PROFESSOR STEPHEN WILLIAM HAWKING
BY JUNAID RAMZAN, E&C
BRANCH, 2ND SEMESTER
BIOGRAPHY:
Professor
Stephen William Hawking was born on 8th January 1942 (exactly
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 (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.
UNIVERSITY
BACKGROUND:
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. His supervisor was Dennis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred
Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. 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. In 1966 he won the Adams Prize for his essay
'Singularities and the Geometry of Space-time'. 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. During the next few years,
Stephen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1974) and Sherman Fairchild
Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology (1974). He
became a Reader in Gravitational Physics at DAMTP (1975), progressing to
Professor of Gravitational Physics (1977). He then held the position of
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (1979-2009). 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. From 2009, Stephen was employed as
the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of
Research at DAMTP.
INTERESTING FIELDS:
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. Towards the end of his life, Stephen was working with colleagues on a
possible resolution to the black hole information paradox, where debate centers
around the conservation of information.
His many publications included The Large Scale Structure of Space time with
G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey,
with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravitation, with W Israel. 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.
AWARDS AND RECORDS:
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, most notably the Fundamental Physics prize (2013), Copley
Medal (2006) and the Wolf Foundation prize (1988). He was a Fellow of the Royal
Society and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
In 1963 Stephen was diagnosed with ALS, a form of Motor Neuron Disease, shortly
after his 21st birthday. 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.
DEATH:
Hawking died in his home in Cambridge, England, early in the morning of 14 March 2018, at
the age of 76.His family stated that he "died peacefully". He
was eulogised by figures in science, entertainment, politics, and other areas. The Gonville and
Caius College flag flew at half-mast and a book of condolences was
signed by students and visitors. A tribute was made to Hawking in the
closing speech by IPC President Andrew Parsons at
the closing ceremony of
the 2018 Para Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Hawking's
final broadcast interview, about the detection of gravitational waves resulting
from the collision of two neutron stars, occurred in October 2017. His
final words to the world appeared posthumously, in April 2018, in the form of
a Smithsonian TV Channel documentary
entitled, Leaving Earth: Or How
to Colonize a Planet. His final research study, entitled A smooth exit from eternal inflation?,
about the origin of the universe,
was published in the Journal of High Energy Physics in
May 2018.
Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death and died on the 139th anniversary
of Einstein's birth. His
private funeral took place at 2 pm on the afternoon of 31 March 2018, at Great St Mary's
Church, Cambridge. Guests at the funeral included Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. Following the cremation there will be a
service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey on 15 June 2018, after which his ashes
will be interred in the Abbey's nave,
alongside the grave of Sir Isaac Newton and close to that of Charles Darwin. He directed at least fifteen years before
his death that the Bekenstein–Hawking
entropy equation be his epitaph.
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