晨读英语美文60篇34 Madam Curie to Be Permitted into the Pantheon
音频下载[点击右键另存为] [00:00.00]Madam Curie to Be Permitted into the Pantheon [00:08.15]On the eve of the International Women’s day on March 8th,1994 [00:13.85]French President Mitterrand made the announcement [00:17.47]that Madame Curie was soon to be admitted into the Pantheon- [00:20.90]the memorial hall of the French national heroes. [00:24.82]The decision, though coming 60 years late, [00:28.54]is a great inspiration and gratification to the people. [00:32.25]Madam Curie, born in Warsaw,Poland in 1867, [00:36.97]is a French professor of physics, [00:39.39]and was taught the value of learning and raised to a patriot by her parents. [00:44.53]Due to her gender, [00:46.18]she was not allowed admission into any Polish universities [00:49.78]after graduating from high school. [00:51.84]Eventually, with the monetary assistance of her elder sister, [00:56.02]she moved to Paris and studied chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne, [01:01.60]where she became the first woman to teach. [01:04.43]Although Marie was not as well prepared as her fellow students, [01:09.36]through hard work she completed master’s degrees in physics [01:13.51]and math in only three years. [01:15.82]It was at the Sorbonne that she met Pierre Curie who became her husband later. [01:22.16]Just think of the hardship she and her husband went through [01:25.98]in those hundreds of days in a damp shed [01:29.59]when they tried to extract pure uranium. [01:32.97]Madame Curie had to bear both the endless obsessions of strict working style and serious attitude [01:40.09]and the excessive heavy work which even a strong man would find hardly possible to endure. [01:46.11]Such was her mental and physical burden that Mr. Curie had sighed and said, [01:52.02]“the life we’ve chosen is really too hard.” [01:55.06]When the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903, [02:02.08]the great honor quickly changed their lives. [02:05.35]Sorbonne University belatedly found funds for a laboratory [02:09.61]and Marie Curie was hired as “laboratory chief”. [02:13.24]Unfortunately, in 1906 Mr. Curie was killed in a traffic accident. [02:19.24]“It is impossible for me to express the profoundness of the crisis brought into my life [02:25.47]by the loss of the one who had been my closest companion,” [02:29.08]Madam Curie said sadly. [02:31.60]Crushed by the blow, she did not feel able to face the future. [02:36.30]She could not forget, however, what her husband used sometimes to say, [02:41.44]“Even deprived of me, you ought to continue our work.” [02:45.93]She was left alone to bring up children and, at the same time, [02:50.85]persisted in her giant research project on radium. [02:54.47]She refused all the honors and titles that she deserved and buried herself in science research. [03:02.12]She received a second Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. [03:07.15]So she became the first scientist in the world to win two Nobel Prizes. [03:13.39]Since man’s civilization began, [03:16.33]there have been very few women like Madame Curie [03:19.74]who so perfectly combined the role of a scientist,a wife and mother. [03:24.99]She joined with all readiness organization protecting the patents and copyrights [03:31.09]and copyrights of her fellow scientists. [03:32.96]She says that scientists need protection while in laboratories the way a child needs it, [03:39.20]so that they may be free from the worries of material life. [03:43.57]This, if we may say so, [03:45.85]is Madame Curie’s transfer of maternal love to young scientists. |