Dreams are like stars. You may never catch them, but if you follow them, they will lead you to success. Yan Ning is such a dream follower.

Yan is a rising star in the science world. When Yan Ning was only a little girl, she dreamed of being a scientist. After years of hard work, in 1996, she went to Tsinghua University to study biology. After graduating from Tsinghua in 2000, she went to Princeton University and finished her study there in 2007. Then she returned to Tsinghua and set up her own lab (实验室). At the age of 30, she became the youngest professor (教授) at Tsinghua.

Now Yan has become a leading researcher at Princeton. She is one of the 100 new members in the US National Academy of Science (美国国家科学院).

However, it was a long and difficult road for her to make such achievements. She said that in order to make her dream come true, she experienced a lot of difficulties. But she never gave up her dream. Instead, she followed her dream and fought for it. She usually works for at least 14 hours a day. Sometimes she even forgets to eat and rest, and she always works until late night. She never gets tired because she thinks doing research is the most “comfortable” job for her.

In a TV interview, Yan asked young people to work hard for their dreams. “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to follow them.”

Galileo Galilei was born in the year 1564 in the town of Pisa, Italy. When he was 20 years old, he was studying in Pisa. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but Galileo was bored with school except for math. Because math was the one subject which he was do well in, someone famous offered to teach him privately so he could become a good mathematician. Galileo’s father was not so happy, but he agreed.

Because Galileo needed to make money, he began trying his hand at （尝试）different things. He wanted to come up with some kind of invention that he could sell for money. He had a little bit of success with his invention that was kind of like a compass（圆规）. It could be used to work out the size of a piece of land.

When Galileo heard that a Dutch inventor had invented something called a spyglass（小望远镜）, but was keeping it a secret, he decided to work on one of his own. In less than 24 hours, he invented a telescope（望远镜） that could make things look larger and closer. On night, he pointed his telescope toward the sky, and made his first space watch: the moon was not smooth（光滑的）like everyone had thought. As technology has improved, first Galileo, and many others, have made improvements on the telescope, the wonderful invention that helps us to see things far away.

Yuan Longping is a Chinese agricultural scientist and educator. He is known for developing the first hybrid rice(杂交水稻). He was born in Beijing in1930. He loved playing the erhu, swimming and motorcycling. He graduated from the Southwest Agriculture College in 1953. Then he began teaching at an agriculture school in Anjiang, Hunan Province.

In 1960, a very serious food shortage happened in China. A large number of people died of hunger and illnesses. Yuan Longping could hardly fall asleep at night. He thought it was time for him to do something for his country and people. He decided to find a way to solve the problem. Since then, he had devoted himself to the research of a new kind of rice.

In 1964, Yuan found a natural hybrid rice plant by accident. It had more advantages than others. He worked very hard with other scientists on it for many years. In 1973, the first hybrid rice appeared. It yielded (出产) 20% more than that of common rice. Chinese people solved the food problem by their own efforts.

But Yuan Longping didn’t stop. He kept on his research. Now the “Super Rice” yields over 1, 100 kilograms each mu. Chinese people have enough rice to eat, and hybrid rice has also brought good news the peoples of many other countries all over the world.

By the achievements, Yuan Longping is called The Father of Hybrid Rice”.