Recently, the speech of Yang Shuping, a female student studying abroad in the University of Maryland, has caused widespread heated discussions on the Internet.
At the same time, this video also made another graduation speech video
This rural child named He Jiang is the first Chinese to speak at the Harvard doctoral graduation ceremony.
is different from "Sweet and Fresh" . He pointed out the problems in China without flattery, neither humble nor arrogant, and placed hope for China's future.
is also a graduation speech. In sharp contrast, the right and wrong are judged immediately.
Famous teachers produce great disciples , this is true.
It turns out that behind this Harvard academic master He Jiang, there is another more powerful scientist, big shot - Zhuang Xiaowei .
In He Jiang's eyes, she is her own role model (idol and role model) , she is the true legend of the master level.
Zhuang Xiaowei and He Jiang
Genius girl, University of Science and Technology Junior Class, Chinese woman closest to the Nobel Prize, American Academy of Sciences youngest Chinese academician, Harvard University dual-recruitment professor, the first Chinese female scientist to win the American "Genius Award", Harvard laboratory named after her...
These are all the halos she has.
Zhuang Xiaowei was born in Rugao City, Jiangsu Province in 1972. His parents are professors at the University of Science and Technology of China.
Although I have never learned pinyin and literacy formally, when I was years old, Zhuang Xiaowei was already a second-year student at the Affiliated Primary School of University of Science and Technology.
However, in the class, is the youngest but the smartest student.
Zhuang Xiaowei's family portrait, the first on the left is Zhuang Xiaowei
Influenced by his parents, Zhuang Xiaowei has been interested in science since he was a child, and is also attracted by the beauty of rigorous reasoning in physics.
When she was in junior high school, she won the first place in the national mathematics, physics and chemistry competition.
15 years old, she was admitted to the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China with her top scorer with her score of more than 600 points in the college entrance examination.
In the genius class, Zhuang Xiaowei was not afraid at all.
With her love for physics, she does not miss every detail of physics.
She didn't care much about her grades, but in the end she took the four major mechanics courses to .
, the legendary record of " Grand Slam", has been broken by no one at the University of Science and Technology so far.
Zhuang Xiaowei's genius image is also deeply rooted in the youth class.
The classmate in the junior class recalled, "Secret Wisdom is unique and has the ability to use both minds. We can do atomic physics homework while listening to "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and doing atomic physics homework, which makes us admire it."
After graduating from the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China, Zhuang Xiaowei went to the United States to start her doctoral career. That year, she was only 19 years old and .
In 2003, this genius girl was favored by the American MacArthur "Genius Award" and received a prize of 500,000 US dollars.
She is the first Chinese woman to win this honor and the youngest among the winners.
MacArthur Genius Award, the prize amount is $500,000
In 2006, she became a dual-taught professor in the Department of Physics and Chemistry at Harvard University.
At the same time, a single molecule biophysics laboratory named after her was built.
After that, she led 21 doctors and postdoctoral fellows to start studying the process of influenza, AIDS, SARS and other viruses invading host cells.
Zhuang Xiaowei's laboratory website home page
Genius girl, Genius youth class, "Genius Award", as if all her experiences are related to her talent.
But in fact, no achievements will come so naturally.
Only Zhuang Xiaowei himself knows the hardships of growth.
25-year-old Zhuang Xiaowei graduated with a doctorate, tutor Shen Yuanrang encouraged her who performed well to find a teaching position.
Stanford University told Zhuang Xiaowei that she was very satisfied with all aspects and was preparing to leave her a position.
Zhuang Xiaowei was extremely excited and began to become a little self-inflated.
After all, her classmate is still a postdoctoral fellow, so she is already an assistant professor at Stanford.
Zhuang Xiaowei, California, Berkeley, PhD graduation photo
However, when she was complacent, she also ushered in the first blow in her life.
Stanford University changed its words at the last moment, thinking that she Not Ready only gave her the opportunity to study for a postdoctoral degree at Stanford University.
Zhuang Xiaowei cried for a long time and began to reflect on his complacency.
Serena Williams' postdoctoral supervisor Zhu Diwen
After this, no matter which university called her to invite her to attend the teaching position, she refused one by one.
Because she also sees herself clearly that she is indeed Not Ready, and she cannot lose her most essential motivation for the sake of the professor's glory.
, Zhuang Xiaowei, who calmed down, decided to join Zhu Diwen in Stanford University's laboratory.
Zhu Diwen is a Chinese physicist who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and is also the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Zhuang Xiaowei and Zhu Diwen took a photo
Top professors and top students meet, and something new is destined to happen.
Two physicists, saying "Why not?" , suddenly turned to the fields of chemistry and biology that they were completely unfamiliar with.
You may think that you are a Stanford Ph.D. Even if you are studying in the physics department, biology will definitely not be much worse.
But Zhuang Xiaowei's situation is that he doesn't even know what the difference between DNA and RNA is.
The reason is that Zhuang Xiaowei's youth class environment is very free. Except for the compulsory English and Chinese, you can take other courses freely.
, while she herself chose physics and mathematics entirely based on her interests, and she didn't learn a single biology.
Later she often laughed at herself, "I couldn't even figure out the difference between DNA and RNA at that time. I was completely ignorant and fearless."
Interdisciplinary is accidental, but it is definitely not because of accident.
In the first two years, she was almost always exploring and testing, without any success, and crying was commonplace.
...
With his efforts, in 2006, Zhuang Xiaowei established an experiment named after her at Harvard University. The construction of the
laboratory has also made her life busier.
Work 7 days a week, starting from 10 a.m. every day, working until 12 a.m.
She said "Except for eating and sleeping, the rest of the time is working."
, the first row of the right second Zhuang Xiaowei, the first International Academic Review Committee (SAB) meeting of the Center for Biological Dynamic Optical Imaging
Although it was a big challenge to cross-border investment in the biological field at the beginning, the background of physics has also brought a lot of help to Zhuang Xiaowei.
She creatively combined biofluorescence and microscopic analysis technology and invented "ultra-high resolution fluorescence microscopy technology".
This technology overcomes the diffraction limit of in optical microscope , making it possible to reveal the movement of biomolecules in real time.
Zhuang Xiaowei and her students in the laboratory
If you want to do it well, you must first sharpen your tools.
Since the birth of optical microscopes, scientists have been able to see the dynamics of tiny organisms such as bacteria through the lens.
in the diffraction limit of Airy spots
But traditional optical microscopes actually have a diffraction limit, so that the optical microscopy can only form a limited spot (Airy spot) on the sample .
Because this optical diffraction limit exists, it is already the limit to be observed that 200 nanometers to 300 nanometers.
German physicist Ernst Abbe discovered the diffraction limit of an optical microscope and engraved it on the tombstone. electron microscope , which uses different imaging methods, can reach nanometer resolution, but must be observed under vacuum conditions. Under vacuum conditions of
, organisms cannot survive and there is basically no way to observe life movements.
Extremely rare, the biological "water bearworm" that can survive under vacuum, photos under electron microscope.
Therefore, if you want to observe how organelles and viruses in cells affect cell life activities, it has become an urgent problem to be solved.
In modern biomedical research, understanding the action process of human life and exploring the mechanism of disease production, also encountered the bottleneck of due to the limit of microscope.
And the "ultra-high resolution fluorescence microscopy technology" studied by Zhuang Xiaowei was born to break this bottleneck.
Her research is also called STORM (Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy), which is translated as "random optical reconstruction microscopy technology" in Chinese. The key to
STORM is to break through the technology of using light-controlled switch probes to realize single-molecule luminescence and recombination imaging.
In 2004, her research team discovered that some kind of cyanine dye has the properties of a light-controlled switch.
light-controlled switch properties: Dyes can be activated by lasers of different colors to form fluorescent states and inactivated light-free states. In layman's terms, it is the same as "turn on the light" and "turn off the light".
Zhuang Xiaowei uses this light-controlled switch property to make the originally squeezed biological molecules emit light separately.
After taking a photo, let the original luminous point "turn off" and let the originally non-luminous point "turn on the light", and then continue to take photos.
STORM imaging schematic
repeated this way, and then took thousands of microscopic images and then superimposed them again, finally obtaining ultra-high resolution images.
This method cleverly "overcomes the diffraction limit of light" , and obtains an ultra-high resolution higher than that of for ordinary optical microscopes. Comparison of resolution between
STORM and traditional microscopes
In 2006, Zhuang Xiaowei published a related paper on STORM in the journal Nature Technology.
In 2011, she further overcomes the shortcomings of the previous time-consuming and develops a higher-performance STORM.
Along the way, Zhuang Xiaowei has also become a major player in super-resolution fluorescence microscopes, and has published important research results in top magazines every few days.
Comparison of actin, conventional images (Part 1) and 3D STORM images in neuronal axons (2013)
At that time, many people speculated that if super-resolution fluorescence microscopy was a Nobel Prize achievement, then Zhuang Xiaowei would definitely be the winner.
However, things in the world always joke with Zhuang Xiaowei at critical moments.
...
One general is successful and thousands of bones are bleak. It is indeed no exaggeration to describe the Nobel Prize.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014 was awarded to three physicists, including Bazger, Hull and Mona.
The first Baizige who was pronounced to his name was the reason for winning the award was "super resolution fluorescence microscope" PALM.
0
0 The three scientists who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014 are both researches on "super resolution fluorescence microscopy". However, Zhuang Xiaowei is not on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which has caused a lot of controversy in the Chinese world.
Especially on the website where Chinese scientists gather, everyone is fighting for Zhuang Xiaowei.
There are constant speculations about gender discrimination and racial discrimination.
A professor at at Tsinghua University wrote on Weibo: When I heard Baizige's name, I was almost ready to write a congratulatory letter to Zhuang Xiaowei...
Baizige
Although the result of the Nobel Prize is a foregone conclusion, the dust has been settled.
But Zhuang Xiaowei's STORM is a technology that goes hand in hand with Baizige's PALM.
, and in terms of subsequent development and promotion, Zhuang Xiaowei's role can be said to be more important than Baizige. The publication time of the papers related to
is only one day away.
Baizige's related papers were published in the journal Science magazine published on August 10, 2006 (received on March 13, passed the review on August 2)
Bang Xiaowei's related papers were published in the journal Nature Technology magazine published on August 9, 2006 (received on July 7, passed the review on July 31)
This is how the Nobel Prize committee member explained this question.
First: Baizige published a paper as early as 1995 and put forward theoretical ideas for this technology.
Second: The time for receiving the paper of Baizige was several months earlier than that of Zhuang Xiaowei.
Although Zhuang Xiaowei was not in the Nobel Prize, her achievements are indeed at the Nobel Prize level.
Throughout history, there are many talented people who have not received the honor.
, and Zhuang Xiaowei can also afford the four words , the uncrowned king, .
Zhuang Xiaowei's speech at Peking University
Even without the Nobel Prize, Zhuang Xiaowei still gained countless fans along the way.
Every time you hold a lecture, it must be full and crowded.
, the Harvard PhD He Jiang mentioned at the beginning of the article was because of Zhuang Xiaowei that he was determined to get into Harvard and find Senior Sister Xiaowei (He Jiang also graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China).
Zhuang Xiaowei was already at the top of academics at the age of thirty, and his future achievements are even more immeasurable.
Regarding in the first half of 2016, Zhuang Xiaowei and his team have published up to 10 research papers on Nature, Science, Cell and other top academic journals.
Now she is still committed to improving STORM's capabilities and envisions that she can see every interactive dynamic of molecules in cells in the future and truly solve the unknown mystery of life.
Zhuang Xiaowei is confident about this picture that looks a bit distant:
You see, the diffraction limit has been overcome by technology, nothing is impossible.
