Text 1

Language notes

1.Budapest

（布达佩斯） 

It is the capital of Hungary.

2.Though he was often shy in social settings, science brought out the showman in him.

(虽然在大庭广众面前他还常常感到害羞，但是科学使他的表演天赋得以充分发挥。)

Bring out here means to cause a certain quality to be seen in sb.  
e.g. A crisis brings out the best in her.

The phrase can also be used simply to mean to produce.

e.g. The makers are bringing out a new kind of soap.

3.The professor's sense of humor helped sustain him even in difficult situations.

To sustain sb. means to keep sb alive or in existence.

e.g. Only the hope that the rescuers were getting nearer sustained the trapped miners.

The sentence from our text, however, simply means by being and staying humorous, the professor was able to cope well in face of difficulties. 

Text 2

Language notes:

1. When a young man wanted to enter the school, he would go there, look up the teacher in whose classes he was interested...

（年轻人想进哪所学校，就可以直接去那里。对哪些课程感兴趣，就去找任课教师。）

To look sb. up is an informal way of saying to visit or contact sb., especially after not having seen him/her for a long time. To look sth. up, however, is to search for sth. from reference books, dictionaries, etc.. And to look up to sb. is to admire or respect him/her.  

2.This was especially important in natural science because students often took long, demanding field trips to obtain specimens. 

（这对于学习自然科学尤为重要，因为学生们经常要有耗时费力的野外活动来收集标本。）

If sth. is demanding, it requires skill, effort, patience, etc.. A demanding field trip for natural science students, then, is a trip to some outdoor research site which is often long and exhausting. If sb is demanding, then he/she must be strict or even rigid with others, requiring of super performance at work, like a demanding boss, or one who makes others work hard, like demanding kids to whom you have to pay constant attention.

3.He should be loath to take someone else's word as fact.

(他不应随便把别人的话当做事实。)

Be loath to do something means to be unwilling to do something.
e.g. I have had this old car a long time; I am loath to part with it.

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