1992年,我们纪念克里斯托弗·哥伦布于1492年发现美洲大陆500周年。而现在,由于我们已经详尽地了解了地球这颗行星的地理状况,所以我们清楚地知道地球上已经不存在未知的新大陆了。但是,这里仍然有许许多多“科学新大陆”等待着那些精力充沛的、热情的探索者们去发现。请允许我向你们描述,我和我的学生们是如何探索和发现硼烷这样一块“新大陆”的。1936年,我从芝加哥大学毕业的时候,我的同学萨拉·贝伦将一本阿尔弗雷德·斯托克的著作《硼和硅的氢化合物》送给我 In 1992, we commemorated the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the American continent by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Now that we have a detailed understanding of the geography of the planet Earth, we clearly know that there is no known new continent on Earth. However, there are still many “science new continents” waiting to be discovered by energetic and enthusiastic explorers. Please allow me to describe to you how my students and I explored and discovered borane as a “new continent.” When I graduated from the University of Chicago in 1936, my classmate Sarah Belem gave me an Alfred Stoke book “Hydrogen Compounds of Boron and Silicon.”