《考研英語(yǔ)閱讀理解100篇 高分版》 Unit 20 - TEXT TWO

For a Nobel laureate, the molecular biologist Max Perutz made a lot of mistakes. His science was strewn with assertions that were not supported by the sparse evidence he had gathered. No matter. He was eventually right about the important things—and gentleman enough to concede his errors.
With bloody-minded persistence, Perutz mastered the painstaking task of analysing images of haemoglobin, the component of blood that carries oxygen. This was no mean feat: a molecule of haemoglobin consists of thousands of atoms and, at the time, only simple structures of tens of atoms had been mapped. It was for this work that Perutz was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1962. But his triumphal announcement of the correct structure of haemoglobin was by no means his first solution to the problem: he had previously claimed all sorts of unlikely arrangements, backing down each time a colleague spotted a fatal flaw.
Even when he did finally hold the secret to why blood supports life, he did not piece together the evidence to produce the ultimate result. Indeed, Perutz was furious when a junior researcher saw how the final piece fitted and could not resist popping it into its slot, completing what Perutz viewed as his jigsaw puzzle. Nevertheless, it was Perutz who had gathered all the pieces and who ensured, in the end, that they were correctly assembled.
Perutz was long the outsider. Of Jewish descent, he was a lapsed Catholic by religion. He left his native Austria in 1936, two years before Hitler annexed it. The outbreak of war saw him expelled to Canada as an enemy alien. On returning to Cambridge, he was not welcomed by his college. It was only after he won the Nobel Prize that he felt accepted as an Englishman, despite having been naturalised as a British subject 20 years earlier.
As a scientist, too, Perutz was always on the fringe. His field of endeavour, X-ray crystallography, was neither physics nor maths nor chemistry nor biology but a combination of these. As often happens to researchers working in interdisciplinary areas of science, his progress was impeded by an establishment that sought to promote existing subjects. He lived from grant to grant, each lasting a matter of months. Nevertheless, he managed to establish the unit in which James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated the double helix structure of DNA. A decade later, a whole institute was established under him.
Georgina Ferry's biography captures not only the scientific advances made by Perutz but also his curious personal qualities. A skinny, sickly and, for much of his life, skint individual, Perutz is an unlikely hero. He was demanding—his diet required him to eat black bananas, even in February—and he was unselfconscious in ensuring that his elaborate needs were met. He was also naive in insisting that scientific reasoning would trump political thought and religious teaching.
Ms. Ferry portrays his foibles sympathetically. Perutz used to complain that, although he was famous, few people knew what it was he had achieved. By combining scientific with personal anecdotes, her book goes a good way towards redressing that balance.
1. Max Perutz won the Nobel Prize though he made a lot of mistakes because _____.
[A] his important contribution outweighed those marginal mistakes
[B] he guaranteed some decisive factors were correct
[C] he could always reach the correct conclusion in the end
[D] he was brave enough to admit his mistakes and strived for improvement
2. Which one of the following statements is TRUE of Perutz's task of analyzing structure of haemoglobin?
[A] Perutz successfully worked out the different arrangements of the structures of all the atoms of haemoglobin.
[B] It is not Perutz who had first provided an answer to the correct structure of haemoglobin.
[C] It is in fact Perutz's colleague who had sorted out the solution to the problem of haemoglobin's structure.
[D] Perutz had worked diligently on the divergences between himself and his colleague in analyzing structure of haemoglobin.
3. Perutz was very angry with the junior researcher who popped the final piece into its slot because _____.
[A] the researcher asserted that what Perutz viewed was only jigsaw puzzle
[B] the researcher pointed out that Perutz did not piece together the evidence to prove the final result
[C] the researcher passed off the secret to why blood supports life as his own idea
[D] the researcher pieced together the evidence to work out the final result
4. Perutz's progress was interrupted by an establishment because _____.
[A] the subject he studied did not belong to any of the conventional disciplines
[B] his study threatened existing subjects by promoting interdisciplinary areas of science
[C] that establishment prevented him from receiving adequate and long-term funds
[D] he was diverted to the cause of setting up a brand new institute
5. The word “redressing” (Line 3, Paragraph 7) most probably means _____.
[A] remedying
[B] rectifying
[C] re-adjusting
[D] reversing