万物简史 第610期:冰河时代(7)

Doubtless it helped that he had settled in New England, where the long winters encouraged a certain sympathy for the idea of interminable periods of cold. It also helped that six years after his arrival the first scientific expedition to Greenland reported that nearly the whole of that semicontinent was covered in an ice sheet just like the ancient one imagined in Agassiz's theory. At long last, his ideas began to find a real following. The one central defect of Agassiz's theory was that his ice ages had no cause. But assistance was about to come from an unlikely quarter.

他在新英格兰地区定居下来，这毫无疑问是起作用的，因为那里漫长的冬季使得人们对关于漫长的寒冷时期的理论抱有某种同情。6年以后，阿加西斯对格陵兰作了第一次科学考察。这也是起作用的。他们发现，几乎整个岛上覆盖着一层冰盖，就像阿加西斯理论中设想的古代冰盖那样。他的理论终于开始拥有了真正的支持者，阿加西斯的理论有一个致命的弱点，就是他不能解释导致冰河时代出现的原因。不过，帮忙的人就要从一个意想不到的地方出现了。

In the 1860s, journals and other learned publications in Britain began to receive papers on hydrostatics, electricity, and other scientific subjects from a James Croll of Anderson's University in Glasgow. One of the papers, on how variations in Earth's orbit might have precipitated¹ ice ages, was published in the Philosophical² Magazine in 1864 and was recognized at once as a work of the highest standard. So there was some surprise, and perhaps just a touch of embarrassment³, when it turned out that Croll was not an academic at the university, but a janitor⁴.

19世纪60年代，英国的一些报纸和学术杂志开始收到格拉斯哥安德森大学的詹姆斯·克罗尔所写的有关流体静力学、电力学以及其他学科的文章，其中有一篇文章认为，地球轨道的变化很可能是导致冰川期出现的原因。该文于1864年发表于《哲学杂志》，立刻被推崇为代表最高水平的学术论文。可是，当人们了解到该文的作者克罗尔并不是该大学的研究人员，而只是一名普通职员的时候，他们于惊讶之余，也许还有一丝尴尬。

Born in 1821, Croll grew up poor, and his formal education lasted only to the age of thirteen. He worked at a variety of jobs—as a carpenter, insurance salesman, keeper of a temperance hotel—before taking a position as a janitor at Anderson's (now the University of Strathclyde) in Glasgow. By somehow inducing his brother to do much of his work, he was able to pass many quiet evenings in the university library teaching himself physics, mechanics, astronomy, hydrostatics, and the other fashionable sciences of the day, and gradually began to produce a string of papers, with a particular emphasis on the motions of Earth and their effect on climate.

克罗尔1821年出生于一个贫寒的家庭，他的正规教育在13岁时就已结束，之后他做过许多工作——木匠、保险推销员、禁酒旅店管理员，然后他来到格拉哥斯安德森大学（现在的斯特拉恩克莱德大学）当了一名门房。他说服他的弟弟帮助他打理了许多事务，因此，静悄悄的晚上他经常在大学的图书馆里自学物理、数学、天文学、流体静力学，以及其他一些新兴的学科。慢慢地，他开始撰写一系列论文，尤以地球运动及其对气候的影响为重点。

1 precipitated   

v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀

参考例句：

• His resignation precipitated a leadership crisis. 他的辞职立即引发了领导层的危机。
• He lost his footing and was precipitated to the ground. 他失足摔倒在地上。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 philosophical   

adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的

参考例句：

• The teacher couldn't answer the philosophical problem.老师不能解答这个哲学问题。
• She is very philosophical about her bad luck.她对自己的不幸看得很开。

3 embarrassment   

n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫

参考例句：

• She could have died away with embarrassment.她窘迫得要死。
• Coughing at a concert can be a real embarrassment.在音乐会上咳嗽真会使人难堪。

4 janitor   

n.看门人，管门人

参考例句：

• The janitor wiped on the windows with his rags.看门人用褴褛的衣服擦着窗户。
• The janitor swept the floors and locked up the building every night.那个看门人每天晚上负责打扫大楼的地板和锁门。