Stephen Hawking

Introducing Hawking’s Life

“Stephen William Hawking was born on 8th January in the year 1942 in England. His entire family had to shift to the Oxford University campus to escape the threat of V2 rockets over London. As a child, Sir Stephen Hawkins was a talented kid and used various unorthodox study aids that helped him to retain a lot of things. While leaving school, he decided to continue studying physics at the University of Oxford. According to the physics professor at Oxford, Robert Berman, Stephen Hawking was an extraordinary student. He was not a typical cramming student and barely used books and notes for his studies, but amazingly worked out mathematical theorems and solutions in a conspicuous way in comparison to the others.

Career

Sir Stephen Hawking’s career began at Cambridge University as a researcher and then as a senior research fellow in the department of Mathematics. A major part of his career went as serving as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. It is considered a prestigious position, as the same position was held by Sir Isaac Newton once. Finally, Hawking left this position around 67 years, but he continued his research at the University's cosmology institute. Around 2008 he accepted another prestigious place as an adjunct researcher at Waterloo, which was in Ontario's Premier Institute for “Theoretical Physics”.

In 1982 Hawkings started authoring a book on cosmology and by 1984 he produced his first draft in the name of “A Brief History of Time,” which was published in 1988 after some of his medical hindrances. This book was enlisted in The Sunday Times bestsellers list for about 3–4 years. Another accessible novel from Hawkings named “A Briefer History of Time” was published around 2005 or 2006.

Personal Life

Sir Stephen Hawking married his first love Jane Wilde, who was a literature student, in the year 1965, and had 3 kids: Lucy Hawkings, Robert Hawkings and Tim Hawkings. But due to some problems in their married life, the couple separated in 1991. From 2009 onwards Hawking was completely paralysed, and he died peacefully at the age of 76 on March 14, 2018, in Cambridge, UK at his residence. The doctors almost gave up when it was first detected with ALS then he going to live for a couple of years only, but this man seems a miraculous and extraordinary person himself that he survived till 2018.

Death

Sir Stephen Hawkings was diagnosed and detected with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, The disease is also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He was detected with the disease at the age of 21 and clinicians expected Hawking to live for only two years. But being an extraordinary man himself, he survived beyond our expectations by living for almost five decades and spent most of his life in a wheelchair. He was given the facility to communicate through a voice synthesizer, which was operated by the movement of his eyebrows.

Personal Views

Sir Stephen was a renowned Physicist and a renowned scientist, and his conception of the Universe changed the scientific dimension of the Universe. According to Hawkings: our Universe was a manifestation of God, his mother was his strong support and assisted and cooperated in every single logic and thoughts established by Hawkings. He was the most apolitical person ever known.

Awards and Honours

Professor Stephen Hawking has received 13 honorary degrees and was awarded “Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1982”, and “Companion of Honour “in 1989 followed by the “Presidential Medal of Freedom” in 2009. He was the recipient of uncountable awards, honours, and medals and to name a few- Fundamental Physics prizes,” Copley Medal and the Wolf Foundation prize” are some of them. He was also a member of the Royal Society and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Publications

Hawkings had an innumerable collection of publications and some of them included “The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time” (1973; coauthored with G.F.R. Ellis), “Superspace and Supergravity (1981)”, “The Very Early Universe (1983)”, and one of his bestsellers that the entire World would agree is “A Brief History of Time”: From “the Big Bang to Black Holes” (1988), The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), “A Briefer History of Time (2005)”, and “The Grand Design (2010)”; This one collaborated with Leonard Mlodinow.

Various book publications by Sir Stephen Hawkings

Conclusion

Sir Stephen Hawkings was an eminent physicist and mathematician who presented infatuating theories about our Universe like the “Black Hole Theory”. He has major contributions to the field of Astrophysics. He died of a severe nervous disorder named Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

FAQs

Q1. What subject did Stephens Hawkings exactly study in his graduation?

Ans. Sir Stephen Hawking studied Physics at Oxford University in the year 1962 and bagged his doctorate from Cambridge University in 1966. He joined as a research scholar at Gonville and Caius College, situated in Cambridge.

Q2. What is Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) from which Sir Stephen Hawkings suffered?

Ans. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is one type of nervous system disorder that mainly disrupts the central and peripheral nervous system, leading to the loss of muscle control. ALS is also called Lou Gehrig's disease. No specific causal factors have been diagnosed for this disease to date.

Q3. What is a Black hole?

Ans. A black hole is an interesting place in the Universe where the gravitational pull is so much that even the light cannot go outside. The power of gravity is so strong that any matter can get squeezed up and cannot come back. This normally happens when a star is dying and no light can get out, and hence we experience it as a black hole. Only space telescopes with special tools can be used for observing black holes.