【英语语言学习】历年大事记

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

 

There are lots of lists as the year draws to a close: best films, best books, Persons of the Year. This year, NPR is looking at the numbers that tell this year's story. So, our math guy, Keith Devlin, has a nomination¹ for number of the year. He joins us now from Stanford University, where he's a professor of something that's too long for me to state. Keith, thanks very much for being with us.

 

KEITH DEVLIN: Hi, Scott. Good to be with you again.

 

SIMON: All right. Drum roll, please: the number of the year is...

 

DEVLIN: The number of the year is 2.

 

SIMON: All right. Now, I was hoping for 0, as it represents the number of World Series won by the Cubs² since the Roman era. But why 2?

 

DEVLIN: Because the big story in mathematics this last year - and it was a big story and an exciting story - was to do with something called the twin prime conjecture³, which is about two primes and how close two primes can be. Primes, remember, are these whole numbers bigger than 1 that cannot be divided evenly by any other number. So, a 3, 5, 7. The closest two primes can be together is 2. 5 and 7 is a pair of twins, 11 and 13 is; 17 and 19 is. But as you go up the numbers, the primes themselves get thin - they thin out. It's like going up in a space rocket and the air gets thinner. And so it wasn't at all clear whether you could get infinitely⁴ many of these twin primes. In fact, we still don't know that we can, but, boy, have we come pretty close to being able to prove it.

 

SIMON: Have they created new numbers? I mean, what kind of mystery can there be about this when, as far as I'm concerned, I thought all the numbers had already been assigned.

 

DEVLIN: Ah. But it's like gossiping about your friends. It's not the fact that you have the friends, it's things you learn about them that you didn't know and you think, wow, have they been doing this all that time?

 

SIMON: I'm surprised you have any friends after that, but go ahead.

 

DEVLIN: I'm losing them as I speak, I realize that. What was really exciting about this was until, I think it was maybe April or May of this year, nobody had been able to prove that there were infinitely many of these pairs. And the question's been around for - in a sense, it's been around for thousands of years. It's been looked at in detail for 100 years. No one really came close to proving it. But then in May, this adjunct faculty⁵ member at the University of New Hampshire got pretty close by mathematical standards.

 

SIMON: This is Yitang Zhang, right?

 

DEVLIN: That's right. He actually proved that if you relax friendship to being not adjacent but to being within 70 million of each other then in fact there are infinitely many pairs of primes. Now, that doesn't sound a great deal but going down from no knowledge to 70 million was a big step for mathematicians⁶. And it started an avalanche⁷ because mathematicians have been in a world record hunt, like Phelps does when he gets in a swimming pool. And in the space of a few months, it went down from 70 million to 600. Now, we still got a way to go from 600 to 2, which is the twin prime conjecture...

 

SIMON: This was James Maynard at the University of Montreal.

 

DEVLIN: Yeah, James Maynard, he got the current world record, which is 600. And that was very recently. That was November the 19th he announced it. It was all done on the Internet, and at one stage the record was tumbling at about every half-hour. So, mathematics, which usually takes place over months and years, for a period of a few months was going gangbusters fast. And this record was tumbling down. It seems to have settled at 600. It might creep down. I don't think the methods that we've got now will bring us down to 2. But 2 is within grasp. And because this ancient problem about 2 is within grasp, I would say 2 is absolutely the number of the year in mathematics. It's the number mathematicians have been talking about.

 

SIMON: Keith, are there implications for this finding for those of us who think it's got nothing to do with us whatsoever⁸ should know nevertheless?

 

DEVLIN: You can bet that whenever there's an advance to do with prime numbers, the intelligence community is absolutely on top of it. Because in our knowledge of the prime numbers lies pretty well all of the secret codes that we use for communications around the world. It's all to do with the difficulty of computing⁹ some of the things we know theoretically happen in mathematics.

 

SIMON: Keith Devlin, our math guy and distinguished¹⁰ professor at Stanford. Thanks very much for being with us.

 

DEVLIN: Nice to be with you, Scott.

 

SIMON: And, by the way, we'd like to know the number you'd use to describe 2013. You can join us on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram or Facebook. The hashtag is NPRNoty. It's almost like NPR naughty, isn't it? But not quite.

1 nomination   

n.提名，任命，提名权

参考例句：

• John is favourite to get the nomination for club president.约翰最有希望被提名为俱乐部主席。
• Few people pronounced for his nomination.很少人表示赞成他的提名。

2 cubs   

n.幼小的兽，不懂规矩的年轻人( cub的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a lioness guarding her cubs 守护幼崽的母狮
• Lion cubs depend on their mother to feed them. 狮子的幼仔依靠母狮喂养。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

4 infinitely   

adv.无限地，无穷地

参考例句：

• There is an infinitely bright future ahead of us.我们有无限光明的前途。
• The universe is infinitely large.宇宙是无限大的。

5 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

6 mathematicians   

数学家( mathematician的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? 你以为我们的数学家做不到这一点吗？ 来自英汉文学
• Mathematicians can solve problems with two variables. 数学家们可以用两个变数来解决问题。 来自哲学部分

7 avalanche   

n.雪崩，大量涌来

参考例句：

• They were killed by an avalanche in the Swiss Alps.他们在瑞士阿尔卑斯山的一次雪崩中罹难。
• Higher still the snow was ready to avalanche.在更高处积雪随时都会崩塌。

8 whatsoever   

adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么

参考例句：

• There's no reason whatsoever to turn down this suggestion.没有任何理由拒绝这个建议。
• All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,do ye even so to them.你想别人对你怎样，你就怎样对人。

9 computing   

n.计算

参考例句：

• to work in computing 从事信息处理
• Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。

10 distinguished   

adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的

参考例句：

• Elephants are distinguished from other animals by their long noses.大象以其长长的鼻子显示出与其他动物的不同。
• A banquet was given in honor of the distinguished guests.宴会是为了向贵宾们致敬而举行的。