我2001年间投给《自然》杂志Correspondence栏目的短稿

武夷山

Sir—Your short article “Genius loci” (Nature 409, January 4, 2001) is very enlightening. I have selectively translated it and the translation was already published in February 23, 2001 issue of Science and Technology Daily, one of China’s nationally circulating newspapers. The reason I did the translation is that nowadays a lot of Chinese are eagerly hoping to have scientists from the People’s republic China to win Nobel science prizes as early as possible, but they generally fail to think hard on why China’s record in winning Nobel prize has been so poor. Many of them seem blindly optimistic about the prospect that China will obtain the prize in the near future. Even Prof. Lu Yongxiang, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also said last December that China could achieve major scientific accomplishments at Nobel prize caliber within two or three decades.

So far there are only 6 Nobel laureates with Chinese blood, but P. R. China, as most populous country in the world, has not produced any one yet, which forms a sharp contrast with Hungary, which has contributed 10 Nobel prize winners to the world. It is not strange because China today to a large extent still lacks of the two factors that John von Neumann believed help Budapest become a cradle for great scientists—“multicultural background and external pressure”. However, as China continues its policy of reform and opening to the outside world and transforms itself into a mature market economy, which will be a prolonged process, the Chinese people will possess more diversified cultures and language skills, and the virtuous competition within the scientific community will upgrade the average capability of China’s scientific contingent. At that time, China should not be deficient of Nobel prize winners.

Wu Yishan   

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC)

15 Fuxinglu

Beijing 100038, China

博主今注：文中提到的那篇文章的原文见https://www.nature.com/articles/35051162.pdf