`Stephen
Hawking
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) was a
scientist known for his work with black hole
s and relativity, and the author of
popular science books like 'A Brief History of Time...'
About Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking was a British scientist,
professor and author who performed groundbreaking work in physics and
cosmology, and whose books helped to make science accessible to everyone….
At age
21, while studying cosmology at the University of Cambridge, he was diagnosed
with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Part of his life story was depicted
in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything.
Early Life
Hawking was born on January 8,
1942, in Oxford, England. His birthday was also the
300th anniversary of the
death of Galileo — long a source of pride for the noted physicist..
His Scottish mother earned her way
into Oxford University in the 1930s — a time when few women were able to go to
college. His father, another Oxford graduate, was a respected medical
researcher with a specialty in tropical diseases.
Hawking's birth came at an
inopportune time for his parents, who didn't have much money. The political
climate was also tense, as England was dealing with World War II and the
onslaught of German bombs in London, where the couple was living as Frank
Hawking undertook research in medicine.
In an effort to seek a safer place,
Isobel returned to Oxford to have the couple's first child. The Hawkings would
go on to have two other children, Mary and Philippe. And their second son,
Edward, was adopted in 1956.
The Hawkings, as one close family
friend described them, were an "eccentric" bunch. Dinner was often
eaten in silence, each of the Hawkings intently reading a book. The family car
was an old London taxi, and their home in St. Albans was a three-story
fixer-upper that never quite got fixed. The Hawkings also housed bees in the
basement and produced fireworks in the greenhouse.
In 1950, Hawking's father took work
to manage the Division of Parasitology at the National Institute of Medical Research,
and spent the winter months in Africa doing research. He wanted his eldest
child to go into medicine, but at an early age, Hawking showed a passion for
science and the sky.
That was evident to his mother,
who, along with her children, often stretched out in the backyard on summer
evenings to stare up at the stars. "Stephen always had a strong sense of
wonder," she remembered. "And I could see that the stars would draw
him."
Hawking was also frequently on the
go. With his sister Mary, Hawking, who loved to climb, devised different entry
routes into the family home. He loved to dance and also took an interest in
rowing, becoming a team coxswain in college.
Education
Early in his academic life,
Hawking, while recognized as bright, was not an exceptional student. During his
first year at St. Albans School, he was third from the bottom of his class.
But Hawking focused on pursuits
outside of school; he loved board games, and he and a few close friends created
new games of their own. During his teens, Hawking, along with several friends,
constructed a computer out of recycled parts for solving rudimentary
mathematical equations.
Hawking entered University College
at the University of Oxford at the age of 17.
Although he expressed a desire to
study mathematics, Oxford didn't offer a degree in that specialty, so Hawking
gravitated toward physics and, more specifically, cosmology.
By his own account, Hawking didn't
put much time into his studies. He would later calculate that he averaged about
an hour a day focusing on school. And yet he didn't really have to do much more
than that. In 1962, he graduated with honors in natural science and went on to
attend Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge for a Phd. in cosmology.
In 1968, Hawking became a member of
the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. The next few years were a fruitful
time for Hawking and his research. In 1973, he published his first,
highly-technical book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, with G.F.R.
Ellis.
In 1979, Hawking found himself back
at the
University of Cambridge, where he was named to one of teaching's most
renowned posts, dating back to 1663: the Lucian Professor of Mathematics.
Wife and Children
At a New Year's party in 1963,
Hawking met a young languages undergraduate named Jane
Wilde. They were married
in 1965. The couple gave birth to a son, Robert, in 1967, and a daughter, Lucy,
in 1970. A third child, Timothy, arrived in 1979.
In 1990, Hawking left his wife Jane
for one of his nurses, Elaine Mason. The two were married in 1995. The marriage
put a strain on Hawking's relationship with his own children, who claimed
Elaine closed off their father from them.
In 2003, nurses looking after
Hawking reported their suspicions to police that Elaine was physically abusing
her husband. Hawking denied the allegations, and the police investigation was
called off. In 2006, Hawking and Elaine filed for divorce.
In the following years, the physicist
reportedly grew closer to his family. He reconciled with Jane, who had
remarried. And he published five science-themed novels for children with his
daughter, Lucy.
Stephen Hawking: Books
Over the years, Hawking wrote or
co-
wrote a total of 15 books. A few of the most noteworthy include:
'A Brief History of Time'
In 1988 Hawking catapulted to
international prominence with the publication of A Brief History of Time. The
short, informative book became an account of cosmology for the masses and
offered an overview of space and time, the existence of God and the future.
‘The Universe in a Nutshell’
A Brief History of Time also wasn't
as easy to understand as some had hoped. So in 2001, Hawking followed up his
book with The Universe in a Nutshell, which offered a more illustrated guide to
cosmology's big theories.
‘A Briefer History of Time’
In 2005, Hawking authored the even
more accessible A Briefer History of Time, which further simplified the
original work's core concepts and touched upon the newest developments in the
field like string theory.
Together these three books, along
with Hawking's own research and papers, articulated the physicist's personal
search for science's Holy Grail: a single unifying theory that can combine
cosmology (the study of the big) with quantum mechanics (the study of the
small) to explain how the universe began.
This kind of ambitious thinking
allowed Hawking, who claimed he could think in 11 dimensions, to lay out some
big possibilities for humankind. He was convinced that time travel is possible,
and that humans may indeed colonize other planets in the future.
‘The Grand Design’
In September 2010, Hawking spoke
against the idea that God could have created the universe in his book The Grand
Design. Hawking previously argued that belief in a creator could be compatible
with modern scientific theories.
In this work, however, he concluded
that the Big Bang was the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and
nothing more. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can
and will create itself from nothing," Hawking said. "Spontaneous
creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe
exists, why we exist."
The Grand Design was Hawking's
first major publication in almost a decade. Within his new work, Hawking set
out to challenge Isaac Newton's belief that the universe had to have been
designed by God, simply because it could not have been born from chaos.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set
the universe going," Hawking said.
Disease
At the age of 21, Hawking was
diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease).
In a very simple sense, the nerves that controlled his muscles were shutting
down. At the time, doctors gave him two and a half years to live.
Hawking first began to notice
problems with his physical health while he was at Oxford — on occasion he would
trip and fall, or slur his speech — but he didn't look into the problem until
1963, during his first year at Cambridge. For the most part, Hawking had kept
these symptoms to himself.
But when his father took notice of
the condition, he took Hawking to see a doctor. For the next two weeks, the
21-year-old college student made his home at a medical clinic, where he
underwent a series of tests.
"They took a muscle sample
from my arm, stuck electrodes into me, and injected some radio-opaque fluid
into my spine, and watched it going up and down with X-rays, as they tilted the
bed," he once said. "After all that, they didn't tell me what I had,
except that it was not multiple sclerosis, and that I was an atypical
case."
Eventually, however, doctors did
diagnose Hawking with the early stages of ALS. It was devastating news for him
and his family, but a few events prevented him from becoming completely
despondent.
The first of these came while
Hawking was still in the hospital. There, he shared a room with a boy suffering
from leukemia. Relative to what his roommate was going through, Hawking later
reflected, his situation seemed more tolerable.
Not long after he was released from
the hospital, Hawking had a dream that he was going to be executed. He said
this dream made him realize that there were still things to do with his life.
In a sense, Hawking's disease
helped turn him into the noted scientist he became. Before the diagnosis,
Hawking hadn't always focused on his studies. "Before my condition was
diagnosed, I had been very bored with life," he said. "There had not
seemed to be anything worth doing."
As physical control over his body
diminished (he'd be forced to use a wheelchair by 1969), the effects of his
disease started to slow down. Over time, however, Hawking's ever-expanding
career was accompanied by an ever-worsening physical state.
How Did Stephen Hawking Talk?
By the mid-1970s, the Hawking family had taken in one of
Hawking's graduate students to help manage his care and work. He could still
feed himself and get out of bed, but virtually everything else required
assistance.
In addition, his speech had become
increasingly slurred, so that only those who knew him well could understand him.
In 1985 he lost his voice for good following a tracheotomy. The resulting situation
required 24-hour nursing care for
the acclaimed physicist...
It also put in peril Hawking's
ability to do his work. The predicament caught the attention of a California
computer programmer, who had developed a speaking program that could be
directed by head or eye movement. The invention allowed Hawking to select words
on a computer screen that were then passed through a speech synthesizer.
At the time of its introduction,
Hawking, who still had use of his fingers, selected his words with a handheld
clicker. Eventually, with virtually all control of his body gone, Hawking
directed the program through a cheek muscle attached to a sensor.
Through the program, and the help
of assistants, Hawking continued to write at a prolific rate. His work included
numerous scientific papers, of course, but also information for the
non-scientific community.
Hawking's health remained a
constant concern—a worry that was heightened in 2009 when he failed to appear
at a conference in Arizona because of a chest infection. In April, Hawking, who
had already announced he was retiring after 30 years from the post of Lucian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was rushed to the hospital for being
what university officials described as "gravely ill," though he later
made a full recovery.
Research on the Universe and Black Holes
In 1974, Hawking's research turned
him into a celebrity within the scientific world when he showed that black
holes aren't the information vacuums that scientists had thought they were.
In simple terms, Hawking
demonstrated that matter, in the form of radiation, can escape the
gravitational force of a collapsed star. Another young cosmologist, Roger
Penrose, had earlier discovered groundbreaking findings about the fate of stars
and the creation of black holes, which tapped into Hawking's own fascination
with how the universe began.
The pair then began working
together to expand upon Penrose’s earlier work, setting Hawking on a career
course marked by awards, notoriety and distinguished titles that reshaped the
way the world thinks about black holes and the universe.
When Hawking’s radiation theory was
born, the announcement sent shock waves of excitement through the scientific
world. Hawking was named a fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 32, and
later earned the prestigious Albert Einstein Award, among other honors. He also
earned teaching stints at Caltech in Pasadena, California, where he served as visiting
professor and at Gentile and Caius College in Cambridge.
In August 2015, Hawking appeared at
a conference in Sweden to discuss new theories about black holes and the vexing
"information paradox." Addressing the issue of what becomes of an
object that enters a black hole; Hawking proposed that information about the
physical state of the object is stored in 2D form within an outer boundary
known as the "event horizon." Noting that black holes "are not
the eternal prisons they were once thought," he left open the possibility
that the information could be released into another universe.
Beginning of the Universe
In a March 2018 interview on Neil sdegreases
Tyson's Star Talk, Hawking addressed the topic of "what was around before
the Big Bang" by stating there was
nothing around. He said by applying a
Euclidean approach to quantum gravity, which replaces real time with imaginary
time, the history of the universe becomes like a four-dimensional curved
surface, with no boundary.
He suggested picturing this reality
by thinking of imaginary time and real time as beginning at the Earth's South
Pole, a point of space-time where the normal laws of physics hold; as there is
nothing "south" of the South Pole, there was also nothing before the
Big Bang.
Hawking and Space Travel
In 2007, at the age of 65, Hawking
made an important step toward space travel. While visiting the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida, he was given the opportunity to experience an environment
without gravity.
Over the course of two hours over
the Atlantic, Hawking, a passenger on a modified Boeing 727, was freed from his
wheelchair to experience bursts of weightlessness. Pictures of the freely
floating physicist splashed across newspapers around the globe.
"The zero-G part was
wonderful, and the high-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on.
Space, here I come!" he said.
Hawking was scheduled to fly to the
edge of space as one of Sir Richard Branson's pioneer space tourists. He said
in a 2007 statement, "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of
being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a
genetically engineered virus or other dangers. I think the human race has no
future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public
interest in space."
Stephen Hawking and Jim Parsons as
Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory
Stephen Hawking Movie and TV Appearances
If there is such a thing as a
rock-star scientist, Hawking embodied it. His forays into popular culture
included guest appearances on The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation, a
comedy spoof with comedian Jim Carrey on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and
even a recorded voice-over on the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking."
In 1992, Oscar-winning filmmaker
Errol Morris released a documentary about Hawking's life, aptly titled A Brief
History of Time. Other TV and movie appearances included:
'The Big Bang Theory'
In 2012, Hawking showed off his
humorous side on American television, making a guest appearance on The Big Bang
Theory. Playing himself on this popular comedy about a group of young, geeky
scientists, Hawking brings the theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper (Jim
Parsons) back to Earth after finding an error in his work. Hawking earned kudos
for this light-hearted effort.
'The Theory of Everything'
In November of 2014, a film about
the life of Hawking and Jane Wilde was released. The Theory of Everything stars
Eddie Remained as Hawking and encompasses his early life and school days, his
courtship and marriage to Wilde, the progression of his crippling disease and
his scientific triumphs.
'Genius'
In May 2016, Hawking hosted and
narrated Genius, a six-part television series which enlists volunteers to
tackle scientific questions that have been asked throughout history. In a
statement regarding his series, Hawking said Genius is “a project that furthers
my lifelong aim to bring science to the public. It’s a fun show that tries to
find out if ordinary people are smart enough to think like the greatest minds
who ever lived. Being an optimist, I think they will...”
The I Brain
In 2011, Hawkings had participated
in a trial of a new headband-styled device called the I Brain. The device is
designed to "read" the wearer's thoughts by picking up "waves of
electrical brain signals," which are then interpreted by a special
algorithm, according to an article in The New York Times. This device could be
a revolutionary aid to people with ALS.
Hawking on AI
In 2014, Hawking, among other top
scientists, spoke out about the possible dangers of artificial intelligence, or
AI, calling for more research to be done on all of possible ramifications of
AI. Their comments were inspired by the Johnny Depp film Transcendence, which
features a clash between humanity and technology. ..
"Success in creating AI would
be the biggest event in human history," the scientists wrote.
"Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid
the risks..." The group warned of a time when this technology would be
"outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating
human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand."
Hawking reiterated this stance
while speaking at a technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in November
2017. Noting how AI could potentially make gains in wiping out poverty and
disease, but could also lead to such theoretically destructive actions as the
development of autonomous weapons, he said, "We cannot know if we will be
infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably
destroyed by it.."
Hawking and Aliens
In July 2015, Hawking held a news
conference in London to announce the launch of a project called Breakthrough
Listen.. Funded by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Listen was
created to devote more resources to the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
Breaking the Internet
.In October 2017, Cambridge
University posted Hawking's 1965 doctoral thesis, "Properties of Expanding
Universes," to its website. An overwhelming demand for access promptly
crashed the university server, though the document still fielded a staggering
60,000 views before the end of its first day online. ..
When Did Stephen Hawking Die?
On March 14, 2018, Hawking finally
died of ALS, the disease that was supposed to have killed him more than 50
years earlier... A family spokesman confirmed that the iconic scientist died at
his home in Cambridge, England...
.The news touched many in his field
and beyond. Fellow theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss tweeted:
"A star just went out in the cosmos. We have lost an amazing human being.
Hawking fought and tamed the cosmos bravely for 76 years and taught us all
something important about what it truly means to celebrate about being human...”
Hawking's children followed with a
statement: "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away
today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy
will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance
and humor inspired people across the world. He once said. 'It would not be much
of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you loves..' We will miss him
forever...”
Later in the month, it was
announced that Hawking's ashes would be interred at Westminster Abbey in
London, alongside other scientific luminaries like Isaac Newton and Charles
Darwin..
On May 2, 2018, his final paper,
titled "A smooth exit from eternal inflation?" was published in the
Journal of High Energy Physics. Submitted 10 days before his death, the new
report, co-authored by Belgian physicist Thomas Hertzog, disputes the idea that
the universe will continue to expand…
