Stephen Hawking is a British theoretical physicist. He is the greatest theoretical physicist of post-Einstein era. He has explained some of the universe’s mystery such as black holes to general public in a much simplified way by means of book, speech, television programs and others.
Stephen was born in 1942. He is currently a professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Despite being physically handicapped and confined to wheelchair, he continues his search on solving mysteries of physics. His pioneer work includes: study of space and universe including black hole, origin of universe, big bang and string theory, philosophical questions, etc.
Stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease (a degenerative nerve disease) for 40 years that has made him a quadriplegic (with complete paralysis), his body movement is restricted to his mouth and eyes. He can speak via a computerized voice synthesizer that he operates by batting his eyelids. He depends on a diaphragm to breathe, and has very brittle bones due to severe osteoporosis.
His life-long dream of flying in out space under zero gravity was fulfilled in April 2007, when he flew for 4 minutes under such conditions in a zero-gravity plane.
He gave many television programs and posed following question to TV viewers watching PBS (Public Broadcasting Service-a non-profit public service TV channel in USA)
"Where do we come from? How did the universe begin? Why is the universe the way it is? How will it end?
"All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist. The questions are clear, and deceptively simple. But the answers have always seemed well beyond our reach. Until now.
"The ideas which had grown over two thousand years of observation have had to be radically revised. In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. And our galaxy itself is just one of billions of galaxies, in a universe that is infinite and expanding. But this is far from the end of a long history of inquiry. Huge questions remain to be answered, before we can hope to have a complete picture of the universe we live in.
"I want you to share my excitement at the discoveries, past and present, which have revolutionized the way we think. From the Big Bang to black holes, from dark matter to a possible Big Crunch, our image of the universe today is full of strange sounding ideas, and remarkable truths. The story of how we arrived at this picture is the story of learning to understand what we see."
Stephen has written a best-selling book titled “A brief history of time”, which attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, light cones and superstring theory, to the non-specialist reader. The author notes that an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership will be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E = mc˛. You can view (limited pages) this and other similar books by Hawking on www.amazon.com.
For further reading:
1) Stephen Hawking in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking
2) Personal blog maintained by Stephen Hawking
http://www.hawking.org.uk/home/hindex.html
3) PBS website on Stephen Hawking’s TV series.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/html/home.html
4) Details of Hawking’s zero-gravity flight in April 2007.
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