(1942 - 2018)
Stephen
Hawking is known for his work regarding black holes and for authoring several
popular science books. He suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Synopsis
Stephen Hawking
was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. At an early age, Hawking
showed a passion for science and the sky. At age 21, while studying cosmology
at the University of Cambridge, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis. Despite his debilitating illness, he has done groundbreaking work in
physics and cosmology, and his several books have helped to make science
accessible to everyone. Part of his life story was depicted in the 2014 film The
Theory of Everything.
Early Life and Background
The eldest of
Frank and Isobel Hawking's four children, Stephen William Hawking was born on
the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo—long a source of pride for the
noted physicist—on January 8, 1942. He was born in Oxford, England, into a family
of thinkers. His Scottish mother had 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."
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 was
also frequently on the go. With his sister Mary, Hawking, who loved to climb,
devised different entry routes into the family home. He remained active even
after he entered University College at Oxford University at the age of 17. He
loved to dance and also took an interest in rowing, becoming a team coxswain.
Hawking
expressed a desire to study mathematics, but since Oxford didn't offer a degree
in that specialty, 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.
Disability outreach
Since
the 1990s, Hawking has accepted the mantle of role model for disabled people,
lecturing and participating in fundraising activities. At the turn of the century, he and
eleven other luminaries signed the Charter
for the Third Millennium on Disability which
called on governments to prevent disability and protect disability rights. In 1999 Hawking was awarded theJulius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical
Society. Motivated by
the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential
of people with disabilities, in 2007 he participated in zero-gravity flight in
a "Vomit Comet", courtesy of Zero Gravity
Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times.
In
August 2012 Hawking narrated the "Enlightenment" segment of the 2012
Summer Paralympics opening ceremony. In 2013, the biographical documentary
film Hawking,
in which Hawking himself is featured, was released. In September 2013, he expressed
support for the legalisation of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. In August 2014, Hawking accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge to promote ALS/MND awareness and raise
contributions for research. As he had had pneumonia in 2013, he was advised not
to have ice poured over him, but his children volunteered to accept the
challenge on his behalf.
Appearances in popular media
At the
release party for the home video version of the A Brief History of Time, Leonard Nimoy, who had played Spock on Star Trek, learned that Hawking was
interested in appearing on the show. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and
Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek:
The Next Generation in
1993. The same year, his
synthesiser voice was recorded for the Pink Floyd song
"Keep Talking", and in 1999 for an appearance on The Simpsons. Hawking appeared in documentaries
entitled The Real Stephen
Hawking (2001) Stephen Hawking: Profile (2002) and Hawking (2013), and the documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master of the
Universe (2008). Hawking has also guest-starred in Futurama and The Big Bang Theory. Hawking allowed the use of his
trademarked voice in the biographical 2014 film The
Theory of Everything.
Hawking
has used his fame to advertise products, including a wheelchair.
Awards
and honours
Hawking
has received numerous awards and honours. Already early in the list, in 1974 he
was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). At that time, his nomination
read:"Hawking has made major contributions to the field of
general relativity. These derive from a deep understanding of what is relevant
to physics and astronomy, and especially from a mastery of wholly new
mathematical techniques. Following the pioneering work of Penrose he
established, partly alone and partly in collaboration with Penrose, a series of
successively stronger theorems establishing the fundamental result that all
realistic cosmological models must possess singularities. Using similar
techniques, Hawking has proved the basic theorems on the laws governing black
holes: that stationary solutions of Einstein's equations with smooth event
horizons must necessarily be axisymmetric; and that in the evolution and interaction
of black holes, the total surface area of the event horizons must increase. In
collaboration with G. Ellis, Hawking is the author of an impressive and
original treatise on "Space-time in the Large". The citation
continues:
"Other important work by Hawking relates to the
interpretation of cosmological observations and to the design of gravitational
wave detectors."
