萬物簡史 第90期:敲石頭的人們(22)

Unfortunately for Darwin, and for progress, thequestion came to the attention of the great LordKelvin (who, though indubitably great, was then stilljust plain William Thomson; he wouldn't be elevatedto the peerage until 1892, when he was sixty-eightyears old and nearing the end of his career, but Ishall follow the convention here of using the nameretroactively). Kelvin was one of the mostextraordinary figures of the nineteenth century—indeed of any century.

這個(gè)問題引起了開爾文勛爵大人(他肯定是一位了不起的人物，但到1892年才被提升為貴族，當(dāng)時(shí)他已經(jīng)68歲，接近他生命的盡頭，但我在這里還是按照慣例，溯及既往地使用這個(gè)名稱)的注意，這對達(dá)爾文以及對進(jìn)步來說是很不幸的。開爾文是19世紀(jì)的——也是任何世紀(jì)的——最杰出的人物之一。

The German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, no intellectual slouch himself, wrote thatKelvin had by far the greatest "intelligence and lucidity, and mobility of thought" of anyman he had ever met. "I felt quite wooden beside him sometimes," he added, a bit dejectedly.

德國科學(xué)家赫爾曼·馮·亥姆霍茨——他本人也是科學(xué)上的高手——寫道，開爾文是他遇到過的最“理解力強(qiáng)、洞察事理、思想活躍”的人。“在他的面前，我有時(shí)候覺得自己是木頭木腦的。”他不無沮喪地說。

The sentiment is understandable, for Kelvin really was a kind of Victorian superman. He wasborn in 1824 in Belfast, the son of a professor of mathematics at the Royal AcademicalInstitution who soon after transferred to Glasgow. There Kelvin proved himself such a prodigythat he was admitted to Glasgow University at the exceedingly tender age of ten.

這種心態(tài)是可以理解的，因?yàn)殚_爾文確實(shí)是維多利亞時(shí)代的超人。他1824年生于貝爾法斯特，父親是皇家學(xué)院的數(shù)學(xué)教授，過不多久就調(diào)到格拉斯哥。開爾文證明自己是個(gè)神童，小小年紀(jì)(10歲)就考上了格拉斯哥大學(xué)。

By the time he had reached his early twenties, he had studied at institutions in London andParis, graduated from Cambridge (where he won the university's top prizes for rowing andmathematics, and somehow found time to launch a musical society as well), been elected afellow of Peterhouse, and written (in French and English) a dozen papers in pure and appliedmathematics of such dazzling originality that he had to publish them anonymously for fear ofembarrassing his superiors. At the age of twenty-two he returned to Glasgow University to takeup a professorship in natural philosophy, a position he would hold for the next fifty-three years.

20歲出頭，他已經(jīng)在倫敦和巴黎的學(xué)府學(xué)習(xí)過，畢業(yè)于劍橋大學(xué)(他贏得該大學(xué)在賽艇和數(shù)學(xué)兩個(gè)方面的最高獎(jiǎng)，還抽空創(chuàng)建了一個(gè)音樂俱樂部)，當(dāng)選為彼得學(xué)院的研究員，(以英文和法文)寫了10多篇關(guān)于純粹數(shù)學(xué)和應(yīng)用數(shù)學(xué)的論文。這些作品都很有創(chuàng)見，他不得不匿名發(fā)表，免得使他的長輩們感到難堪。他22歲回到格拉斯哥，擔(dān)任自然哲學(xué)教授。在此后的53年里，他一直保有這個(gè)職位。