“The stories of these ten people capture some of the most memorable¹ scientific events in 2018,” says Nature's chief features editor, Rich Monastersky, “and they force us to confront difficult questions about who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.”

自然》特稿版主编里奇-蒙拿斯特斯基表示：“十大人物的故事浓缩了2018年度最难忘的科学事件，这些事件迫使我们思考我们究竟是谁、我们从哪里来、以及我们要去向何处的难题。”

Physicist² Yuan Cao was only 21 when he helped discover a trick to make graphene capable of conducting electricity without resistance, launching a new area of physics.

中国物理学家曹原协助发现了让石墨烯实现超导的方法，当时他年仅21岁。该研究成果开创了物理学一个全新的研究领域。

Cao admits that his situation is unusual, but says he isn’t special. After all, he did spend a full four years at university: “I just skipped some of the boring stuff in middle school.”

曹原承认自己的情况并不常见，但说自己并不特别。毕竟，他在大学里还是待满了四年，“我只是跳过了中学阶段比较无聊的时期。”

Cao loves to take things apart and rebuild them. At heart, he is “a tinkerer”, his supervisor³ says.

他的导师说，曹原在内心深处是个"修补匠"，喜欢把东西拆开重装。

“Every time I go in, it’s a huge mess, with computers taken apart and pieces of telescope all over his desk.”

他说：“每次我进他的办公室，里面都乱糟糟的，桌上堆满了计算机和自制望远镜的零件。”

Despite his youth and shy manner, colleagues say that Cao’s maturity⁴ shines through in his persistence⁵.

尽管年轻又害羞，同事们都说曹原的成熟表现在坚持不懈上。

“He wasn’t happy, but he just rolled up his sleeves and continued working,”

他的导师说："他不开心，但他只是卷起袖子继续干了。"

“There are so many things we can do,” says Cory Dean, a physicist at Columbia University in New York City. “The opportunities at hand now are almost overwhelming.”

"我们能做的事情太多了。"位于纽约的哥伦比亚大学物理学家克里·迪恩说道，"手边的各种机遇都有点应接不暇了。"

Palaeogeneticist Viviane Slon helped make one of 2018’s most surprising discoveries when she and her colleagues sequenced DNA⁶ from a 90,000-year-old bone and found that it came from the offspring of a union between a Neanderthal mother and a father from the extinct human group known as Denisovans.

古遗传学家薇薇安·斯隆与同事在对一个9万年前的骨骼进行DNA测序时，发现该骨骼来自于尼安德特人母亲与已经灭绝的丹尼索瓦人父亲的后代。这也是2018年度最出人意料的发现之一。

Another physicist, Jess Wade⁷, made news through her remarkable⁸ efforts to raise the profile of women and people of color in science, including by writing hundreds of Wikipedia entries for female scientists.

物理学家杰斯·维德为提高女性和有色人种在科学界的地位付出了巨大努力，包括为女性科学家创建数百条维基百科词条。

Robert-Jan Smits made waves in publishing by launching Plan S, a bold effort to make more scientific papers open access.

罗伯特·简·史密斯发起的“S计划”是一项推进科研论文开放获取的大胆倡议，掀起了科学出版业的巨浪。

Open data was also central to the work of Barbara Rae-Venter, who used public genome data to help identify the Golden State killer, who committed multiple murders in California during the 1970s and 1980s.

此外，开放数据也是芭芭拉·李-温特的工作重心，她通过公开的基因组数据，协助警方逮捕了曾在上世纪七八十年代犯下数起凶杀案的“金州杀手”。

Another data set preoccupied⁹ astronomer¹⁰ Anthony Brown, whose team coordinated¹¹ the release of a massive trove¹² of information from the Gaia spacecraft¹³, which has tracked more than a billion stars.

另一位潜心研究数据集的天文学家安东尼·布朗率领团队，发布了盖亚探测器对10亿多颗恒星的大规模追踪数据。

Meanwhile, Makoto Yoshikawa led the Hayabusa2 mission at the Japan Aerospace¹⁴ Exploration Agency to visit a dumpling-shaped asteroid¹⁵ to collect samples and then return them to Earth.

与此同时，由日本宇宙航空研究开发机构的吉川真领导的“隼鸟2号”任务，造访了一颗形状类似饺子的小行星（Ryugu“龙宫”），并准备将采集的样本带回地球。

Climate researcher Valérie Masson-Delmotte had a key role in the stark¹⁶ report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned that nations might have only a dozen years before Earth’s temperature reaches a point that would transform ecosystems¹⁷ and destroy many coral reefs.

气候研究专家瓦莱丽·马松-德尔莫特在政府间气候变化专门委员会发布的重要报告中起到了关键作用。该报告警告称，距离地球气温达到转变生态系统、破坏大量珊瑚礁的程度只剩下十几年的时间。

Bee Yin Yeo, Malaysia’s minister of energy, science, technology, environment and climate change, is featured for leading environmental efforts to reduce single-use plastics.

马来西亚能源、科学、技术、环境及气候变化部长杨美盈带头倡导了减少一次性塑料使用的环保行动。

Chinese scientist He Jiankui captured global attention last month when he announced he had edited the genomes of twin baby girls. This drew widespread condemnation¹⁸ over concerns that he had ignored ethical¹⁹ considerations and exposed the infants to potential risks.

中国科学家贺建奎上个月宣布编辑了一对双胞胎女婴的基因组，引发全球关注。他的做法受到了普遍批评，人们谴责其无视伦理，并将双胞胎女婴置于潜在风险之中。

He, who is now not speaking to the press, disappeared from the world stage as quickly as he had emerged.

贺建奎现在已不在媒体发声。他在世界舞台上匆匆登场，又匆匆消失。