很多小伙伴都想读英文原著学英语，可每次看两页就放弃。为了帮助大家从阅读中找到乐趣，晓梅老师就带大家一起读英文原著，
看看有意思的故事，学学地道表达。先从A Short History of Nearly Everything《万物简史》开始。这本书从宇宙大爆炸开始讲现代科学史，穿插了很多科学家的生平故事，妙趣横生。本书作者Bill Bryson喜欢用口语化的语言叙述，因而里面的英语要比一般的原著通俗易懂。今天读第4章物理学家亨利·卡文迪什的片段。卡文迪什是德文郡公爵的孙子，德文郡公爵的宅邸就是位于英格兰峰区（Peak District，离谢菲尔德不远）的Chatsworth House，中国学生叫“达西庄园”，因为《傲慢与偏见》里达西先生家的庄园就是这里，英国版电影《傲慢与偏见》也在这里取过景。亨利·卡文迪什没在达西庄园住过，但现在里面收藏有他的笔记和书本。家里有这般豪宅的公子哥儿，竟然是个极度害怕社交的科学家。我们来看看他到底有多怪。
卡文迪什的成就
In the course of a long life Cavendish made a string of signal discoveries - among much else, he was the first person to isolate hydrogen and the first to combine hydrogen and oxygen to form water - but almost nothing he did was entirely divorced from strangeness.
在其漫长的一生中，卡文迪什有很多重大发现——比如，他第一个把氢分离出来，第一个把氢和氧结合形成水——但是他的每个举动都透着古怪。
To the continuing exasperation of his fellow scientists, he often alluded in published work to the results of experiments that he had not told anyone about. In his secretiveness, he did not merely resemble Newton, but actively exceeded him. His experiments with electrical conductivity were a century ahead of their time, but unfortunately remained undiscovered until that century had passed.
他经常在发表的论文中提到只有自己知道的实验结果，惹得同行恼怒不已。在保密研究结果这一点上，他比牛顿有过之而无不及。他关于电导率的实验比其他人早了100年，但遗憾的是100年后才被人发现。
Indeed, the greater part of what he did wasn't known until the late nineteenth century, when the Cambridge physicist James Clerk Maxwell took on the task of editing Cavendish's papers, by which time credit for his discoveries had nearly always been given to others.
直到19世纪晚期，剑桥大学物理学家詹姆斯·克拉克·麦克斯韦编辑卡文迪什的论文时，他的大部分成就才为人所知，而那时他的发现几乎都已经归功于其他人。
Among much else, and without telling anyone, Cavendish discovered or anticipated the law of the conservation of energy, Ohm's Law, Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, Richter's Law of Reciprocal Proportions, Charles's Law of Gases, and the principles of electrical conductivity. That's just some of it.
卡文迪什发现或预测了能量守恒定律、欧姆定律、道尔顿分压定律、里希特反比定律、查尔斯气体定律和电导率原理，但从未告诉过别人，而这些只是他全部成就中的一部分。
According to the science historian J. G. Crowther, he also foreshadowed 'the work of Kelvin and G. H. Darwin on the effect of tidal friction on slowing the rotation of the earth, and Larmor's discovery, published in 1915, on the effect of local atmospheric cooling... the work of Pickering on freezing mixtures, and some of the work of Rooseboom on heterogeneous equilibria'.
据科学史学家詹姆斯·杰拉德·克劳瑟说，卡文迪什预见了“开尔文和乔治·霍华德·达尔文关于潮汐摩擦减慢地球自转速度的作用的成果、1915年出版的拉莫尔关于局部大气冷却作用的发现……皮克林关于冷却剂的成果，以及罗斯邦关于多相平衡的成果”。
Finally, he left clues that led directly to the discovery of the group of elements known as the noble gases, some of which are so elusive that the last of them wasn't found until 1962.
最后，他还留下了发现一组名叫惰性气体的元素的线索，有些惰性气体非常难以获得，最后一种直到1962年才找到。
词汇与短语
1. during/in/throughout/over the course of something
During the course of our conversation, it emerged that Bob had been in prison. 在我们谈话的过程中发现，鲍勃曾蹲过监狱。
2. hydrogen，[ˈhaɪdrədʒən]，n. 氢气，氢
hydrogen bomb 氢弹
3. oxygen，[ˈɒksɪdʒən]，n. 氧气，氧
oxygen mask 氧气面罩
4. signal achievement/success/failure etc，重要的成就/成功/失败
The university has done me the signal honour of making me an Honorary Fellow. 这所大学授予我荣誉院士的殊荣。
5. noble gases，惰性气体，稀有气体
a noble gas or metal is not affected chemically by other substances 稀有气体或金属在化学上不受其他物质的影响
