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Throughout his youth, the young Haldane helped his father with experiments. By the time he was a teenager, the two often tested gases and gas masks together, taking turns to see how long it took them to pass out.
在整个年轻时代，小霍尔丹一直是他父亲做实验的帮手。到10来岁的时候父子俩经常一起测试气体和防毒面具，轮流观察要经过多长时间他们才会昏死过去。
Though J. B. S. Haldane never took a degree in science (he studied classics at Oxford), he became a brilliant scientist in his own right, mostly in Cambridge. The biologist Peter Medawar, who spent his life around mental Olympians, called him "the cleverest man I ever knew." Huxley likewise parodied the younger Haldane in his novel Antic Hay, but also used his ideas on genetic manipulation of humans as the basis for the plot of Brave New World. Among many other achievements, Haldane played a central role in marrying Darwinian principles of evolution to the genetic work of Gregor Mendel to produce what is known to geneticists as the Modern Synthesis.
小霍尔丹没有获得过科学方面的学位（他在牛津大学学的是古典学课程），但凭着自己的能力成了一位杰出的科学家，大部分时间里在剑桥为政府工作。一生跟智力超群的人打交道的生物学家彼得·梅达沃称他为“我见过的最聪明名的人”。赫胥黎也以小霍尔丹为原型在小说《古怪的圆圈舞》里塑造人物，还以他关于遗传决定人的本性的思想为基础，设计了小说《美妙的新世界》里的情节。在其他成就方面，小霍尔丹还把达尔文的进化论与格雷戈尔·孟德尔在遗传方面的成就结合起来，提出了被遗传学家称之为“新途径”的理论。
Perhaps uniquely among human beings, the younger Haldane found World War I "a very enjoyable experience" and freely admitted that he "enjoyed the opportunity of killing people." He was himself wounded twice. After the war he became a successful popularizer of science and wrote twenty-three books (as well as over four hundred scientific papers). His books are still thoroughly readable and instructive, though not always easy to find. He also became an enthusiastic Marxist.
与众不同的是，小霍尔丹觉得第一次世界大战是“一次很愉快的经历”，直言不讳地承认他“喜欢有个杀人的机会”。他本人也受过两次伤。战争结束以后，他成功地成为一名科学普及工作者，写了23本书（以及400多篇科学论文）。他的书至今依然可读性很强，很有教育意义，虽然不总是容易找得找。他还成了一名热忱的马克思主义者。
