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Sir Paul Callaghan在ICMRM11晚宴上的演讲
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Sir Paul Callaghan在国际核磁共振领域享有盛誉,是一位知名度很高的科学家。在刚刚结束的ICMRM11上被授予“终身成就奖”，获奖后，Paul即席发表演讲，全文如下：
Paul Callaghan's Speech in the Banquet Hall of the Great Hall of China, Beijing
17 August 2011
I am so delighted to speak here in The Great Hall of the People at this extraordinary conference. The Magnetic Resonance Microscopy conference is quite unique in the sense that nobody wants to miss it. We know how much we enjoy not only the science, but the great companionship of fine colleagues.
The history of magnetic resonance is a long one. I would like to think it began in 1897 when a young New Zealander called Ernest Rutherford arrived at Cambridge University. Back in New Zealand he had worked on Hertzian waves for his Master’s degree at Canterbury University. But his Cambridge PhD supervisor, J J Thompson, suggested he try to discover what Marie Curie’s radiation was. Rutherford found that is was comprised of alpha particles. And in 1910, he used the alpha particle to discover the atomic nucleus. But Ernest Rutherford could not possibly have believed what could come out of that discovery. Thirty five years later, in 1945, we had the discovery of the magnetic resonance, and in 1950, the spin echo. I remember 40 years later, when I was in France at the 1989 ISMAR conference in Morzine, John Waugh saying, “NMR is dead, but there may be some twitches left in the corpse”. How wrong he was. Here we are, 20 years later, and magnetic resonance is in great heart.
We see so often that technology that creates science, more often than the other way around. The discovery of radio waves and radio communication created magnetic resonance. The development of computing created magnetic resonance imaging while super conductors gave us biomedical NMR. Now developments in cell phone technology and rare earth magnets have enabled portable NMR. What nanotechnology will bring we can only imagine.
Our community is in great heart. It spans across physics, chemistry, food science, geophysics, medicine and chemical engineering, to name but a few areas. And if any one conference represents all those branches of science so well, this one does. There is something remarkable about NMR people because we think broadly. We live in the world of many diverse areas of science and technology, more so than people in any other area of science that I can think of.
To the younger scientists of this community, I would like to make a suggestion. You are in a field where you understand how science and technology benefits humanity. But there is something more that science calls from us. Carl Sagan once said, “Science is our candle in the dark”. It is what has enabled humanity to struggle out of a dark world indeed. And we have values in science. Those values are called upon by the world with its enormous problems and by the countries from which we come.
The values of science include: an evidence base for decisions; peer review has a way of life; expressing complex ideas, simply and clearly; what numbers mean and what they do not mean; that nature is rational but is not benign; that knowledge is never to be feared; that common sense should not be trusted because science is a means of discovering knowledge that defies common sense.
We are contrarians at heart in science. We have a point of view to express in the world outside our laboratory walls that is needed by our countries, needed by our communities and needed by business. I encourage you, the younger members of this audience, to think of science as a form of leadership that you can offer.
I want to thank this extraordinary community, which I have so much enjoyed being part of and I want to particularly thank Professor Lizhi Xiao for his excellent organization of this conference. To be speaking in this place that I have known about for so many years my life, is a great honour.
I would like to finish with a salutation in the language of my country:
“Kia ora tatou,
e nga tangata whenua me nga manuhiri, haere mai, haere mai, haere mai.
Kia kaha, ake, ake, ake”
(“Thank you to you all,
to the local people and to the visitors, thrice greetings.
May you have strength forever”)
17 August 2011
I am so delighted to speak here in The Great Hall of the People at this extraordinary conference. The Magnetic Resonance Microscopy conference is quite unique in the sense that nobody wants to miss it. We know how much we enjoy not only the science, but the great companionship of fine colleagues.
The history of magnetic resonance is a long one. I would like to think it began in 1897 when a young New Zealander called Ernest Rutherford arrived at Cambridge University. Back in New Zealand he had worked on Hertzian waves for his Master’s degree at Canterbury University. But his Cambridge PhD supervisor, J J Thompson, suggested he try to discover what Marie Curie’s radiation was. Rutherford found that is was comprised of alpha particles. And in 1910, he used the alpha particle to discover the atomic nucleus. But Ernest Rutherford could not possibly have believed what could come out of that discovery. Thirty five years later, in 1945, we had the discovery of the magnetic resonance, and in 1950, the spin echo. I remember 40 years later, when I was in France at the 1989 ISMAR conference in Morzine, John Waugh saying, “NMR is dead, but there may be some twitches left in the corpse”. How wrong he was. Here we are, 20 years later, and magnetic resonance is in great heart.
We see so often that technology that creates science, more often than the other way around. The discovery of radio waves and radio communication created magnetic resonance. The development of computing created magnetic resonance imaging while super conductors gave us biomedical NMR. Now developments in cell phone technology and rare earth magnets have enabled portable NMR. What nanotechnology will bring we can only imagine.
Our community is in great heart. It spans across physics, chemistry, food science, geophysics, medicine and chemical engineering, to name but a few areas. And if any one conference represents all those branches of science so well, this one does. There is something remarkable about NMR people because we think broadly. We live in the world of many diverse areas of science and technology, more so than people in any other area of science that I can think of.
To the younger scientists of this community, I would like to make a suggestion. You are in a field where you understand how science and technology benefits humanity. But there is something more that science calls from us. Carl Sagan once said, “Science is our candle in the dark”. It is what has enabled humanity to struggle out of a dark world indeed. And we have values in science. Those values are called upon by the world with its enormous problems and by the countries from which we come.
The values of science include: an evidence base for decisions; peer review has a way of life; expressing complex ideas, simply and clearly; what numbers mean and what they do not mean; that nature is rational but is not benign; that knowledge is never to be feared; that common sense should not be trusted because science is a means of discovering knowledge that defies common sense.
We are contrarians at heart in science. We have a point of view to express in the world outside our laboratory walls that is needed by our countries, needed by our communities and needed by business. I encourage you, the younger members of this audience, to think of science as a form of leadership that you can offer.
I want to thank this extraordinary community, which I have so much enjoyed being part of and I want to particularly thank Professor Lizhi Xiao for his excellent organization of this conference. To be speaking in this place that I have known about for so many years my life, is a great honour.
I would like to finish with a salutation in the language of my country:
“Kia ora tatou,
e nga tangata whenua me nga manuhiri, haere mai, haere mai, haere mai.
Kia kaha, ake, ake, ake”
(“Thank you to you all,
to the local people and to the visitors, thrice greetings.
May you have strength forever”)
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-2401-481883.html
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