Stephen William Hawking
1942-
English Theoretical Physicist
Stephen Hawking is arguably the most famous scientist of the second half of the twentiethcentury. His work on black holes, his best-selling book A Brief History of Time, and his long struggle with Lou Gehrig's disease have made him a celebrity.
Hawking was trained as a physicist at Oxford University. He wanted to study mathematics, but his father wanted him to study medicine. Since University College didn't offer mathematics, he ended up in physics. After completing his undergraduate degree he went to Cambridge University for his Ph.D., where he was supervised by Dennis Sciama. He remained at Cambridge, where he is now in the department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position also held by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727).
Hawking's greatest scientific achievements came in the 1960s and 1970s with his advancements of Albert Einstein's (1879-1955) general relativity as it relates to black holes and the Big Bang theory. He worked out many of the characteristics of black holes, such as shape and temperature. His greatest discovery is that black holes radiate tiny amounts of heat, meaning they lose mass and energy. He showed that black holes will eventually shrink down to sub-molecular sizes and evaporate into nothingness. In his honor this radiation is now called Hawking radiation. This discovery solved many problems related to the evolution of black holes.
But this evaporation also created new problems. What exists at the center of the black hole seems to be a "singularity" where space and time cease to have any normal meaning. The English mathematician Sir Roger Penrose (1931- ) and Hawking also showed that rewinding the history of the universe must lead one to conclude that the universe began as a singularity. This singularity could have started the Big Bang, creating our entire universe. This and other findings showed that Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics would have to be linked together into a "theory of everything." This search has occupied Hawking and many other scientists since then and has led in part to the development of string theory.
Hawking is a victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The disease robs victims of control of their muscles. Hawking was diagnosed with the illness in 1963. He was given only a few years to live but has since defied that prediction. He began using a wheelchair as he lost many motor skills. Then, during a 1985 bout with pneumonia he had to undergo a tracheotomy that lefthim almost without speech. He now speaks in a faint, slurred mumble that only those who are with him regularly can understand. Soon after that operation he began to use one of his trademarks—a speech synthesis program that speaks in a robotic, monotone voice. With the two fingers he can still control he slowly and laboriously pecks out text for the machine to read. He claims he can communicate more effectively with this system than with his voice. Today he can use the Internet, make cellular phone calls, and control the lights and doors in his house from his wheelchair.
Stephen Hawking. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced with permission.)His 1988 book A Brief History of Time became a surprise best-seller, staying on the New York Times Bestseller list for 100 weeks and selling over one million hardcover copies. It was also adapted into a television series called Stephen Hawking's Universe. He followed that up with Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays in 1993. He has also written, edited, and contributed to many academic texts and popular books.
Hawking has three children—Robert, Lucy, and Timothy—by his first wife, Jane. Hawking and his wife endured a bitter divorce in 1991 and relations with her and his children remain strained. In 1995 he married his second wife, Elaine Mason.
This is the complete article, containing 635 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
