Stephen Hawking : Biography
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| Stephen Hawking |
Stephen Hawking : Biography
Scientist, Physicist (1942–2018)
Scientist
Stephen Hawking was known for his groundbreaking work with black holes and
relativity, and was the author of several popular science books including 'A
Brief History of Time.'
Who Was Stephen Hawking?
Stephen Hawking (January 8, 1942 to March 14, 2018)
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.
Stephen Hawking’s Books
Over the years, Stephen 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 work was
an instant success, spending more than four years atop the London Sunday Times'
best-seller list. Since its publication, it has sold millions of copies
worldwide and been translated into more than 40 languages.
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 Sir 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.
What Disease Did Stephen
Hawking Have?
At the age of 21, Stephen 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—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." With the sudden realization that he might not even live long
enough to earn his PhD, Hawking poured himself into his work and
research.
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. 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,
Stephen 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 Lucasian 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.
Death
On March 14, 2018, Hawking finally succumbed to 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. Stephen 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 love.' 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 Newton and Charles Darwin.
Stephen Hawking’s Wife and
Children
At a New Year's party in 1963, shortly before he had
been diagnosed with ALS, Stephen 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.
When and Where Was Stephen
Hawking Born?
Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England,
on January 8, 1942, the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo—long a
source of pride for the noted physicist.
Stephen Hawking’s Family and
Early Years
The eldest of Frank and Isobel Hawking's four
children, Stephen Hawking was born into a family of thinkers. 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.
Stephen 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 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 (1943) and Philippa (1947). 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 and Cambridge
University
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 Oxford
University 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 Cambridge University 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 Cambridge
University, where he was named to one of teaching's most renowned posts, dating
back to 1663: the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
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 EinsteinAward,
among other honors. He also earned teaching stints at Caltech in Pasadena,
California, where he served as visiting professor, and at Gonville 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 deGrasse 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."
TV and Film Appearances
If there is such a thing as a rock-star scientist,
Stephen 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 lighthearted effort.
‘The
Theory of Everything’
In November of 2014, a film about the life of Stephen
Hawking and Jane Wilde was released. The Theory of Everything stars Eddie
Redmayne 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 iBrain
In 2011, Hawkings had participated in a trial of a new
headband-styled device called the iBrain. 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.
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