Major discoveries
1. The discovery of oracle bones
As of 2012, about 150,000 oracle bones and more than 4,500 single characters have been discovered. The contents recorded in these oracle bone inscriptions are extremely rich and involve many aspects of social life in the Shang Dynasty, including not only politics, military, culture, social customs, etc., but also science and technology such as astronomy, calendar, medicine, etc.
Judging from the approximately 2,500 single characters that have been identified in oracle bone inscriptions, it already possesses the character creation methods of "pictogram, meaning, pictograph, reference, transfer, and pretense", demonstrating the unique charm of Chinese characters.
Documents from China's Shang Dynasty and early Western Zhou Dynasty (about 16th century BC to 10th century BC) using tortoise shells and animal bones as carriers. It is the earliest known form of Chinese literature. The characters engraved on oracle bones were previously called deeds, oracle bone inscriptions, oracle inscriptions, tortoise edition inscriptions, Yinxu inscriptions, etc., and are now commonly known as oracle bone inscriptions.
2. The discovery of Peking Man
In 1929, Chinese archaeologists discovered a complete ancient human skull fossil in a cave in Zhoukoudian, Beijing. This is the world-famous Pekingese.
They lived about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago. They still retained some characteristics of apes, but their hands and feet had a clear division of labor. They could make and use tools, and they could use natural fire. The forest is dense, overgrown with weeds, and wild beasts are infested. Beijingers pounded rocks into rough stone tools, chopped branches into sticks, and fought hard against nature with extremely primitive tools.
3. Discovery of artemisinin
Artemisinin is a type of sesquiterpene lactone with peroxy groups extracted from the stems and leaves of the compound inflorescence plant Artemisia annua. It is a colorless needle-shaped crystal with the molecular formula C15H22O5. It was discovered by Chinese pharmacologist Tu Youyou in 1971.
Artemisinin is the most effective anti-malarial drug after pyrimethamine, chloroquine, and primaquine, especially for cerebral malaria and chloroquine-resistant malaria. It has the characteristics of rapid effect and low toxicity. The World Health Organization calls it "the only effective malaria treatment drug in the world."
Invention
1. Two bombs and one satellite
On November 5, 1960, China’s first imitation missile was successfully launched. On October 16, 1964 China's first atomic bomb exploded successfully at 15:00 on the same day, making China the fifth country to have an atomic bomb.
At 8:00 a.m. on June 17, 1967, China's first hydrogen bomb air burst test was successful; at 21:00 on April 24, 1970, China's first artificial satellite was successfully launched, making China the fifth country to launch an artificial satellite. satellite country. China's "two bombs and one satellite" are the glorious achievements of the Chinese nation in the second half of the 20th century.
2. Quantum Satellite
At 1:40 a.m. on August 16, 2016, Chinese scientists successfully launched the world’s first quantum satellite using the Long March 2D carrier rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The scientific experimental satellite "Mozi" was launched and successfully entered orbit. This makes our country the first country in the world to realize quantum communication between space and the ground, and also established our country’s quantum secure communication and scientific experiment system integrating space and ground.
"Mozi" is the world's first quantum science experimental satellite. Pan Jianwei, chief scientist of the quantum satellite and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the reason why it was named "Mozi" is because Mozi first discovered that light propagates in a straight line through small hole imaging experiments, and he also proposed a "particle theory" in a sense ".
3. Synthetic bovine insulin
Since 1958, the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Department of Chemistry of Peking University have jointly developed Led by Niu Jingyi, a collaborative group was formed by Gong Yueting, Zou Chenglu, Du Yucang, Ji Aixue, Xing Qiyi, Wang You, Xu Jiecheng and others.
Based on previous research on the structure of insulin and peptide chain synthesis methods, we began to explore the use of chemical methods to synthesize insulin. After careful research, they established the procedure for synthesizing bovine insulin. This was China's only opportunity to win a Nobel Prize at that time.
Baidu Encyclopedia--Peking Man
Baidu Encyclopedia--Oracle Bone Inscriptions
Baidu Encyclopedia--Artemisinin
Baidu Encyclopedia-- Synthetic bovine insulin
Baidu Encyclopedia--Quantum Communication Satellite