It has been more than a week since 2026, and everyone must have seen the various year-end summaries for 2025. Just some time ago, Nature also named what they considered the "Top Ten People of 2025". This thing is unbeatable at the end of every year. Although it is not as eye-catching as the Nobel Prize, it can be regarded as a key point for all the homework handed in by all mankind in the past year.
This year's list is full of good guys. There are ruthless people who made new discoveries in the ruins after their laboratories were blown up by missiles; there are professional players who single-handedly turned the entire academic fraud circle upside down; and there is a baby who is just 6 months old? !
The most important thing is that at a glance, two out of ten people are Chinese!
Who is it specifically? Let me tell you directly without telling you:
The first one is Liang Wenfeng, who is known as DeepSeek, a national-level product. Nature calls him a disruptor because he has directly rewritten the pattern of global AI large models. Let’s not brag about this guy. He is low-key and awesome. Nature revealed that he was even rejected by their editorial department for interviews. He is probably busy preparing a new version for the Spring Festival this year, so we just keep looking forward to it.
The other one is Du Mengran, a female scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Nature gave her the title of "deep diver" because she is one of the representatives of the new generation of deep-sea scientific research in China. She followed the "Struggle" into a trench more than 9,000 meters deep. In a place where the pressure is 1,000 times that of the ground, she discovered an ecosystem that subverts human cognition.
As the saying goes, all things grow dependent on the sun. Originally, scientists thought that there was no light at all in the 10,000-meter-deep ocean, and that this ghostly place would at most contain microorganisms such as tardigrades. As a result, Du Mengran looked through the porthole during a deep dive in 2024 and saw that there were all conches, tubeworms, and clams, forming a complete ecosystem. This ecosystem does not rely on sunlight at all, but relies on microorganisms to convert methane and sulfide on the seafloor into energy to feed itself.
This directly rewrote the textbook description, explaining that even under extreme conditions with no sunlight and high pressure, life can exist and reproduce and establish a biosphere.
And it also serves as a reminder to writers, because the Earth is not the only place with similar environments. It seems that other ocean objects (such as Europa) may also have similar alien creatures.
After talking about our Chinese people, there are also many interesting characters in other characters, so let’s move on.
There is a guy in Brazil calledLuciano MoreiraAn entomologist, this time also on the annual list, Nature labeled him a "mosquito rancher". Why does Nature pay attention to mosquitoes? Because in Brazil, the disease dengue fever is so widespread that it killed more than 6,300 people in 2024. The key point is that this disease is spread by mosquitoes. Let alone slapping people with their hands, the insecticide spray will emit smoke, and the effect will be just that.
And this entomologist came up with a solution: we must first raise mosquitoes, and then release them to save the country.
Do you think this is not a big deal? Is it possible to raise mosquitoes to treat mosquitoes? But this guy is not fooling around. He is an experienced mosquito scientist. In the 1990s, he participated in the development of genetically modified anti-malarial mosquitoes. Later, while studying for a Ph.D. in Australia, he discovered a bacterium called "Wolbachia". This bacterium is huge: it is harmless to humans, but once a mosquito is infected, its ability to carry viruses such as dengue fever, chikungunya, and Zika will be greatly reduced. Moreover, if the infected male mosquito mates with a wild female mosquito, the eggs will not hatch. To put it bluntly, you can vaccinate mosquitoes. After that, the mosquitoes are not only non-toxic, but also sterilized.
After years of research, Moreira actually came up with this idea. In 2015, he started piloting it in a Brazilian city called Niterói.After releasing these modified mosquitoes, the local incidence of dengue fever dropped by 89%!
Seeing this data, the Brazilian Ministry of Health was also happy. In 2025, it approved the promotion of this technology across the country and upgraded this matter to a national public health plan.
So Moreira built the world's largest mosquito factory in Brazil, consuming 70 liters of blood every week to feed mosquitoes, with the goal of producing 5 billion infected mosquitoes per year. Then, tons of these creatures are released into various cities.
At present, this person has attracted the attention of global health authorities. Many countries have expressed interest in cooperation with Moreira, hoping to rely on his model to control mosquito-borne diseases. Use magic to defeat magic. This guy has figured it out.
After watching Brazil, let’s look at India again. This time there is a person in India calledAchar AgrawalThe elder brother from the academic circle is also on the list. One person singled out their entire academic circle, which is equivalent to the Indian version of Mr. Geng.
This person was originally a university teacher, but one time he discovered that his student had used software to modify other people's papers and then submitted them as his own original work.
Although it seems normal for Indians to do this kind of thing, this guy is a serious person and pointed it out to the students on the spot. But when it was over, the student said: "Teacher, if the plagiarism checking software didn't detect it, can it be considered plagiarism? Are you better than the software or what?"
Upon hearing this, the more serious third brother was immediately silenced. He realized that it seems that in Indian universities, the matter of academic misconduct may be over. No more hesitation, we must strike hard.
So out of anger, my friend quit his job and became a full-time academic detective. He created a website called "Indian Research Observation", which uses data analysis to track the retractions, plagiarism, and image fraud of various universities in India, and then posts them all online.
Data shows that the retraction rate per 1,000 papers in India has increased nearly 7 times in 8 years! He said that it was because university rankings only looked at the number of papers, which forced everyone to go crazy and make false claims.
Destroying people's wealth is like killing their parents. If you, an unorganized Vaisya, dare to do this, how can other academic Brahmins tolerate you? After that, he received anonymous threats every day, and his website was hacked. Because he exposed the inside story, no university dared to hire him. It was difficult to find a job, and he was even sued by the university.
But this guy is stubborn. Not only does he not give in, he also insists on giving lectures on scientific research ethics to various universities to teach you how to check yourself. Moreover, he relied on his own efforts to bring this matter to the Indian government.
In August 2025, India's university ranking system (NIRF) made a historic adjustment: for the first time, high retraction rate was used as a ranking deduction item.In this case, if your school wants to keep these academically dishonest people, the grades will be dropped and you have to weigh them yourself.
Although he is still worried about his livelihood, he has let the whole world see that no matter how bad the environment is, there are still such righteous and ruthless people who stand up and overturn the table. One person's persistence can shake up a country's scientific research evaluation system.
After watching Tough Guys, I was watching something fun. An Israeli systems biologist is also on the list this time, but the reason why she is on the list is a bit difficult to comment on because her laboratory was blown up by a missile...
Originally, she had been studying some basic biological issues: for example, how the trash can (proteasome) in the cell, which is responsible for recycling and processing waste proteins, works.
Then she discovered that proteaseWhen waste proteins are broken down, a large number of small fragments (peptide fragments) will be produced, and these small fragments themselves are natural antibiotics.
This is a new discovery in immunology. It turns out that the garbage disposal system of cells is also the line of immune defense. When a pathogen invades, this system will automatically adjust the cutting method of "garbage" to quickly release these antibacterial ingredients. This will refresh immunology textbooks and may also provide a new direction for the problem of antibiotic resistance.
But she never expected that in June 2025, at the critical moment of her research, Iran's missile suddenly fluttered and destroyed her laboratory, along with all the equipment inside and the samples that had been reproduced n times.
But this girl is very strong. After confirming that there were no casualties, in her own words, she immediately started the reconstruction work like "automatic driving". Re-purchased equipment and led the team to quickly regroup and continue to advance research.In the end, this new biological discovery was made in a mess.
It can be seen that the fire of science is sometimes closely related to Nobel, and even missiles cannot be extinguished.
In addition to these, a 6-month-old baby is also on the list this time. He is the first baby in the world to be cured by customized gene editing therapy.
When it comes to gene editing, some friends will immediately think of our congratulations, but this story is completely different from that one. This is an upright miracle. It was said that in August last year, a man namedKJ MuldoonDebby was born. This unlucky child was born with an extremely rare genetic disease (CPS1 deficiency).
The liver of normal people can convert ammonia produced by protein decomposition into urea for elimination. But due to a liver defect caused by a DNA mutation, this child is unable to process ammonia, and instead of urinating urea, ammonia is accumulated in the body. But this stuff is highly toxic to the brain. Once accumulated in the blood, it can quickly cause brain damage or even death.
Half of the children with this disease do not live to be one year old. The only hope is to strictly control the diet and then wait in line for a liver transplant, but he may burp at any time.
But the child's doctors came up with an idea. Since it's so dangerous, let's not wait any longer. Let's do gene editing and directly change the wrong gene back to him!
This was unimaginable in the past, because drug research and development in the past was focused on one group and took several years. To develop a miracle drug specifically for a child with a rare disease that would only serve him, the cost and time did not allow for it.
But this time, they really did it. The team of experts from the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia responsible for the treatment were studying a method called "base editing"It's a cutting-edge technology. Compared with traditional gene editing, which cuts and repairs DNA, this kind of base editing is like directly finding the wrong place in the gene and erasing it with a rubber pencil to change it back."
Because it doesn't require reinventing entire therapies, the technology is ideally suited to diseases caused by variations in a single DNA base.
Human lives are at stake, and the expert team has been trained in the laboratory many times before and has extremely deep technical reserves. Therefore, after receiving the application, the FDAOnly one weekThis emergency clinical trial was approved, and the 18-month process from drug design to ethical approval was directly compressed to 6 months.
At the beginning of 2025, the little one who was only 6 months oldKJ, received an injection of this customized miracle drug, and then a miracle happened. The ammonia level in his body gradually stabilized and he began to eat normally. After the third infusion, KJ's condition improved significantly. After staying in the hospital for 307 days, he was discharged home for the first time and forever.
This baby became the first case in the world to be cured by customized gene editing therapy. His success also marks that human medicine may enter a new era of personalized customization.
Of course, besides the ones I mentioned, there are many other great people on this list.
It took 30 years to finally build an astronomical pioneer that can take dynamic videos of the universe.Vera Rubin ObservatoryofTony Tyson; There are also whistleblowers in the field of public health who withstand huge political pressure and protect the bottom line of science...
In fact, after taking stock here, our biggest feeling is that scientific progress is never smooth sailing. It’s not just about reading a few papers, or what advanced instruments are in the laboratory.
Scientific exploration is like this group of people, studying the deepest technology, diving into the deepest seabed, and turning hundreds of millions of mosquitoes into comrades; it is rebelliousness in the face of injustice, it is picking up test tubes from the ruins and continuing to work, and it is also modifying the underlying code of life in order to save a child.
Although this world is sometimes fucked up, there are viruses, wars, academic fraud, and rare diseases. But there is always a group of people who are using their wisdom and courage to push the world in a good direction.
These people are the heroic answers that we humans will hand over in the face of the times in 2025.