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.
Some cool facts about Stephen Hawking
1.Believed aliens may exist
Although he contributed through his work on cosmology, Stephen Hawking’s opinions about possibility of alien life also gained a lot of attention. He said that there may be primitive alien life in the universe given the vastness of its nature. He even did an episode on the subject for
“Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking” that aired on the Discovery Channel.
2.He always scored less marks
Although he is known as a brilliant mind for his theories, Stephen Hawking was not particularly good when it came to grades. He ranked among the worst in his class when he was nine, and he couldn’t push his grades beyond average despite his efforts.
3.He was the member Of Oxford's Rowing Team
Before his illness, he was one of the most important members of Oxford Rowing Team. His dedication and perfection made him very popular and he was called as "the adventurous type" by one of his fellow boatman.
4.Martial status
He got married twice and divorced twice.
5.He was nicknamed Einstein in school
Hawking was nicknamed 'Einstein' by his classmates after he built a computer with his friends as a teenager. He also had an almost unbelievable understanding about space and time, which shocked everyone.
6.He had only two years to live!
In 1963 at the age of 21, Stephen was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease and doctors told him that he had only 2 years to live.
7.Mysterious for Hawking
When asked which was the most mysterious thing in the world, Hawking replied- its’s women!
8.Guest starred
He has guest-starred, as himself, on "The Big Bang Theory," "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "The Simpsons."
9.He didn't like biology
Hawking used to love mathematics even as a child. His father, Frank, wanted him to pursue medicine but Stephen was not interested in Biology, saying that he found the subject overly detailed and inexact, which is why he wanted to do something that had precise and structured concepts. Problem was, Oxford was not offering Mathematics as a major at that point, which is why Hawking chose Physics as his major. He was given the option of deciding between particle physics and cosmology and he chose the latter, even though the legitimacy of the field was in doubt back then.
10.He Has Many Awards
Hawking has several awards and distinctions to his name. He was admitted in the royal society in 1974, which went on to award him the Hughes Medal and the Albert Einstein Award. In 2009, USA presented him with Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian award. He has 12 honorary degrees to his name.
Some of Stephen Hawking's quotes
1.Next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.
2.Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.
3.People who boast about their IQ are losers.
4.I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.
5.Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
6.My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically.
7.We are all different, but we share the same human spirit. Perhaps it’s human nature that we adapt and survive.
8.We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
9.Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.
10.I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time.
Discoveries made by Stephen Hawking
- The Origins of the Universe
- Time
- The Big Bang Theory
- Gravitational and Spacetime Singularities
- Black Hole Radiation
- A Universe Without Spacetime Boundaries
- Atheism
- The High Likelihood of the Existence of Extraterrestrial Life
Here is a timeline of some of Prof Hawking's key discoveries and works.
1966 - Completes doctorate and is awarded fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He works on singularities in the theory of general relativity and applies ideas to the study of black holes.
1968 - Publishes Large Scale Structure of Space-Time
1970 - Discovers that by using quantum theory and general relativity he is able to show that black holes can emit radiation.
1973 - In the same year he joins the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge, he discovers that black holes could leak energy and particles into space, and could even explode. It is published in the journal Nature, a year later. The theory is known as Hawking radiation.
1974- 1975 - Black holes can vanish
1982 - How Galaxies might arise
1983- Wave functions of the Universe
1988- "A Brief History of Time" his famous book published
1993 - Publishes Black Holes and Baby Universes, and other Essays, a collection of scientific articles exploring ways in which the universe may be governed.
1998 - Publishes Stephen Hawking's Universe: The Cosmos Explained, a book about the basis of existence.
2001 - Publishes Universe in a Nutshell in the UK, a book explaining to a general audience recent breakthroughs in physics.
2002 - Publishes The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, a book presenting the most complex theories of physics past and present.
2004 - Announces he has solved the Black Hole paradox. In doing so, he concedes that he lost a bet that he an Caltech theorist Kip Thorne had made with John Preskill, also of Caltech, about black holes. After nearly 30 years of arguing black holes destroy everything that falls into it, he admits that they may allow information within them to escape.
2006- Top-Down Theory on Cosmology
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 Gravitation, 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.
Stephen Hawking's Pediction
- He had theories on topics from artificial intelligence to humans moving to other planets.
- Hawking once predicted that the earth would turn into a giant ball of fire by 2600 and humans would need to colonize another planet or face extinction.
- The scientist also claimed that the advent of artificial intelligence could be the "worst event in the history of our civilization."
Stephen Hawking's Death
Hawking died at his home in Cambridge, England, early in the morning of
14 March 2018. His family stated that he "died peacefully".
