Stephen William Hawking
was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford,
England. His parents' house was in north London, but during the second world
war, Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. 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; 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 honours degree in Natural Science.
Stephen then went on to
Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no one working in that area
in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped
to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he
became first a Research Fellow and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville
and Caius College. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973, Stephen
came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1979,
and held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1979 until 2009.
The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry
Lucas who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first
held by Isaac Barrow and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton. Stephen is still an active part of Cambridge
University and retains an office at the Department for Applied Maths and
Theoretical Physics. His title is now the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui
Wong-Avery Director of Research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and
Theoretical Physics.
Stephen Hawking has 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. 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 radiation and eventually
evaporate and disappear. 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.
His many publications
include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General
Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of
Gravity, with W Israel. Among the popular books Stephen Hawking has 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 Hawking has
twelve honorary degrees. He was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a
Companion of Honour in 1989. He is the recipient of many awards, medals and
prizes, is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National
Academy of Sciences.
Stephen was diagnosed with
ALS, a form of Motor Neurone Disease, shortly after his 21st birthday. In spite
of being wheelchair bound and dependent on a computerised voice system for
communication Stephen Hawking continues to combine family life (he has three
children and three grandchildren), and his research into theoretical physics
together with an extensive programme of travel and public lectures. He still
hopes to make it into space one day.
“Quiet people have the
loudest minds.” ― Stephen Hawking.
“Intelligence is the
ability to adapt to change. ” ― Stephen Hawking.
“My expectations were
reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus." [The
Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12,
2004)]” ― Stephen Hawking.
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