"Stephen Hawking"

                     
     
      Stephen Hawking (born January 8, 1942) is a
British scientist, professor and author who has done
groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology, and
whose books have helped to make science accessible to
everyone. At the age of 21, while studying cosmology
at the University of Cambridge, he was diagnosed with
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Part of his life
story was depicted in the 2014 film The Theory of
Everything.
Over the years, Stephen Hawking has written or
co-written a total of 15 books. A few of the most
noteworthy include:
In 1988 Hawking 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 and offered an overview
of space and time, the existence of God and the future.
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.
A Brief History of Time 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.
In 2005, Hawking authored the even more accessible
A Briefer History of Time, which further simplified the
original work’s core concepts and touched upon the
newest developments in the field like String theory.
Together these three 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.
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.
At the age of 21, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed
with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou
Gehrig’s disease). In a very simple sense, the nerves
that controlled his muscles were shutting down. At the
time, doctors gave him two and a half years to live.
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 diagnose Hawking
with the early stages of ALS. It was devastating news
for him and his family, but a few events 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.
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.
As 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. Over time, however,
Hawking’s ever-expanding career was accompanied by
an 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.
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.