12日登陸“丘留莫夫－格拉西緬科”彗星，完成人造探測器的首次彗星登陸，成為有史以來第一個在彗核表面著陸并開展科學(xué)考察的探測器；rendezvous： 會合；Comet 67P： 67P彗星，即丘留莫夫-格拉西緬科彗星，這顆彗星表面有大型巖石、沙丘。

The biggest challenge, says Stephan Ulamec, manager of the Philae lander programme, was how to design a probe to land on a body whose makeup they had little knowledge about.19probe： 探測器；body： 天體；makeup：組成?！癢e had no idea of the size, we had no idea of the day-night cycle, which in fluences the thermal design, we had no idea of the gravity,20day-night cycle： 晝夜交替周期；thermal design： 散熱設(shè)計；gravity： 重力。so how fast would the lander impact, we had no idea how the surface looked,” he says.

They needed to create design parameters that could cope with an extremely wide range of possible comet structures.21design parameter： 設(shè)計參數(shù)；cope with： 應(yīng)付，處理。Even then, not everything went to plan, and two decades of meticulous planning could have failed within minutes at touchdown.22meticulous： 一絲不茍的；touchdown：著陸。

Lesson six: Genius is inde finable23 inde finable： 難下定義的。

“It’s a funny word: the word ‘genius’,” says Nirenberg. “I just sort of ignore it and just go on with life. You just do what you do independent of whatever label’s attached to you. I don’t know really how else to explain it.”