On September 10, 2016, CCTV's "Let's Talk" program team welcomed Yan Ning, a heavyweight scientist from a Chinese biology business. At the age of 30, Yan Ning became the youngest doctoral supervisor in the School of Life Sciences of Tsinghua University.
At the same time, in 2014, he led the team to make a huge breakthrough in structural biology, pushing Forward China's research in related fields for at least 20 years.
For a time, Yan Ning became a goddess in the minds of the Chinese people, and in the program "Let's Talk", Yan Ning used a humorous and wise speech to once again attract countless fans.
"Let's Talk": Sabine, Yan Ning
People praised Yan Ning for abandoning the superior conditions of the United States to return to China to serve the motherland, which is a model for Chinese scientists. However, a year later, the news came that Yan Ning accepted the invitation of Princeton University in the United States and left his homeland to choose to serve the United States.
For a time, there was a lot of scolding on the Internet, and people said that Yan Ninggu was famous and ungrateful. Some people also say that it is because Yan Ning has lost the selection of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences three times, so he left in a negative mood.
For a while, there were many opinions, so was the truth of the facts really so? Was Yan Ning's achievements in biology and his contributions to the country really all erased because he left the United States? How did Yan Ning himself respond to this?
First, the growth process of Xueba
In fact, there are not a few Chinese who work for the United States, and the reason why Yan Ning's departure from the United States will cause such an uproar is probably because she has broken an expectation and beauty in people's hearts.
Young and promising, he gave up his high salary to return to the embrace of the motherland to serve the country. This satisfies all the beautiful fantasies of a patriotic scientist.
Therefore, when this beautiful image is broken, people's hearts are unacceptable. This is also one of the reasons why Yan Ning left the motherland and turned to the United States to make the People of China indignant.
Now, let's not say whether Yan Ning left China is right or wrong, let's first look at the growth process of female scientist Yan Ning.
Yan Ning was originally born in a rural area of Zhangqiu, Shandong Province, and his parents were ordinary local workers, so Yan Ning's success can be regarded as a cold door out of the noble son.
Rural life is naturally not as colorful as in the city, and Yan Ning did not learn any dance or piano when she was young, not to mention one-on-one tutoring classes.
Before the age of 6, Yan Ning can be said to have grown freely, and in the countryside where there is no mobile phone, no network or even no TELEVISION, Yan Ning plays crazy with her friends all day long.
Such a childhood experience made her develop a freedom-loving, lively and cheerful personality, and also gave Yan Ning a strong heart. After the age of 6, due to changes in her parents' work, Yan Ning followed her parents to Beijing and attended primary school in Beijing.
Originally, her parents were worried that Yan Ning would not be able to keep up with the Beijing curriculum, but the intelligent Yan Ning was always able to complete the tasks assigned by the school teachers quickly, and her academic performance was always among the best.
After middle school, she fell in love with traditional Chinese literature, and she dabbled in Tang poems, Song poems, and prose novels. As the saying goes, reading a book is like a god under the pen, Yan Ning's article is particularly well written, so the classmates gave her the title of a literary and artistic young woman.
When she was divided into liberal arts and sciences in high school, Yan Ning wanted to study literature, but her parents thought that there was no future in learning literature, it was better to learn science, and she could study medicine in the future. The little girl works as a doctor, and her job is decent and stable.
Therefore, at the insistence of their parents, literary and artistic young women were forced into the science class. It is always said that genius is made up of ninety-nine percent hard work plus one percent talent. However, Yan Ning's growth tells us that many times, it is this one percent talent that determines whether a person can succeed.
As a talented player, Yan Ning was admitted to Tsinghua University with excellent results, and finally chose the Biology Department, which was a relatively unpopular major at that time, and the employment area was also very narrow. However, Yan Ning believes that in the future 21st century, it will be an era of biological science, and biology has broad prospects.
In Tsinghua University, where the masters are gathered, Yan Ning's excellence is no longer so dazzling, so Yan Ning, who does not accept defeat, begins his own diligent study model. Her efforts and talent won the favor of Chinese structural biologist Rao Zihe, who selected Yan Ning to his laboratory, which opened up a new world for Yan Ning.
Yan Ning felt an unprecedented sense of joy and accomplishment in one experiment after another, and she even fell in love with the laboratory. She wanted to explore more fields, so after graduating from undergraduate, Yan Ning turned down high-paying job offers from many companies and wanted to go to Princeton University in the United States for further study.
Just when Professor Shi Yigong came to Tsinghua University to enroll, Yan Ning boldly wrote a self-recommendation letter to Shi Yigong. Shi Yigong was very interested in Yan Ning after seeing it, and after some exchanges with Yan Ning, he immediately decided to admit Yan Ning as his graduate student.
Second, follow the teacher to return from his studies
After arriving at Princeton University, Yan Ning followed Shi Yigong into the experiments and research of the molecular regulation mechanism of tumorigenesis and apoptosis.
This study did not have much to learn from at the time, so everything needed to be based on continuous experimentation to derive data, and in order to make breakthrough progress, Yan Ning worked in the laboratory for 13 hours a day.
The huge pressure and the persistence of wanting to achieve results made Yan Ning lose 30 pounds in a month's time. Perhaps it was the strong heart cultivated in childhood that played a role, and the successive failures did not make Yan Ning feel depressed.
On the contrary, after three years of failure, she was still able to sit calmly and calmly in the laboratory to continue her research. It was not until 2003 that Yan Ning finally achieved great results and won the Young Scientist Award in the United States.
In 2005, Yan Ning began to focus on the field of membrane proteins, which had worldwide significance at that time. If Yan Ning can construct high-resolution crystals of crystalline proteins, it will provide an efficient way for humans to treat cancer, diabetes and other problems.
In 2006, Yan Ning made the world's first membrane protein structure in the laboratory, which caused a sensation in the entire human biological community. In 2007, Enshi Shi Yigong decided to return to China, and Yan Ning resolutely followed Enshi back to the embrace of the motherland with his research results.
And accepted the invitation of Tsinghua University, becoming the youngest professor in the Department of Biology, this year, Yan Ning was just 30 years old. With a beautiful appearance, clear eyes and remarkable achievements in the field of biology, Yan Ning soon became a goddess in the minds of students of Tsinghua University.
All this foreign praise did not cause waves in Yan Ning's heart, yan Ning set up his own laboratory at Tsinghua University to continue research in the field of membrane proteins.
There is a class of membrane proteins called glucose transporters, which are very widely present in the body's cells and play a very huge role in maintaining the stability of human blood sugar and oxygen to the brain.
Although humans have made some progress in this field, the three-dimensional structure of glucose transporter has not yet been resolved, so humans have not been able to truly understand the mechanism and highly dynamic nature of this protein in the human body.
Biologists have been studying this field for nearly 50 years, but still have not learned anything. Yan Ning led his experimental team to specialize in this field.
Countless failures did not make Yan Ning give up, kung fu pays off, in 2014, Yan Ning's team finally resolved the three-dimensional crystal of this protein, and thus revealed the operation mechanism of this protein in the human body and the pathogenesis of diabetes.
This achievement of Yan Ning's team was published in the form of a paper in the journal Nature, which caused a huge sensation around the world and won Yan Ning a number of international scientific awards.
It has won honors in the field of biology in China. At the same time, in the 10 years after returning to China, Yan Ning also trained a number of doctoral students for China, and they also became leaders in the field of biology.
In 2016, Yan Ning accepted the invitation of CCTV to be a guest of the "Open Talk" column, in the program scene, Yan Ning smiled throughout the whole process, told his story with humorous and wise language, and also answered many questions for the students on the spot.
At the scene of the show, a student said in a question, "The character of Andy in the TV series "Ode to Joy" is very similar to you, both are high-IQ school bullies, but Andy makes far more money than you do a year, how do you feel about this?" ”
In the face of the student's question, Yan Ning said, "Then how can you be sure that Andy is really happy?" But I can be sure that I enjoy a great sense of happiness in my work and research. ”
Yan Ning raised his own level with a simple sentence, and also answered this question perfectly, winning the favor of the audience and the majority of netizens.
However, a year later, news came out that Yan Ning had left China to teach in the United States. The majority of Chinese netizens were in an uproar, what happened during this period? Is it really like netizens said, Yan Ning left because he lost the election of academicians?
3. Accept the invitation of Princeton University in the United States to teach in the United States
During Yan Ning's teaching at Tsinghua University, he was nominated by the Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences three times. But in Order to become an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China, it is not enough to have scientific research results.
There is a complicated selection process, and just when Yan Ning lost the election, the news that she left Tsinghua for the United States was reported, which had to make people think that Yan Ning ran away because of the failure.
On this point, Yan Ning himself only gave two words as a response, that is, "nonsense!" Such a simple and rude response once again attracted the attention of netizens, and some people began to jump out and scold Yan Ning for betraying the motherland.
More ugly words spread into Yan Ning's ears, and under the pressure of public opinion, Yan Ning had to stand up again and respond. Yan Ning said on his blog that the selection of academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences uses a nomination system, not an individual application.
Yan Ning himself has twice declined the nomination of academicians, yan Ning said that he always values scientific research, and does not care at all whether he can become an academician.
As for why he left his homeland to accept the invitation of American universities, Yan Ning's answer was that he liked the pure natural scientific research environment in Princeton University.
Yan Ning said that she has lived in the countryside since she was a child and is very fond of the pristine natural scenery, and the environment around Princeton University is just in line with her own requirements, such an environment allows her to get peace in her heart and allow her to devote herself to work.
After coming to Princeton University, Yan Ning served as a tenured chair professor in the department of molecular biology at the university. And the reason she gave for going abroad to stay in the United States was not accepted by the Chinese people.
Someone also interviewed Professor Yang Zhenning, who has studied in the United States, specifically for this issue, Yang Zhenning said that Yan Ning ran away under the circumstances of China's development, the reasons for this should be very complicated, he did not make too much conjecture about this, but I believe that Yan Ning made such a choice, must have been well thought out.
In 2019, Yan Ning's scientific research achieved new results and became a foreign member of the American Academy of Sciences. In China, there are still people who question and even insult her because of her departure, but Yan Ning shields all this from her life and continues her pursuit and career.
In fact, there are many Chinese like Yan Ning in the United States, some of them choose to serve the United States because of the superior conditions prescribed by the American unit, and some are because the United States has a more advanced scientific research environment, which is more conducive to their own development choices.
Yan Ning once returned to China without hesitation, but chose to leave after ten years, which should have more complicated reasons, but in any case, Yan Ning's choice must be well thought out.
The Chinese people are more anxious and regretful in addition to being angry, so good brain drain abroad, whether it is a huge loss to the country or to the Chinese people!
Perhaps, we should also think about what true patriotism is, and think about how we can keep more talents at home and let them serve the country.
Although Yan Ning chose the United States, her 10 years at Tsinghua University have indeed made great contributions to China's biological research and cultivated scientific research talents in this field for the country, which cannot be denied.
Yan Ning also said that no matter when she was always Chinese she did not forget. And although she was elected a member of the American Academy of Sciences, she still retains her Chinese nationality, which may prove that Yan Ning is still loyal to her motherland in her heart.
We also hope that the relevant domestic systems can be improved, providing a pure land for those truly talented scientific researchers, so that more talents can return to their motherland and contribute to the construction of the motherland.