Yuan Cao’s teenage years were hardly typical. By age 18, he had already graduated from high school, completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, and travelled to the United States to begin his PhD. He hasn’t slowed down since: this year, aged just 21, Cao had two papers published on strange behaviour in atom-thick layers of carbon that have spurred a new field of physics. Cao admits that his situation is unusual, but says he isn’t special. After all, he did spend a full four years at university: “I just skipped some of the boring stuff in middle school.”

曹原年少时便令许多人望尘莫及。在18岁时，他已高中毕业，并在合肥中国科学技术大学完成本科学位，随后前往美国攻读博士学位。他也没有停下前进的脚步: 今年，年仅21岁的曹原发表了两篇关于原子厚度的碳层中奇怪行为的论文，这开创了物理学的一个全新领域。曹原承认自己的情况并不常见，但是并不特别。最后，他称自己和普通人一样也上了四年大学，只是在中学时期跳过了一些无聊的东西。

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero’s group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge was already layering and rotating sheets of carbon at different angles when Cao joined the lab in 2014. Cao’s job was to investigate what happened in two-layer stacks when one graphene sheet was twisted only slightly with respect to the other, which one theory predicted would radically change the material’s behaviour.

曹原2014年加入麻省理工学院(MIT)Pablo Jarillo-Herrero团队时，该团队已经在从不同角度对碳片进行分层和叠加研究。曹原的工作是研究当一个石墨烯薄片相对于另一个稍微扭曲时，两层叠加层中会发生什么，一种理论预测这将从根本上改变这种材料的性质。

Many physicists were sceptical about the idea. But when Cao set out to create the subtly twisted stacks, he spotted something strange. Exposed to a small electric field and cooled to 1.7 degrees above absolute zero, the graphene — which ordinarily conducts electricity — became an insulator (Y. Cao et al. Nature 556, 80–84; 2018). That by itself was surprising. “We knew already that it would have a big impact on the community,” says Cao. But the best was yet to come: with a slight tweak to the field, the twisted sheets became a superconductor, in which electricity flowed without resistance (Y. Cao et al. Nature 556, 43–50; 2018). Seeing the effect in a second sample convinced the team that it was real.

许多物理学家对此有些怀疑。当曹原开始制作这些巧妙扭曲的结构时，他发现了一些奇怪的东西。如果把石墨烯暴露在一个小电场中，冷却到绝对零度以上1.7度，通常导电的石墨烯就变成了绝缘体(2018年《自然》第556期，80-84页，曹原等人) 。这个发现已经非常令人震惊了。曹原说，我们知道这将对科学界产生巨大影响，但是远远不止于此。曹原发现，只要对电场稍加调整，扭曲的薄片就会变成超导体，超导体里的电流就可以毫无阻碍地流动(2018年《自然》第556期，43-50页，曹原等人)。他的团队从第二个样本中也得到了同样的结果，并确认曹原的想法是正确的。

Cao, now 22, doesn’t yet know where he’d like his career to lead. “On magic-angle graphene, we still have a lot of things to do,” he says. But universities around the world are already eyeing him for not only postdoctorate jobs, but also faculty positions, says physicist Changgan Zeng, Cao’s undergraduate supervisor and mentor at the University of Science and Technology of China. “Among condensed-matter physicists in China, everybody knows his name,” Zeng says. The university would gladly have him back, but Zeng expects that Cao will stay in the United States for now. “There, it’s easier to see the stars.”

未来的科研生涯将会走向何方，现在22岁的曹原说自己并不知道。他说：“对于石墨烯的‘魔角’，我们要做的事情还有很多。”他的本科导师，中国科学技术大学物理学家曾长淦表示，世界各地已经有多所大学向他抛出了橄榄枝，不仅有博士后的职位，而且还有教职岗位。“在中国的凝聚态物理学家中，每个人都知道他的名字。”曾长淦说。他回来的话中科大会很高兴，但曾长淦希望曹原现阶段留在美国。“那里，更容易取得更大的成就。”