Stephen Hawking

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born

January 08, 1942 in Oxford, The United Kingdom

gender

male

website

http://www.hawking.org.uk

genre

Science, Nonfiction

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Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 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 eleven Stephen went to St Albans School, and then on to University College, Oxford, his father's old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead. After three years and not very much work he was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science.

Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one wo...more Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 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 eleven Stephen went to St Albans School, and then on to University College, Oxford, his father's old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead. After three years and not very much work he was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science.

Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton.

Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

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 Gravity, with W. Israel. Stephen Hawking has three popular books published; his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays and most recently in 2001, The Universe in a Nutshell. There are .pdf and .ps versions of his full publication list.

Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He is the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes and is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Stephen Hawking continues to combine family life (he has three children and one grandchild), and his research into theoretical physics together with an extensive programme of travel and public lectures. (less)

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Books by Stephen Hawking

Average rating: 3.98 · 59,080 ratings · 3,343 reviews · 29 distinct works

	A Brief History of Time 4.00 avg rating — 34,350 ratings — published 1988 — 110 editions	My rating:
	The Universe in a Nutshell 3.99 avg rating — 6,130 ratings — published 2001 — 38 editions	My rating:
	The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow 3.84 avg rating — 6,249 ratings — published 2010 — 29 editions	My rating:
	A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow 4.05 avg rating — 3,685 ratings — published 2005 — 47 editions	My rating:
	Black Holes and Baby Universes 3.87 avg rating — 1,699 ratings — published 1993 — 27 editions	My rating:
	The Illustrated A Brief History of Time & The Universe in a Nutshell 4.26 avg rating — 1,402 ratings — published 1996 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe 3.90 avg rating — 1,011 ratings — published 1999 — 29 editions	My rating:
	On the Shoulders of Giants (Illustrated): The Great Works of Physics And Astronomy 4.13 avg rating — 522 ratings — published 2002 — 12 editions	My rating:
	God Created The Integers 3.95 avg rating — 295 ratings — published 2005 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Nature of Space and Time by Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose 3.87 avg rating — 189 ratings — published 1996 — 12 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Stephen Hawking

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Stephen Hawking

tags: ignorance , knowledge

339 people liked it

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

tags: philosophy , science , search-for-meaning

313 people liked it

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
― Stephen Hawking

tags: inspirational , science

233 people liked it

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