评论丨诺奖得主：中国在科研领域拥有巨大优势

Editor's note: Michael Levitt is 2013 Chemistry Nobel Laureate. This is his speech at the TV forum "Science in an uncertain world" joinly held by the CGTN Think Tank and the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Hello, everybody. My name is Michael Levitt. I'm a professor of structural and computational biology at Stanford University in California. I'm in the department of structural biology in Stanford medical school. And I would like to tell you a little bit about my life, a little bit about my work on COVID-19, and also some important advice for young people. 

大家好，我是迈克尔·莱维特，斯坦福大学结构和计算生物学教授。我现在所在的地方是斯坦福大学医学院结构生物学系。今天我会给大家简单介绍一下我的经历和我针对新冠病毒所做的工作，也会给年轻人提一些重要的建议。

I've been an independent scientist since I was 20 years old. That's 53 years ago. And that's a very young age to become an independent scientist, but I think anybody who is a scientist can become independent, young. And I think being independent young is very important. So let me just say a little bit about my own life. I started out working on the structure of proteins, and most of my work has been about how proteins move, how DNA moves. It's the way a molecule moves, something that is called a trajectory. 

我从20岁开始，就是一名独立科学家，那是53年前。20岁对于独立科学家这个职业来说是个很轻的年纪，但我认为所有的科学工作者都可以在年轻时就做到独立。年轻时独立是非常重要的。下面我简单介绍一下我的经历。我的职业生涯是从研究蛋白质结构开始的。我的工作内容大多涉及蛋白质和脱氧核糖核酸的运动，也就是研究分子的运动方式，也叫做轨迹。

Now, other things also move and have trajectories. An epidemic moves. The number of cases increases with time. The number of deaths increases with time. So every epidemic, in some ways, has a trajectory. When I first heard about the outbreak in Wuhan in the end of January, I basically started to look at the outbreak. I focused on it, and quite quickly realized that like a dynamical object, it was slowing down. It wasn't accelerating. It was slowing down. It was coming to an end. This allowed me to feel really confident by the last week of February that things will be fine in Wuhan and indeed, all of China. 

其他的事物也有轨迹。流行病是动态的。随着时间流逝，病例数不断增加，死亡数也在不断增加。所以每一场流行病，从某种意义上来说，都有自己的轨迹。我一月底听说武汉暴发了疫情之后就开始对其进行研究。我密切关注着疫情发展并很快意识到，它就像一个运动的物体一样在逐渐减速。不是加速，而是减速，有停下来的趋势。这让我相信，到二月份最后一周，武汉甚至整个中国就会没事。

But meanwhile, the virus started up in Iran, then South Korea, Iran, Italy. And, in fact, although most places in the world seem now to be past the virus, there is still new activity. There's been a lot of interest in China's big trading partners, countries like Germany and Europe, and the United States. In the United States, the virus finally does seem to be coming under control. I think after we see the results of the U.S. election, everything will quieten down, and we will know where the virus is going. In Europe, things started off very quickly, but by the middle of May, everything seemed to have stopped. But just today and yesterday, we're seeing some potentially disturbing news where they do seem to be some increase in the number of deaths reported as being from COVID-19. It's not clear whether these are really extra deaths or deaths that would have happened anyway. We will know this in a few days' time. 

与此同时，病毒开始在伊朗传播，之后是韩国、伊朗、意大利。实际上，虽然全球大多数国家目前看来似乎即将控制住病毒，但疫情仍有新的发展。大家对中国的主要贸易伙伴关注较多，比如德国和其他欧洲国家，还有美国。美国似乎终于要把病毒控制住了。我认为美国大选尘埃落定以后，一切都会平静下来，我们也会了解疫情的走向。欧洲的疫情暴发速度非常快，但到了五月中旬似乎基本上结束了。但是就在昨天和今天，我们又看到了一些令人担忧的消息，新冠肺炎的死亡病例数又增加了。目前还不清楚这些到底真的是疫情造成的死亡还是自然死亡，几天之后我们就会知道结论。

So now let me, in the last part of my talk, say something about something that for me is my greatest passion. I have realized that the future belongs to young people. That might seem so obvious. We also have lots of respect for old people, but old people are not what's driving science. The work I got my Nobel Prize for was done when I was 20 and 21. Later on, it didn't really matter. 

在我讲演的最后，请允许我谈一谈我个人最关注的话题。我意识到，未来属于年轻人。这似乎是显而易见的道理。我们也非常尊重年长的人，但他们不是推动科学发展的主力军。帮助我获得诺贝尔奖的研究是我在20到21岁时做的，在那之后的工作其实不那么重要。

So we have to let young people do important science. And where we have to do this is by giving them confidence in their independence. They should study with great people, but they should be independent from the beginning. They should have their ideas. They should be able to do their work. New ideas come from young people. The great advances in technology, the great founders of startup companies, whether it's Apple, or Microsoft or Weixin, or Alibaba, all came from very young people. And it's important to remember that the young people are the people that are driving the future. 

所以我们必须让年轻人参与重要的科学工作，方法就是让他们有信心独立。他们当然要和杰出的人合作，但从一开始，他们就应该是独立的。他们应该有自己的想法，应该能够独立开展研究。新的观点来自年轻人。伟大的技术进步、杰出的初创企业，不论是苹果、微软、微信还是阿里巴巴，都出自年轻人之手。还要记住的重要一点是，年轻人是未来的塑造者。

Now how do you encourage young people? Firstly, you let them be curious. Young people need to be curious. Every young person is naturally curious. You mustn't kill the curiosity. You must let the young people do what they want to do to have ideas. And also it's very important to realize that if you're doing science, you are wrong. 

那么如何鼓励年轻人呢？首先，要让他们拥有好奇心。年轻人必须保持好奇，每个年轻人都带着与生俱来的好奇心，决不能将其扼杀。必须让年轻人做自己想做的事，这样才能激发新的想法。还要明白的重要一点是，从事科学研究的人永远在犯错。

A good scientist is wrong in 90% of the time. And a really good scientist is wrong 99% of the time. So this is a very important thing to remember. If you can't be wrong, you cannot do great science. If you are right all the time, you're not doing great science, you're doing easy science. Science is about discovering very, very difficult things and making those things available to everybody. Everybody can do this. China has a real advantage in this area. It's the country with more young people than any other country in the world, probably by a factor of four or five. That's a huge advantage. Those young people are the treasure of future China and should be regarded as such. 

一个优秀的科学家90%的时间都是错的，一个非常优秀的科学家99%的时间都是错的。所以记住这一点很重要。如果你永远是对的，那你做的就不是伟大的科学研究，而只是简单研究。科学的本质是研究难度非常非常高的问题，再把成果向大众普及。这所有人都可以做。中国在这方面有着相当大的优势，因为中国的年轻人数量比任何其他国家都要高，可能达到4或5倍。这是极大的优势。这些年轻人是未来中国的宝贵财富，因此应该得到相应的重视。

Thank you very much. 

感谢大家。

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