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A great man died late last month, one of the last of the pioneering biologists who essentially created the modern science of molecular biology. His name was Alexander Rich; he was 90 years old; and he had spent the past 57 years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was still going to work right up until the last two months of his life.
上个月，一个伟大的人物去世了。他名叫亚历山大·里奇(Alexander Rich)，是当世仅存的几位缔造了现代分子生物科学的生物学先驱之一。他享年90岁，过去57年里一直是麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)教授，直到去世前两个月，他还在继续工作。
In her obituary of Rich in The Times last week, Denise Gellene recounted some of his scientific achievements: In 1973, some 20 years after James Watson and Francis Crick worked out the structure of DNA — theoretically at least — Rich proved them right, using “X-rays to produce a distinct image of the famous double helix.” He then went on to make important discoveries about the structure of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, and the way RNA translated genetic information in DNA. His work on RNA and DNA is one of the foundations of biotechnology and the biotech industry.
在《纽约时报》上周刊登的讣告中，作者德妮丝·杰林(Denise Gellene)讲述了里奇生前取得的科学成就：1973年，在詹姆斯·沃森(James Watson)和弗朗西斯·克里克(Francis Crick)（至少在理论上）得出DNA的结构20几年之后，里奇证实他们的论断是正确的，使用“X射线产生出了著名的双螺旋结构的清晰图像”。之后，他又继续发现了核糖核酸(RNA)的结构，以及RNA将遗传信息翻译到DNA当中的方式，这些发现都十分重要。他在RNA和DNA方面开展的工作是生物技术及生物技术产业的一个基石。
Rich was a scientist with a wide-ranging curiosity. In a video that was put together when he won an important award in 2008, Rich talked about “the excitement associated with a discovery. You see something new,” he said. “When somebody else makes a discovery and I read about it, I get that same boost of awe and wonder about nature.”
里奇是一个兴趣广泛的科学家。在2008年获得一个重要奖项后制作的视频中，里奇谈道了“得出发现时的兴奋。你看到了新东西，”他说。“我读到别人的发现时，也会促使我对大自然产生相同的敬畏和惊奇。”
In his lifetime, he met Albert Einstein, worked under Linus Pauling, and knew everyone from Crick and Watson to the great physicists Leo Szilard and Richard Feynman. Rich co-founded several companies. He mentored scientists who would go on to make their own important discoveries. He helped establish Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, which is today one of that country’s leading scientific institutions. He was a member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, whose founding mission was to eliminate nuclear weapons. “Alex lived a rich and important life,” wrote Phillip Sharp, a scientist at M.I.T. who was close to him. That he did.
在里奇的一生中，遇到过阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦(Albert Einstein)，曾在莱纳斯·鲍林(Linus Pauling)手下工作，认识克里克、沃森以及利奥·西拉德(Leo Szilard)和理查德·费曼(Richard Feynman)等等伟大的物理学家。里奇参与创立了数家公司，他指导过的科学家接下来又相继做出了重要的发现。他帮助建立了以色列的魏茨曼科学研究学院(Weizmann Institute of Science)，如今它成了该国领先的科研机构之一。他是帕格沃什科学和世界事务会议(Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs)的成员，这个组织创始使命是销毁核武器。与里奇关系紧密的麻省理工科学家菲利普·夏普(Phillip Sharp)写道，“亚历山大度过了丰富而重要的一生。”的确如此。
But as I looked into his life this week, three things struck me, all of which could be said not only of Rich, but of most members of that remarkable generation.
然而本周我回顾他的一生时，有三件事让我印象深刻。这三件事不仅体现在里奇身上，而且在那一代的大多数杰出人物身上也都有体现。
The first was how maddeningly difficult — and painstaking — it was to create the building blocks of molecular biology. In the early 1950s, recalled Jack Strominger, a scientist at Harvard who was Rich’s roommate in college, the federal government did not hand out grants to scientists the way it does today; so just getting the money to do science was hard.
首先，打下分子生物学的基础，异常艰难，而且需要付出辛勤的努力。曾是里奇大学室友的哈佛大学(Harvard)科学家杰克·施特罗明格(Jack Strominger)回忆道，在上世纪50年代初期，联邦政府并不像今天这样向科学家发放拨款，所以单单是拿到科研经费就相当困难。
“You walk into a lab today and you see the rows of equipment,” Strominger said. Equipment was much harder to come by, and not as precise. “As late as the 1980s,” he says, “X-ray crystallography was a difficult field. Now a young person can do it quickly.” It took many years — of trial and error — before Rich proved, through X-ray crystallography, that the Crick and Watson double helix structure was correct. “Persistence is luck,” Rich was known to say. That certainly was true of his generation of biologists.
“你今天走进实验室里，能看到成排的仪器，”施特罗明格说。但当时得到实验设备要难得多，而且也没那么精密。他说，“迟至1980年代，X射线晶体学都还是一个很难的领域，现在一个年轻人就可以很快做好。”里奇经过了很多年——很多年的试错——才终于通过X射线晶体学的手段，证实了克里克和沃森研究发现的双螺旋结构是正确的。“坚持不懈就是幸运，”里奇曾这样说。这对于他那一代生物学家来说，无疑是成立的。
The second insight was how collaborative the scientists were. One good example was something called the RNA Tie Club, of which Rich was a member. Founded by the physicist George Gamow, it was a collaborative effort to figure out the structure of RNA. (Each member was given a tie with a green-and-yellow RNA helix; hence the name of the group.) Although the members met infrequently, they circulated papers among each other and talked freely about their ideas, not fearing that their ideas would be stolen or misused.
第二个洞见在于，当时的科学家多么乐于协作。一个例子是被称为“RNA领带俱乐部”(RNA Tie Club)的组织，里奇就是其中的成员。由物理学家乔治·伽莫夫(George Gamow)建立的这个组织，目的是通过协作研究出RNA的结构。（每一位成员都得到了一条印有黄绿相间的RNA螺旋图案的领带，俱乐部因此而得名。）尽管成员间聚会并不频繁，但是他们相互之间会传阅论文，自由地交流观点，不用担心自己的观点被人偷走或误用。
That kind of collaboration is something that has been largely lost in the scientific world. “Everything is so much more competitive now,” says Strominger. Scientists today are more likely to look for niches they can dominate. They compete to get their discoveries published ahead of rivals. Or to start a biotech company and make millions. “It would be pretty hard to capture the flavor of that period again,” says Strominger.
这种程度的合作，如今在科学界基本上已经不复存在。“所有领域的竞争现在都更激烈了，”施特罗明格说。今天的科学家更倾向于找一些能够主导的细分领域，他们争先恐后地要抢在对手前面发表论文介绍自己的发现，要么就是抢着开一家生物科技公司，赚到数百万美元。施特罗明格说，“很难再找到那个时代的气息了。”
Finally, one gets the sense — and this is especially true of Rich — that they didn’t get into science to get rich or become famous. They loved science for its own sake. Rich would call other scientists, often in the evening, just to talk shop. “I never saw Alex bad-mouth another scientist, even when he had reason to,” said Robert Gallo, the director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “I don’t know anybody who was more interested in science for its own sake than that man. He lived it and loved it.”
最后，我们还能感觉到，他们投身科学事业不是为了发财或成名，这一点在里奇身上尤为突出。他们热爱科学只是为了科学本身。里奇会给其他科学家打电话，常常是在傍晚，只是谈工作。“我从来没有见过亚历山大说其他科学家的坏话，即使他有理由那样做时也不会，”马里兰大学医学院人类病毒学研究所主任罗伯特·加洛(Robert Gallo)这样说。“他对科学感兴趣是出于科学本身，我不知道谁在这一点上还能超过他。科学就是他的生活，他热爱科学。”
In the course of talking to Strominger, I discovered that, at 89, he is also still going to work every day. Why didn’t scientists like him and Rich retire? I asked.
在与施特罗明格交谈的过程中，我发现他在89岁高龄仍然每天去工作。我问道，为什么像他和里奇这样的科学家，不退休呢？
“Why should we?” he replied. “It’s too much fun.”
“为什么要退休？”他回答道。“工作太有趣了。”
