外媒選出最具影響力的女性,第一實至名歸
Politics, science, sport, technology and literature... it's impossible to find an area where women haven't made a powerful impact.
政治、科學、體育、科技以及文學……要找到一個女性沒有產生過重大影響的領域是幾乎不可能的。So the task of finding the female figure who has made the greatest contribution was always going to be a tough one.
所以要找出一位做出了最大貢獻的女性是一項艱鉅的任務。But experts have finally narrowed it down – and named Marie Curie as the woman who did the most to change the world.
但是專家們終於把名單縮減,並把“對改變做出最大貢獻的女性”的頭銜賦予了瑪麗·居里。
The scientist, whose discoveries in the field of radiation helped develop X-rays and cancer treatments, beat Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana and Jane Austen in a poll by BBC History Magazine.
這位在放射性研究領域做出巨大貢獻,並推進了X射線發展以及癌症治療的科學家,在BBC歷史雜誌的投票評選中打敗了瑪格麗特·撒切爾,簡·奧斯丁以及戴安娜公主,成爲第一。In second place was Rosa Parks, the civil rights movement activist who protested against racial segregation in the US by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst came third.
第二名的美國黑人民權行動主義者羅莎·帕克斯,曾通過拒絕在公交車上爲白人乘客讓座發起了抗議種族隔離的活動。英國婦女參政運動的領導者艾米琳·潘克斯特位居第三。Curie was the first to win two Nobel prizes – one in physics and one in chemistry – and coined the word 'radiation'.
居里夫人是第一位獲取兩項不同學科諾貝爾獎的科學家。她曾分別被授予諾貝爾物理學及化學諾貝爾獎,並創造了‘輻射’這一詞。She had a tough childhood in her native Poland, then under oppressive Russian rule. Her mother died when she was ten and she had to work as a young governess for six years.
居里夫人在俄羅斯帝國統治下的波蘭度過了艱苦的童年。她的母親在她僅僅十歲的時候去世,幼小的居里夫人不得不開始了六年的家教工作爲自己謀生。Going on to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, she met fellow physicist Pierre Curie, and the pair dedicated their lives to science.
前往巴黎的索邦進學的居里夫人邂逅了同爲物理家的皮埃爾·居里。居里夫婦將他們的畢生獻給了科學研究。She began cracking the secrets of radioactivity in their primitive laboratory in a shed.
之後,居里夫人開始在用棚搭建的簡陋實驗室中探索放射性的祕密。Curie helped fit X-ray machines to ambulances in the First World War while working for the Red Cross, and suffered leukaemia from long-term exposure to radiation. She died in 1934 aged 66.
在第一次世界大戰期間,居里夫人在爲紅十字會工作的同時,幫助將X光機器安裝在戰地救護車上。1934年,由於長期接受輻射, 66歲的居里夫人死於再生不良性貧血。Readers were given a list of 100 women to choose from, selected by experts in ten fields of human endeavour.
讀者們從專家們從對人類發展有貢獻的十個領域選取的100位傑出女性中做出了自己的選擇。Some of the less familiar names include computer programmer Ada Lovelace, 19th-century philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, who helped crack the structure of DNA.
一些尚未被世人廣知的候選人包括:計算機工程師阿達·洛芙萊斯,19世紀的慈善家安吉拉·伯德特·庫茨,對DNA結構研究做出貢獻的晶體學家羅莎琳·富蘭克林。Other figures in the top 20 include early feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, women's rights activist Josephine Butler and queen Eleanor of Aquitaine – one of the most powerful women of the Middle Ages.
其他在前二十名的女性包括:女權主義作家瑪麗·沃斯通克拉夫特,女權積極分子約瑟芬·巴特勒以及在中世紀最有權力的女性之一:阿基坦的埃莉諾王后。BBC History Magazine deputy editor Charlotte Hodgman said: 'The poll has shone a light on some truly extraordinary women from history.'
BBC歷史雜誌副編輯夏洛特·霍啓曼說道: “這次的評選讓歷史上這些真正傑出的女性們再次綻放了光芒。”