STEPHEN HAWKING:-BIOGRAPHY

NAME:	STEPHEN HAWKING
BIRTH:	8 JAN 1952
COUNTRY:	UNITED KINGDOM
DEATH:	14 MARCH 2018
AWARDS:	PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM and many more…

 

 

 

Professor Stephen William Hawking was born on 8th January 1942 (exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England. When he was eight his family moved to St. Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At the age of eleven, Stephen went to St. Albans School and then on to University College, Oxford (1952); his father’s old college.

Stephen wanted to study mathematics although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he pursued physics instead. After three years and not very much work, he was awarded a first class honors degree in natural science.

In October 1962, Stephen arrived at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge to do research in cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time.. After gaining his PhD (1965) with his thesis titled ‘Properties of Expanding Universes‘, he became, first, a research fellow (1965) then Fellow for Distinction in Science (1969) at Gonville & Caius College.. Stephen moved to the Institute of Astronomy (1968), later moving back to DAMTP (1973), employed as a research assistant, and published his first academic book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, with George Ellis.

Professor Stephen Hawking worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein’s general theory of relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes (1970). These results indicated that it was necessary to unify general relativity with quantum theory, the other great scientific development of the first half of the 20th century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but rather should emit ‘Hawking’ radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear (1974). Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science. .

 Among the popular books Stephen Hawking published are his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design and My Brief History.

Professor Stephen Hawking received thirteen honorary degrees. He was awarded CBE (1982), Companion of Honor (1989) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009). He was the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes.

In 1963, Stephen was diagnosed with ALS, a form of Motor Neuron Disease. In spite of being wheelchair-bound and dependent on a computerized voice system for communication Stephen continued to combine family life (he has three children and three grandchildren) with his research into theoretical physics, in addition to an extensive programme of travel and public lectures. Thanks to the Zero-G Corporation, he experienced weightlessness in 2007 and always hoped to make it into space one day.

He truly is a great scientist!!

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