英语-年度最难的人物传记，没有之一（等你来挑战）.docxVIP

年度最难的人物传记，没有之一（等你来挑战） When you listen to digital music, the harmonies and chords that you hear have probably been reconstructed from a file that stored them as components of different frequencies，broken down by a process known as Fourier analysis. As you listen, the cochleae（耳蜗）in your ears repeat the process-- separating the sounds into those same sinusoidal（正弦曲线的）components before sending electrical signals to the brain, which puts the components together again. Fourier analysis allows complex waveforms to be understood and analyzed by breaking them down into simpler signals. And it’s a shining example of the power and value of intellectual courage. The roots of the idea go back to the mid 1700s, when the Italian mathematical physicist Joseph Louis Lagrange and others studied the vibration（震动）of strings and the propagation of sound. But it was one of Lagrange’s pupils, Joseph Fourier, who in 1822 truly founded the field that carries his name. Fourier was born 250 years ago, on 21 March 1768.Today, there is virtually no branch of science, technology and engineering that is left untouched by his ideas. Modern versions and analogues（模拟）of his theory help researchers to analyze their data in almost every discipline，powering everything from YouTube’s videos to machine learning techniques. Among the scientists who benefited is Ingrid Daubechies, an applied mathematician，who in the1980 s helped to develop the theory of wavelets（微波），which generalized Fourier analysis and opened up previously inaccessible problems. Wavelets were one of the main data analysis tools used to detect gravitational！（重力的）waves, for the first time in2015, to worldwide praise. “He’s one of my heroes,” Daubechies says. Before he inspired a revolution in science, Fourier helped to start one in his native France. He came of age in the ferment（骚乱）of the1790 s and signed up as a committed revolutionnaire franais--a decision that almost led to him losing his head to the guillotine during the Reign of Te