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Greenwood Biographies
Stephen Hawking: A Biography
Few scientists are as recognizable as Stephen Hawking. Despite having Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease)--an affliction that many experts expected to have killed him decades ago--Hawking remains a vital and influential voice in the scientific community. One of the leading cosmologists studying the celestial phenomenon known as black holes, Hawking has also led the way in popularizing science with his best-selling work A Brief History of Time. This biography of Hawking, written by a physicist, provides an accessible introduction to the life and work of an inspirational figure.
190 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
20 people are currently reading
539 people want to read
About the author
Kristine Larsen
22 books4 followersDr. Kristine M. Larsen (Ph.D., Physics, University of Connecticut, 1990; M.S., Physics, University of Connecticut, 1987; B.A., Physics, Central Connecticut State University, 1984) is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the Central Connecticut State University.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 4, 2010
"မသန္မစြမ္းျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ သိပၸံပညာရွင္တစ္ေယာက္ထက္... မသန္မစြမ္းျဖစ္သြားရွာတဲ့ သိပၸံပညာရွင္တစ္ေယာက္လို႔ ျမင္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္.."
ဂယ္လီလီယိုေသဆံုးသည့္ေန႔ ေနာက္ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း သံုးရာတိတိတြင္ ေမြးဖြားလာေသာ သီအိုရီဆုိင္ရာ ရူပေဗဒပညာရွင္တစ္ေယာက္..
ဂယ္လီလီယိုေသဆံုးသည့္ေန႔ ေနာက္ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း သံုးရာတိတိတြင္ ေမြးဖြားလာေသာ သီအိုရီဆုိင္ရာ ရူပေဗဒပညာရွင္တစ္ေယာက္..
February 24, 2013
bloody physicist!
Want to read
March 24, 2013
September 13, 2020
Hey everyone... So here we come up with the new series of biographies. Including some of the legends from various categories of art, science, politics, economics , social work etc.
So here's our first hero Dr. Stephen Hawking. One of the rarest legends from the field of science who are eqaully the other celebrities. Basically you can consider this article as more of short insight from the goggles of this book in Hawking's life. As feel I am not the person who can review or comment on Hawking Sir's work.
So the he was born and brought up in Oxford exactly after 300 years after the death of Galileo. So he was the eldest son in his family. And went to special school during childhood as was not abled to learn at the regular pace. He always wanted to know how everything works and then try to control it accordingly. This hobby brought him into field of science and soon he started his college in Cambridge. During the college days the symptoms for his disease (ALS- a motor neuron disease. Causing muscles to be immovable.) started to show up. But as they go unrecognised by the doctors he had to face a serious impact as it was diagnosed later.
Rising from the depression from his diagnosis he started to work on science and later developed intrest particularly in cosmology. He reasearched on singularities (later known as black holes) and stated it's basic properties. Also worked on black hole thermodynamics and the ration coming from black holes due to rotational energy was named Hawking radiation.
He wanted to unify the final theories of albert einstein (general theory of relativity ) for macroscopic universe and (Quantum thoery) for microscopic universe and purpose a single theory as a whole. He was open to all the new theories which can unify this some of the theories he worked on were supersymetry, quantum gravity, the string theory , the M- theory. During his life he faced so many struggles due to his disease, accidents, criticism, family issues and what not. He wrote a book as ' a brief history of time' it was a national best seller but hardly , anyone had understood it. This made him star and a popular scientist. Later he also wrote a book 'universe in a nut shell' . Both the books have no equations involve in it as Hawking wanted everyone to understand the beauty of cosmology even a sports player should be fascinated with its beauty.
He received so many awards and prestigious positions but the never received a noble prize for his work as experimental verification for the theory is must to receive a noble. And it is highly possible to do experiment on his theories as very high amount of energy involvement. When asked about how he feels about this, Hawking replied , ' It is better to work on new discoveries rather to hope for a prize for the work that I did years before.'
So I have tried to concisely tell you about Dr.Stephen Hawking from his biography. There is so much more to tell but it's never enough to talk about this kind of people. Some part of the book I had to google and though I understood it or not it always left me awestruck.
Anyone having intrest in the starts please go through book and try to give a serious attempt to learn.
I hope you LIKED what you read. Kindly SHARE it with your friends and knowledge increase upon sharing.
The COMMENT box is open for discussion.
If I had mistaken somewhere you want add anything do mention in COMMENTS.
Thank you.
So here's our first hero Dr. Stephen Hawking. One of the rarest legends from the field of science who are eqaully the other celebrities. Basically you can consider this article as more of short insight from the goggles of this book in Hawking's life. As feel I am not the person who can review or comment on Hawking Sir's work.
So the he was born and brought up in Oxford exactly after 300 years after the death of Galileo. So he was the eldest son in his family. And went to special school during childhood as was not abled to learn at the regular pace. He always wanted to know how everything works and then try to control it accordingly. This hobby brought him into field of science and soon he started his college in Cambridge. During the college days the symptoms for his disease (ALS- a motor neuron disease. Causing muscles to be immovable.) started to show up. But as they go unrecognised by the doctors he had to face a serious impact as it was diagnosed later.
Rising from the depression from his diagnosis he started to work on science and later developed intrest particularly in cosmology. He reasearched on singularities (later known as black holes) and stated it's basic properties. Also worked on black hole thermodynamics and the ration coming from black holes due to rotational energy was named Hawking radiation.
He wanted to unify the final theories of albert einstein (general theory of relativity ) for macroscopic universe and (Quantum thoery) for microscopic universe and purpose a single theory as a whole. He was open to all the new theories which can unify this some of the theories he worked on were supersymetry, quantum gravity, the string theory , the M- theory. During his life he faced so many struggles due to his disease, accidents, criticism, family issues and what not. He wrote a book as ' a brief history of time' it was a national best seller but hardly , anyone had understood it. This made him star and a popular scientist. Later he also wrote a book 'universe in a nut shell' . Both the books have no equations involve in it as Hawking wanted everyone to understand the beauty of cosmology even a sports player should be fascinated with its beauty.
He received so many awards and prestigious positions but the never received a noble prize for his work as experimental verification for the theory is must to receive a noble. And it is highly possible to do experiment on his theories as very high amount of energy involvement. When asked about how he feels about this, Hawking replied , ' It is better to work on new discoveries rather to hope for a prize for the work that I did years before.'
So I have tried to concisely tell you about Dr.Stephen Hawking from his biography. There is so much more to tell but it's never enough to talk about this kind of people. Some part of the book I had to google and though I understood it or not it always left me awestruck.
Anyone having intrest in the starts please go through book and try to give a serious attempt to learn.
I hope you LIKED what you read. Kindly SHARE it with your friends and knowledge increase upon sharing.
The COMMENT box is open for discussion.
If I had mistaken somewhere you want add anything do mention in COMMENTS.
Thank you.
July 28, 2020
What are the qualities of a book which inspire you?
If they are motivation, interesting bond with life rules, the real life experiences and problems, then this book will be a great choice.
↪ Actually, it is a biography of a celebrated scientist and bestselling author, Stephen Hawking who was treated special by Allah. Since his teenage, he was diagnosed a dreadful disease ALS which make a healthy and living person numb. But Hawking didn't lose his heart and keep on ignoring his disease [not in terms of treatment but in mind] which help him to lead a highly successful life.
↪ Hawking is also considered as the most intelligent person of 21st century. His researches on Black Holes are invaluable and incompatible. His complete life is teaching us simply that 'You can do what you want but you must have courage to face reality, the quality of persistency and hard-working'.
If they are motivation, interesting bond with life rules, the real life experiences and problems, then this book will be a great choice.
↪ Actually, it is a biography of a celebrated scientist and bestselling author, Stephen Hawking who was treated special by Allah. Since his teenage, he was diagnosed a dreadful disease ALS which make a healthy and living person numb. But Hawking didn't lose his heart and keep on ignoring his disease [not in terms of treatment but in mind] which help him to lead a highly successful life.
↪ Hawking is also considered as the most intelligent person of 21st century. His researches on Black Holes are invaluable and incompatible. His complete life is teaching us simply that 'You can do what you want but you must have courage to face reality, the quality of persistency and hard-working'.
September 8, 2020
A good book for people who want to delve more into the life of Stephen Hawking. I was personally very curious to know more about him after reading a Brief History of Time, and watching the great film The theory of everything with Eddie Redmayne.
This book gives more details on the life of Hawking at Cambridge University, his multiple cosmological theories, the work he has done to communicate science to the public.
This books talks about theories such as the black hole information paradox, the Big Bang, multiverses, string theory. The concepts are presented in a rather accessible way. Don't worry there are no equations in this book!
It is also extraordinary that Stephen Hawking accomplished so many things in his life, despite not being about to speak without a computer.
This book gives more details on the life of Hawking at Cambridge University, his multiple cosmological theories, the work he has done to communicate science to the public.
This books talks about theories such as the black hole information paradox, the Big Bang, multiverses, string theory. The concepts are presented in a rather accessible way. Don't worry there are no equations in this book!
It is also extraordinary that Stephen Hawking accomplished so many things in his life, despite not being about to speak without a computer.
November 8, 2017
I thought this was a pretty good book. It helped me understand Stephen Hawking's life, along with some of his other works. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in astrophysics/ cosmology or an interest in Stephen Hawking. It is an easier read than Hawking's books, which makes it more appealing to people who don't like to read really technical stuff. I liked that it is an easy read, but I didn't really like that it focused a bit more on Hawking's work than on his life, which made it a bit hard to use as a biography.
May 30, 2019
This biography shows the life of Stephen Hawking from the beginning to close to the end. This details some important events and his research. This book dives into his research very well and leaves out very few detail. It spend so much time on that, it would need to not much feeling and attention put into his actual life. It is still there, it could just be done better. If you wanted to know more about Hawking, especially is findings, I would recommend this. If you are looking for more details into his life or more of an emotional input, you could probably look for something else.
September 6, 2025
I almost finished it, I'm inaccurate how well this boy did things, he knew how to think very well and was involved in too many good things in science, I loved that they gave him the space to tell what happened in his life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 30, 2018
I did not really like this book because I don´t really find his life fascinating.
December 5, 2018
Simple explanation of the studies pursued by Hawking was one of the cornerstones of the book for me!
September 8, 2012
There are many biographies about Professor Hawking. This one, however, is actually special. Why?
Dr. Kristin Larsen has managed to lightly dance (perhaps in a Brownian motion type of way?) between personal and scientific, and popular and intellectual, planes. While many biographies of Professor Hawking detail his scientific theories and accomplishments, Larsen has uniquely, in my experience, been able to interweave Hawking's life into the world's larger cultural context. At the same time, while quite readable by the average person, I think, this is not a pop version of Hawking's life as chapter titles including "Physics and Metaphysics?: The 'No Boundary' Proposal," and "Plays, P-Branes, and Polls: Private Lives and Public Pronouncements" show.
Larsen has not stopped with Hawking himself, but has been able to include interesting details of Hawking's children, especially as those children themselves have begun to assert themselves on their own stages, quite apart from their father.
In short Stephen Hawking: A Biography may be, at a high level, one of the most readable and culturally comprehensive biographies of the man. Read it.
Dr. Kristin Larsen has managed to lightly dance (perhaps in a Brownian motion type of way?) between personal and scientific, and popular and intellectual, planes. While many biographies of Professor Hawking detail his scientific theories and accomplishments, Larsen has uniquely, in my experience, been able to interweave Hawking's life into the world's larger cultural context. At the same time, while quite readable by the average person, I think, this is not a pop version of Hawking's life as chapter titles including "Physics and Metaphysics?: The 'No Boundary' Proposal," and "Plays, P-Branes, and Polls: Private Lives and Public Pronouncements" show.
Larsen has not stopped with Hawking himself, but has been able to include interesting details of Hawking's children, especially as those children themselves have begun to assert themselves on their own stages, quite apart from their father.
In short Stephen Hawking: A Biography may be, at a high level, one of the most readable and culturally comprehensive biographies of the man. Read it.
January 14, 2014
This 165 page biography by Kristine Larsen about Stephen Hawking takes readers on a journey throughout his life from the very beginning to the present day. Unlike many other biographies this one is told like a story; it carefully combines both his personal and professional life throughout the biography. By doing this the readers are able to step into the shoes of Hawking. It discusses the development of his ALS, the course of his romantic life, his habits in his early education as well as an overview of all his notable discoveries and awards. This biography made me realize that Hawking was not the man I thought he was. From his appearance he seems like a fragile and shy person, but what I got out of the biography is that he was a very stubborn and unafraid. His marital life was a big surprise to me. Who knew a physicist like himself would fall in love with his nurse and abandon his wife and children for her. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the biography and felt that it gave a full and complete overview of his life.
February 7, 2016
"Stephen Hawking: A Biography" by Kristine Larsen is a great biography book that is very accurate. I love Stephen Hawking and he is my favorite scientist so when I read this book it was very interesting and stuff that I never expected to happen in his life. It also talks about his disability and how he got it from the start, so if you're wondering how he got that disease thing, then you should read this book because I think that it's a biography that everybody should read.BR5
September 19, 2012
Excellent biography of Stephen Hawking covering his years as a student, his medical condition, his family life, and his work in physics. See the full review at http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/...
February 9, 2015
Stephen Hawking is best embodied in his happiness over the fact that " our search for understanding will never come to an end, and that we will always have the challenge of new discovery. Without it, we would stagnate. "
This pretty much sums up Stephen Hawking in a 'nutshell'.
This pretty much sums up Stephen Hawking in a 'nutshell'.
May 27, 2012
Well written interesting...good for folks who need a gentle intro to the science
April 8, 2016
The shortest but greatest autobiography that I've ever read!
January 7, 2017
It's is a good book.. I expected something while taking it but found something.. however it is good in knowledge...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews