Physicist, Scientist(1942–)
Scientist Stephen Hawking is known for
his groundbreaking work with black holes and relativity, and is the
author of several popular science books including 'A Brief History of
Time.'
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.
ALS Diagnosis
While
Hawking first began to notice problems with his physical health while
he was at Oxford—on occasion he would trip and fall, or slur his
speech—he didn't look into the problem until 1963, during his first
year at Cambridge. For the most part, Hawking had kept these symptoms
to himself. But when his father took notice of the condition, he took
Hawking to see a doctor. For the next two weeks, the 21-year-old college
student made his home at a medical clinic, where he underwent a series
of tests.
"They took a muscle sample from my arm, stuck electrodes
into me, and injected some radio-opaque fluid into my spine, and
watched it going up and down with X-rays, as they tilted the bed," he
once said. "After all that, they didn't tell me what I had, except that
it was not multiple sclerosis, and that I was an atypical case."
Eventually,
however, doctors did inform the Hawkings about what was ailing their
son: He was in the early stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS,
or Lou Gehrig's disease). In a very simple sense, the nerves that
controlled his muscles were shutting down. Doctors gave him two and a
half years to live.
It was devastating news for Hawking and his
family. A few events, however, prevented him from becoming completely
despondent. The first of these came while Hawking was still in the
hospital. There, he shared a room with a boy suffering from leukemia.
Relative to what his roommate was going through, Hawking later
reflected, his situation seemed more tolerable. Not long after he was
released from the hospital, Hawking had a dream that he was going to be
executed. He said this dream made him realize that there were still
things to do with his life.
But the most significant change in his
life was the fact that he was in love. At a New Year's party in 1963,
shortly before he had been diagnosed with ALS, Hawking met a young
languages undergraduate named Jane Wilde. They were married in 1965.
In
a sense, Hawking's disease helped him become the noted scientist he is
today. Before the diagnosis, Hawking hadn't always focused on his
studies. "Before my condition was diagnosed, I had been very bored with
life," he said. "There had not seemed to be anything worth doing." With
the sudden realization that he might not even live long enough to earn
his PhD, Hawking poured himself into his work and research.
Research on Black Holes
Groundbreaking
findings from another young cosmologist, Roger Penrose, about the fate
of stars and the creation of black holes tapped into Hawking's own
fascination with how the universe began. This set him on a career course
that reshaped the way the world thinks about black holes and the
universe.
While physical control over his body diminished (he'd be
forced to use a wheelchair by 1969), the effects of his disease
started to slow down. In 1968, a year after the birth of his son Robert,
Hawking became a member of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.
The
next few years were a fruitful time for Hawking. A daughter, Lucy, was
born to Stephen and Jane in 1969, while Hawking continued with his
research. (A third child, Timothy, arrived 10 years later.) He then
published his first book, the highly technical The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (1973), with G.F.R. Ellis. He also teamed up with Penrose to expand upon his friend's earlier work.
In
1974, Hawking's research turned him into a celebrity within the
scientific world when he showed that black holes aren't the information
vacuums that scientists had thought they were. In simple terms, Hawking
demonstrated that matter, in the form of radiation, can escape the
gravitational force of a collapsed star. Hawking radiation was born.
The
announcement sent shock waves of excitement through the scientific
world, and put Hawking on a path that's been marked by awards, notoriety
and distinguished titles. He was named a fellow of the Royal Society at
the age of 32, and later earned the prestigious Albert Einstein Award,
among other honors.
Teaching stints followed, too. One was at
Caltech in Pasadena, California, where Hawking served as visiting
professor, making subsequent visits over the years. Another was at
Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge. In 1979, Hawking found himself
back at Cambridge University, where he was named to one of teaching's
most renowned posts, dating back to 1663: the Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics.
'A Brief History of Time'
Hawking's
ever-expanding career was accompanied, however, by his ever-worsening
physical state. By the mid-1970s, the Hawking family had taken in one of
Hawking's graduate students to help manage his care and work. He could
still feed himself and get out of bed, but virtually everything else
required assistance. In addition, his speech had become increasingly
slurred, so that only those who knew him well could understand him. In
1985 he lost his voice for good following a tracheotomy. The resulting
situation required 24-hour nursing care for the acclaimed physicist.
It
also put in peril Hawking's ability to do his work. The predicament
caught the attention of a California computer programmer, who had
developed a speaking program that could be directed by head or eye
movement. The invention allowed Hawking to select words on a computer
screen that were then passed through a speech synthesizer. At the time
of its introduction, Hawking, who still had use of his fingers, selected
his words with a handheld clicker. Today, with virtually all control of
his body gone, Hawking directs the program through a cheek muscle
attached to a sensor.
Through the program, and the
help of assistants, Stephen Hawking has continued to write at a prolific
rate. His work has included numerous scientific papers, of course, but
also information for the non-scientific community.
In 1988
Hawking, a recipient of the Commander of the Order of the British
Empire, catapulted to international prominence with the publication of
A Brief History of Time.
The short, informative book became an account of cosmology for the
masses. The work was an instant success, spending more than four years
atop the
London Sunday Times' best-seller list. Since its
publication, it has sold millions of copies worldwide and been
translated into more than 40 languages. But it also wasn't as easy to
understand as some had hoped. So in 2001, Hawking followed up his book
with
The Universe in a Nutshell, which offered a more illustrated guide to cosmology's big theories. Four years later, he authored the even more accessible
A Briefer History of Time.
Together
the books, along with Hawking's own research and papers, articulate
the physicist's personal search for science's Holy Grail: a single
unifying theory that can combine cosmology (the study of the big) with
quantum mechanics (the study of the small) to explain how the universe
began. It's this kind of ambitious thinking that has allowed Hawking,
who claims he can think in 11 dimensions, to lay out some big
possibilities for humankind. He's convinced that time travel is
possible, and that humans may indeed colonize other planets in the
future.
Space Travel and Further Fame
Hawking's
quest for big answers to big questions includes his own personal desire
to travel into space. In 2007, at the age of 65, Hawking made an
important step toward space travel. While visiting the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida, he was given the opportunity to experience an
environment without gravity. Over the course of two hours over the
Atlantic, Hawking, a passenger on a modified Boeing 727, was freed from
his wheelchair to experience bursts of weightlessness. Pictures of the
freely floating physicist splashed across newspapers around the globe.
"The zero-G part was wonderful, and the high-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come!" he said.
If
there is such a thing as a rock-star scientist, Stephen Hawking
embodies it. His forays into popular culture have included guest
appearances on
The Simpsons,
Star Trek: The Next Generation, a comedy spoof with comedian Jim Carrey on
Late Night with Conan O'Brien,
and even a recorded voice-over on the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking."
In 1992, Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris released a documentary
about Hawking's life, aptly titled
A Brief History of Time.
Of
course, as it is with any celebrity, fame has brought with it an
interest in Hawking's personal life. And there have been some
news-making events. In 1990, Hawking left his wife, Jane, for one of his
nurses, Elaine Mason. The two were married in 1995, and the marriage
put a strain on Hawking's relationship with his own children, who
claimed Elaine closed off their father from them. In 2003, nurses
looking after Hawking reported their suspicions to police that Elaine
was physically abusing her husband. Hawking denied the allegations, and
the police investigation was called off.
In 2006, however, Hawking
and Elaine filed for divorce. In the years since, the physicist has
apparently grown closer with his family. He's reconciled with Jane, who
has remarried, and published a 2007 science book for children,
George's Secret Key to the Universe, with his daughter, Lucy.
Hawking's
health, of course, remains a constant concern—a worry that was
heightened in 2009 when he failed to appear at a conference in Arizona
because of a chest infection. In April, Hawking, who had already
announced he was retiring after 30 years from the post of Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was rushed to the hospital for
being what university officials described as "gravely ill." It was later
announced that he was expected to make a full recovery.
Hawking is scheduled to fly to the edge of space as one of Sir Richard Branson's
pioneer space tourists. He said in a 2007 statement, "Life on Earth is
at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as
sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or
other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go
into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."
In September 2010, Hawking spoke against the idea that God could have created the universe in his book
The Grand Design.
Hawking previously argued that belief in a creator could be compatible
with modern scientific theories. His new work, however, concluded that
the Big Bang was the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and
nothing more. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can
and will create itself from nothing," Hawking said. "Spontaneous
creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the
universe exists, why we exist."
The Grand Design was
Hawking's first major publication in almost a decade. Within his new
work, Hawking set out to challenge Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the
universe had to have been designed by God, simply because it could not
have been born from chaos. "It is not necessary to invoke God to light
the blue touch paper and set the universe going," Hawking said.
Hawking
made news in 2012 for two very different projects. It was revealed that
he had participated in a 2011 trial of a new headband-styled device
called the iBrain. The device is designed to "read" the wearer's
thoughts by picking up "waves of electrical brain signals," which are
then interpreted by a special algorithm, according to an article in
The New York Times. This device could be a revolutionary aid to Hawking and others with ALS.
TV and Film
Also around this time, Hawking showed off his humorous side on American television. He made a guest appearance on
The Big Bang Theory,
a popular comedy about a group of young, geeky scientists. Playing
himself, Hawking brings the theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) back to Earth after finding an error in his work. Hawking earned kudos for this lighthearted effort.
In
2014, Hawking, among other top scientists, spoke out about the possible
dangers of artificial intelligence, or AI, calling for more research to
be done on all of possible ramifications of AI. Their comments were
inspired by the Johnny Depp film
Transcendence,
which features clash between humanity and technology. "Success in
creating AI would be the biggest event in human history," the scientists
wrote. "Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how
to avoid the risks." The group warned of a time when this technology
would be "outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human
researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we
cannot even understand."
In November of the same year, a film about the life of Stephen Hawking and Jane Wilde was released.
The Theory of Everything stars Eddie Redmayne
as Hawking and encompasses his early life and school days, his
courtship and marriage to Wilde, the progression of his crippling
disease and his scientific triumphs.
In May 2016, Hawking hosts and narrates
Genius,
a six-part television series which enlists volunteers to tackle
scientific questions that have been asked throughout history. In a
statement regarding his new series, Hawking said
Genius is “a
project that furthers my lifelong aim to bring science to the public.
It’s a fun show that tries to find out if ordinary people are smart
enough to think like the greatest minds who ever lived. Being an
optimist, I think they will.”
Alien Life and
New Theories
Hawking was back in the headlines in the summer of
2015. In July, he held a news conference in London to announce the
launch of a project called Breakthrough Listen. Funded by Russian
entrepreneur Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Listen was created to devote more
resources to the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
The
following month, Hawking appeared at a conference in Sweden to discuss
new theories about black holes and the vexing "information
paradox." Addressing the issue of what becomes of an object that enters a
black hole, Hawking proposed that information about the physical state
of the object is stored in 2D form within an outer boundary known as the
"event horizon." Noting that black holes "are not the eternal prisons
they were once thought," he left open the possibility that the
information could be released into another universe.
