新GRE写作名人素材库精选篇
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新GRE写作名人素材库：马克思
马克思 Marx, Karl (Heinrich) 1818 -- 1883
Philosopher, economist, revolutionary leader. Born May 5, 1818 in Trier, Rhenish Prussia, the son of Heinrich Marx, a lawyer, and Henriette Presburg Marx, a Dutchwoman. Both Heinrich and Henriette were descendants of a long line of rabbis. Barred from the practice of law as a Jew, Heinrich Marx became converted to Lutheranism about 1817, and Karl was baptized in the same church in 1824, at the age of 6. Karl attended a Lutheran elementary school but later became an atheist and materialist, rejecting both the Christian and Jewish religions. It was he who coined the aphorism "Religion is the opium of the people," a cardinal principle in modern communism.
Karl attended the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Trier for 5 years, graduating in 1835, at the age of 17. The gymnasium curriculum was the usual classical one--history, mathematics, literature, and languages, particularly Greek and Latin. Karl became proficient in French and Latin, both of which he learned to read and write fluently. In later years he taught himself other languages, so that as a mature scholar he could also read Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Russian, and English. As his articles in the New York Daily Tribune show, he came to handle the English language masterfully (he loved Shakespeare, whose works he knew by heart), although he never lost his heavy Teutonic accent in speaking.
In October 1835 Marx matriculated in Bonn University, where he attended courses primarily in jurisprudence, as it was his father's ardent wish that he become a lawyer. Marx, however, was more interested in philosophy and literature than in law. He wanted to be a poet and dramatist, and in his student days he wrote a great deal of poetry--most of it preserved--which in his mature years he rightly recognized as imitative and mediocre. He spent a year at Bonn, studying little but roistering and drinking. He spent a day in jail for disturbing the peace and fought one duel, in which he was wounded in the right eye. He also piled up heavy debts.
Marx's dismayed father took him out of Bonn and had him enter the University of Berlin, then a hub of intellectual ferment. In Berlin a galaxy of brilliant thinkers was challenging existing institutions and ideas, including religion, philosophy, ethics, and politics. The spirit of the great philosopher G. W. F. Hegel was still palpable there. A group known as the Young Hegelians, which included teachers such as Bruno Bauer and bright, philosophically oriented students, met frequently to debate and interpret the subtle ideas of the master. Young Marx soon became a member of the Young Hegelian circle and was deeply influenced by its prevailing ideas.
Marx spent more than 4 years in Berlin, completing his studies there in March 1841. He had given up jurisprudence and devoted himself primarily to philosophy. On April 15, 1841, the University of Jena awarded "Carolo Henrico Marx" the degree of doctor of philosophy on the strength of his abstruse and learned dissertation, Difference between Democritean and Epicurean Natural Philosophy, which was based on Greek-language sources.
Marx's hopes of teaching philosophy at Bonn University were frustrated by the reactionary policy of the Prussian government. He then turned to writing and journalism for his livelihood. In 1842 he became editor of the liberal Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, but it was suppressed by the Berlin government the following year. Marx then moved to Paris, where he first came in contact with the working class, gave up philosophy as a life goal, and undertook his serious study of economics.
In January 1845, Marx was expelled from France "at the instigation of the Prussian government," as he said. He moved to Brussels, where he lived until 1848 and where he founded the German Workers' party and was active in the Communist League. It was for the latter that he, with his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, published, in 1848, the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party (known as the Communist Manifesto). Expelled by the Belgian government for his radicalism, Marx moved back to Cologne, where he became editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in June 1848. Less than a year later, in May 1849, the Prussian government suppressed the paper, and Marx himself was exiled. He returned to Paris, but in September the French government expelled him again. Hounded from the Continent, Marx finally settled in London, where he lived as a stateless exile (Britain denied him citizenship and Prussia refused to renaturalize him) for the rest of his life.
In London, Marx's sole means of support was journalism. He wrote for both German-and English-language publications. From August 1852 to March 1862 he was correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune, contributing a total of about 355 articles, many of which were used by that paper as leading (unsigned) editorials. Journalism, however, paid wretchedly (? per article); Marx was literally saved from starvation by the continuous financial support of Engels. In 1864 Marx helped to found in London the International Workingmen's Association (known as the First International), for which he wrote the inaugural address. In 1872 he dissolved the International, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin. Thereafter, Marx's political activities were confined mainly to correspondence with radicals in Europe and America, offering advice and helping to shape the socialist and labor movements.
新GRE写作名人素材库：达尔文
Darwin, Charles (Robert) 1809 -- 1882
Naturalist; best known as the discoverer of natural selection. Born February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England, at almost exactly the same hour as Abraham Lincoln. Darwin's father was a doctor; his mother was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the famous pottery firm. His grandfather (already dead) was a famous botanist, Erasmus Darwin. Darwin's mother died when he was eight years old. He was not a very successful student, but as a teenager he became interested in natural science and started various collections. He went to Edinburgh University to study medicine but did not do well. He transferred to Cambridge University with the idea of studying theology and becoming a clergyman. There he met Professor John Henslow, a botanist, who became his mentor and persuaded him to study geology. He also read Alexander von Humboldt's book, A Personal Narrative, about his travels in South America, which greatly inspired him.
Darwin got his B.A. degree from Cambridge in June 1831. During the summer he traveled with a geology professor to study rock formations in Wales. On his return to Shrewsbury on August 29, he found a letter waiting for him from Henslow. Henslow had recommended Darwin for a job as naturalist on board a Royal Navy ship, the Beagle, under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy. The ship was going on a long trip to survey the southern coasts of South America. Darwin's father was initially opposed because he felt that this would keep him from starting his career in the church. With the help of his Wedgwood relatives, Darwin was able to get his father's permission.
The Beagle left England on December 27, 1831. It was a small ship, only 90 feet long, with a crew of 74. Darwin's laboratory was a small space at the end of the chartroom, where he also had his hammock for sleeping. Not only was his space cramped, but Darwin suffered miserably from seasickness every day that the ship was at sea. He tried to remedy this by spending as much time ashore as possible and often traveled overland to meet up with the ship at another port.
From England the Beagle sailed to the Cape Verde Islands and then to the Brazilian port of Bahia, where it arrived on February 29, 1832. Darwin spent much of his time there collecting specimens from the surrounding forests. He also got into a violent quarrel with Fitzroy on the subject of slavery (a major question in Brazil at the time) to which Darwin was adamantly opposed. Reaching Rio de Janeiro in early April, Darwin met an Irishman and traveled with him by horseback for seven days to his coffee plantation in the interior. Along the way, he collected specimens of the teeming insect life.
In July and August 1832 Darwin and the Beagle were in Montevideo in Uruguay. During this first visit, the ship's crew did not have many opportunities to go ashore because of civil unrest. On August 19, the Beagle headed south to begin surveying the coast of Patagonia in southern Argentina. On September 23 near Bahia Blanca, Darwin made a highly significant discovery he bones of "numerous gigantic extinct Quadrupeds." There were remains of several different species, none of which existed any longer, and they were covered with seashells. The fact that these creatures had been alive "whilst the sea was peopled with most of its present inhabitants" was an important revelation.
In January 1833, the Beagle sailed into the Beagle Channel south of the large island of Tierra del Fuego. It was hit by a storm that lasted 24 days and at one point almost overturned the ship. Darwin was seasick for most of the time. The aim in going to Tierra del Fuego was to return three native Fuegians that Fitzroy had taken on board during a previous voyage. With them went a missionary, sent to convert the Fuegians to Christianity. On their arrival, one of the Fuegians did not want to return home, and the ship had to return a week later to pick up the missionary who had been threatened with his life by the Native Americans on the island. Soon after, they almost lost the ship's boats when a glacier "calved" and created giant waves that almost washed the boats out to sea.
In March and April 1833 the Beagle spent five weeks in the Falkland Islands, which had just been claimed by Great Britain. It spent the southern winter in the harbor in Montevideo. In August 1833 Fitzroy left Darwin ashore at the little town of Carmen de Patagones while the ship carried out routine surveying chores. Darwin rode overland to Bahia Blanca where he re-examined the fossil remains and thought about their significance. By the time he left on September 8, 1833 he had begun to doubt the accepted view that the species were unchangeable and had existed in their current form ever since the Creation. His entire outlook on the nature of life had changed. He was careful, however, not to share his views with Fitzroy, who remained a firm "Creationist" all his life.
From Bahia Blanca Darwin traveled north across the Argentine pampas (plains) accompanied by gauchos (cowboys) who hunted with bolas and lazos (a kind of weighted lasso). Along the way he met the Argentine dictator, Juan Manuel Rosas, who was engaged in a war of extermination against the Native Americans of the pampas. He saw flocks of rheas, a form of ostrich, which were flightless but could outrun most horses. Darwin found the remains of an unknown species of rhea that he sent back to England and which was named after him?I>rhea darwinii.
After reaching Buenos Aires and resting a few days at the home of an English merchant, Darwin traveled up the Parana River to the port city of Santa Fe, where he saw some more fossils. He then made a trip from Mercedes to Montevideo in Uruguay, where he met up with the Beagle on December 6, 1833. In March 1834, after having visited the Falkland Islands once again, the Beagle went back to Tierra del Fuego where they met up with one of the returned Fuegians. In April they sailed up the coast of Patagonia, putting into the mouth of the Santa Cruz River to carry out some repairs.
On April 18, 1834 Fitzroy and Darwin with 23 men and three whaleboats set off on a three-week journey of exploration up the Santa Cruz River. They saw continual signs of Native Americans but never met up with any in the cold desert region of southern Patagonia. They traveled to the foothills of the Andes and came within a few miles of the river's source at Lago Argentino without realizing it. Along the way, Darwin shot a condor that had a wing span of eight feet. To Darwin's disappointment they were forced to turn back because of low supplies. The others wished not to, but Darwin remained cheerful: "Almost every one is discontented with this expedition, much hard work, and much time lost and scarcely anything seen or gained ... To me the cruize (sic) has been most satisfactory, from affording so excellent a section of the great tertiary formations of Patagonia."
At the end of May 1834 the Beagle entered the Straits of Magellan for the last time and then exited into the Pacific. Stormy weather made sailing slow, and they put in on Chiloe Island to wait for better weather. The ship's purser died there. They reached Valparaiso, the chief port of Chile, on July 23, 1834. An old acquaintance from Shrewsbury was living there, and Darwin stayed as a guest in his house. Like many of his shipmates, he was ill for the first few weeks of his stay. In fact, it appears as though Fitzroy suffered a nervous breakdown in Valparaiso, and this delayed their departure. Darwin used the extra time to set out on an expedition across the Andes to the Argentine town of Mendoza. In November 1834 Fitzroy took the Beagle south again to Chiloe Island. Darwin was able to get a specimen of the very rare Chilotan fox by walking up behind it while it was observing two British officers take measurements and hitting it on the head with his geological hammer. On February 20, 1835 at Valdivia on the coast of Chile, they experienced the strongest earthquake that anyone in the area had experienced, which destroyed the city of Concepcion farther north. When they reached Concepcion, Darwin found that the earthquake had permanently raised the land and saw evidence of such uplift from previous quakes as well.
新GRE写作名人素材库：林肯
Lincoln, Abraham 1809 -- 1865
Abraham Lincoln: Preserving the Union
Sixteenth president of the United States and president during the Civil War. Born February 12, 1809, in a log cabin on a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky. His father had come with his parents from Virginia and had grown to manhood on the Kentucky frontier. He had evidently become moderately successful as a farmer and carpenter, for in 1803 he was able to pay ?18 for a farm near Elizabethtown. Three years later he married Nancy Hanks, described as "intelligent, deeply religious, kindly, and affectionate," but as "illiterate" as himself. Of her family and background little is known.
The young couple soon moved to the one-room cabin on Nolin Creek where their second child, Abraham, was born. Two years later the family moved to the farm on Knob Creek that Abraham later remembered. There, when there was no pressing work to be done, Abraham walked two miles to the schoolhouse, where he learned the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Five years later, the elder Lincoln sold his lands and carried his family into the untracked wilderness of Indiana across the Ohio River. It was late fall, and there was time only to pull together a crude three-sided shelter of logs, brush, and leaves. The open side was protected by a blazing fire that had to be replenished at all times. The only water was nearly a mile away. For food the family depended almost entirely on game.
They began building a better home and clearing the land for planting. They were making progress when, in the summer of 1818, a terminal disease known as milk sickness struck the region, afflicting Lincoln's great uncle and great aunt first, then tragically, his mother. On the shoulders of Abraham's 12-year-old sister, Sarah, fell the burden of caring for the household; the home was soon reduced to near squalor.
The next winter Abraham's father returned to Kentucky and brought back a second wife, Sarah Bush Johnson, a widow with three children. Abraham learned to love her and in later years referred to her as "my angel mother." As time passed, the region where the Lincolns lived grew in population, and James Gentry's little store became a trading center around which the village of Gentryville grew. There Abraham spent much of his spare time, early showing a marked talent for storytelling and mimicry. He grew tall and strong, and his father often hired him out to work for neighbors. Through this came the chance, with Gentry's son Allen, to take a flatboat of produce down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleansincoln's first sight of anything other than frontier simplicity.
Meanwhile Lincoln's father had again moved his family to a new home in Illinois, where he built a cabin on the Sangamon River. This was open prairie country, but the abundant trees along the streams supplied the rails to fence their fields. Young Lincoln, already skilled with his ax, was soon splitting rails, not only for the Lincoln farm but for others as well.
At the end of the first summer in Illinois an attack of fever and ague put the Lincolns again on the move. This time it was to Coles County. Abraham, however, did not go along. He was now of independent age and had agreed with two friends to take a cargo of produce, belonging to one Denton Offutt, downriver to New Orleans. Offutt was so impressed with Lincoln's abilities that he placed him in charge of the mill and store which he had established at New Salem. To the store came people of all kinds to talk and trade and to enjoy the stories and rich human qualities stored up in this unique man. The young roisterers from Clary's Grove found him to be more than a match for their champion wrestlers and became his devoted followers. The members of the New Salem Debating Society welcomed him; and when the Black Hawk War broke out, the volunteers of the region elected Lincoln to be their captain. On his return he announced himself as a candidate for the Illinois Legislature on a "Henry Clay-Whig" platform of internal improvements, better educational facilities, and lower interest rates. He was not elected, but he did receive 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct.
Lincoln next formed a partnership with William Berry and purchased one of the other stores in New Salem. However, on the death of his partner Lincoln found himself responsible for a $1,100 debt. His appointment as New Salem postmaster and the chance to work as deputy surveyor of the country improved his finances. He also was enabled to widen his acquaintances and to win election to the state legislature in 1834. The skill with which Lincoln conducted his campaign so impressed John Todd Stuart, the Whig leader of the county and an outstanding lawyer in Springfield, that he took Lincoln under his care and inspired him to begin the study of law.
Lincoln served four successive terms in the legislature and became floor leader of his party in the lower house. Meanwhile, he mastered the law books he could buy or borrow and in September 1836 passed the bar examinations and was admitted to practice. He played an important part in having the state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield, and in 1837, he moved there to become Stuart's law partner. Coming into a firm already well established, Lincoln had a secure legal future. He not only practiced in Springfield but also rode the Eighth Circuit of some 160 miles through the Sangamon Valley. In 1846 he was elected to the U.S. Congress.
In these years Lincoln had become engaged to Mary Todd, a cultured and well-educated Kentucky woman who was visiting relatives in Springfield. After a rather stormy courtship, they were married on November 2, 1842. The part that Mary played in Lincoln life is still a matter of controversy.
Lincoln's election to Congress came just as the war with Mexico began. Like many Whigs, he doubted the justice of the war, but since it was popular in Illinois he kept quiet. When Congress convened in December 1847, Lincoln, the only Whig from Illinois, voted for the Wilmot Proviso whenever it came up. When William A. Richardson, Illinois Democrat, presented resolutions declaring the war just and necessary and Mexico the aggressor, Lincoln countered with resolutions declaring that Mexico, not the United States, had jurisdiction over "the spot" where blood was first shed. These resolutions, together with one to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, brought sharp criticism from the people back in Illinois. Lincoln was "not a patriot." He had not correctly represented his state. Although the Whigs won the presidency in 1848, Lincoln could not even control the patronage in his own district. His political career seemed to be ended. His only reward for party service was an offer of the governorship of far-off Oregon, which he refused. He could only return to the practice of law.
During the next 12 years, while Lincoln rebuilt his legal practice, the nation was drifting steadily toward sectional confrontation. Victory in the Mexican war, having added vast western territory to the United States, raised anew the issue of slavery in the territories. To southerners it involved the security and rights of slavery everywhere; to Northerners it was a matter of morals and democratic obligations. Only the frantic efforts of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster brought about the Compromise of 1850 as a temporary truce. The basic issues, however, were not eliminated. Four years later, Stephen A. Douglas, by his bill to organize the Kansas-Nebraska Territory according to "squatter sovereignty" and "with all questions pertaining to slavery ... left to the decision of the people," reopened the whole bitter struggle.
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