Stephen William Hawking – British theoretical physicist

The theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has been a celebrity not only within the scientific community but among the general public as well. Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, coincidentally on the 300th anniversary of Galileo Galilei’s death. His parent, Frank and Isobel, lived in London but went to Oxford for his birth to avoid the London of World War II.

Both Frank and Isobel Hawking had studied at Oxford University. Frank studied medicine and became a specialist in tropical disease. Isobel became a secretary and met Frank, and they married in early days of war. Stephen went to the private St. Albans School, beginning his studies in September 1952. He had two younger sisters, Mary and Philippa, and a brother, Edward.

Stephen soon discovered his great gift for mathematics and an intuitive capacity of good ideas, nevertheless, he did not excel as an undergraduate at Oxford University. He got scholarship to University College, which had also been his father’s college.

During his last year at Oxford, physical difficulties emerges, he did nothing about it, but when he went home for Christmas his mother had him examined in the hospital. He soon got report that he had ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also known as motor neuron disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

At Cambridge Hawking was a student at Trinity Hall. Hawking’s fame began with work developed by Fred Hoyle, well known for working with Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold on the “steady state” theory of the universe.

As the Oxford undergraduate, he had shown little promise of becoming a great genius, but when the devastating consequences of his disease appeared in Cambridge, he began to shine with his own light, like a new star igniting into a bright nova.

Hawking is widely known for his pioneering work in the study of black holes, and his interest have included such disciplines as physics, supersymmetry and quantum gravity. In 1971 he argued that black holes could be formed other than by a star’s gravitational collapse. They could have been produced, in the form of mini-black-holes, in the original big-bang.

In 1974 he introduced the concept of Hawking radiation, postulation suggesting an intimate relationship between gravity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics by which under special circumstances, black holes can emit thermal radiation and eventually evaporate.

Hawking has also considered the problem of the quantization of gravity, although he has not yet reached any generally accepted conclusions. He explained his scientific theories in a, popular book, A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes published 1988, which has been in bestseller list for nearly four years.
Stephen William Hawking – British theoretical physicist