Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942)[1] is a British theoretical
physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific career spans over forty years. His books and public
appearances have made him an academic celebrity and he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society
of Arts,[2] a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,[3] and in 2009 was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.[4]

Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years,
taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on 1 October 2009. [5][6] He is also a Fellow of Gonville and
Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.[7] He is known for his contributions to the fields of
cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved
success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in
general; these include the runaway best seller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British
Sunday Times bestsellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.[8][9]

Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems
regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical
prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or
sometimes as Bekenstein–Hawking radiation).[10]

Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition
that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed.

Early life and education

Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 to Dr. Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel
Hawking. He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. [11]
Though Hawking's parents were living in North London, they moved to Oxford while his mother was
pregnant with Stephen, desiring a safer location for the birth of their first child. (London was under
attack at the time by the Luftwaffe.)[12] According to Hawking, a German V-2 missile struck only a
few streets away.[13]

After Hawking was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of
parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research.[11] In 1950, Hawking and his family
moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire, where he attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to
1953. (At that time, boys could attend the Girls' school until the age of ten.) [14] From the age of
eleven, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not exceptional, student.[11] When
asked later to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named his mathematics teacher Dikran
Tahta.[15] He maintains his connection with the school, giving his name to one of the four houses and
to an extracurricular science lecture series. He has visited it to deliver one of the lectures and has also
granted a lengthy interview to pupils working on the school magazine, The Albanian.

Hawking was always interested in science.[11] Inspired by his mathematics teacher, he originally
wanted to study the subject at university. However, Hawking's father wanted him to apply to
University College, Oxford, where his father had attended. As University College did not have a
mathematics fellow at that time, it would not accept applications from students who wished to read
that discipline. Hawking therefore applied to read natural sciences, in which he gained a scholarship.
Once at University College, Hawking specialised in physics.[12] His interests during this time were in
thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in
The New York Times Magazine:

It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without
looking to see how other people did it. [...] He didn't have very many books, and he didn't take notes.
Of course, his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries.[11]

Hawking was passing, but his unimpressive study habits resulted in a final examination score on the
borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman
said of the oral examination:

And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far
more clever than most of themselves.[11]

After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford in 1962, he stayed to study astronomy. He decided to leave
when he found that studying sunspots, which was all the observatory was equipped for, did not
appeal to him and that he was more interested in theory than in observation. [11] He left Oxford for
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he engaged in the study of theoretical astronomy and cosmology.

Career in theoretical physics

Almost as soon as he arrived at Cambridge, he started developing symptoms of amyotrophic lateral

sclerosis (ALS, known colloquially in the United States as Lou Gehrig's disease), a type of motor
neurone disease which would cost him almost all neuromuscular control. During his first two years at
Cambridge, he did not distinguish himself, but, after the disease had stabilised and with the help of
his doctoral tutor, Dennis William Sciama, he returned to working on his Ph.D.[11]

Hawking was elected as one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, was created a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1982, and became a Companion of Honour in
1989. Hawking is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Hawking's achievements were made despite the increasing paralysis caused by the ALS. By 1974, he
was unable to feed himself or get out of bed. His speech became slurred so that he could be
understood only by people who knew him well. In 1985, he caught pneumonia and had to have a
tracheotomy, which made him unable to speak at all. A Cambridge scientist built a device that
enables Hawking to write onto a computer with small movements of his body, and then have a voice
synthesizer speak what he has typed.[16]

Research fields

Hawking in Cambridge
Hawking's principal fields of research are theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity.

In the late 1960s, he and his Cambridge friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, applied a new, complex
mathematical model they had created from Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.[17] This led,
in 1970, to Hawking proving the first of many singularity theorems; such theorems provide a set of
sufficient conditions for the existence of a gravitational singularity in space-time. This work showed
that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a
fairly generic feature of general relativity.[18]

He supplied a mathematical proof, along with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, of
John Wheeler's no-hair theorem – namely, that any black hole is fully described by the three
properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.

Hawking also suggested upon analysis of gamma ray emissions that after the Big Bang, primordial
mini black holes were formed. With Bardeen and Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole
mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. In 1974, he calculated that black holes should
thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known today as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, until
they exhaust their energy and evaporate.[19]

In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a model in which the universe had no boundary
in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to
the North Pole: one cannot travel north of the North Pole, as there is no boundary. While originally
the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the
realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a universe which is not closed.

Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN, in 2006 Hawking proposed a theory of "top-down cosmology,"
which says that the universe had no unique initial state, and therefore it is inappropriate for physicists
to attempt to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular
initial state.[20] Top-down cosmology posits that in some sense, the present "selects" the past from a
superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the
fine-tuning question: It is inevitable that we find our universe's present physical constants, as the
current universe "selects" only those past histories that led to the present conditions. In this way, top-
down cosmology provides an anthropic explanation for why we find ourselves in a universe that
allows matter and life, without invoking an ensemble of multiple universes.

Hawking's many other scientific investigations have included the study of quantum cosmology,
cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the
density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills
instantons and the S matrix, anti de Sitter space, quantum entanglement and entropy, the nature of
space and time, including the arrow of time, spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean
quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian, Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of
gravitation, gravitational radiation, and wormholes.

At a George Washington University lecture in honour of NASA's fiftieth anniversary, Hawking

theorised on the existence of extraterrestrial life, believing that "primitive life is very common and
intelligent life is fairly rare."[21]

Losing an old bet

Main article: Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet
U.S. President Barack Obama talks with Stephen Hawking in the Blue Room of the White House
before a ceremony presenting him and fifteen others the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 12 August
2009. The Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honour.

Hawking was in the news in July 2004 for presenting a new theory about black holes which goes
against his own long-held belief about their behaviour, thus losing a bet he made with Kip Thorne
and John Preskill of Caltech. Classically, it can be shown that information crossing the event horizon
of a black hole is lost to our universe, and that thus all black holes are identical beyond their mass,
electrical charge and angular velocity (the "no hair theorem"). The problem with this theorem is that
it implies the black hole will emit the same radiation regardless of what goes into it, and as a
consequence that if a pure quantum state is thrown into a black hole, an "ordinary" mixed state will
be returned. This runs counter to the rules of quantum mechanics and is known as the black hole
information paradox.

Human spaceflight

At the fiftieth anniversary of NASA in 2008, Hawking gave a keynote speech on the final frontier
exhorting and inspiring the space technology community on why we (the human race) explore space.
[22]

At the celebration of his sixty-fifth birthday on 8 January 2007, Hawking announced his plan to take
a zero-gravity flight in 2007 to prepare for a sub-orbital spaceflight in 2009 on Virgin Galactic's
space service. Billionaire Richard Branson pledged to pay all expenses for the latter, costing an
estimated £100,000.[23] Stephen Hawking's zero-gravity flight in a "Vomit Comet" of Zero Gravity
Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times, took place on 26 April 2007.[24]
He became the first quadriplegic to float in zero-gravity. This was the first time in forty years that he
moved freely, without his wheelchair. The fee is normally US$3,750 for 10–15 plunges, but Hawking
was not required to pay the fee. A bit of a futurist,[25] Hawking was quoted before the flight saying:

Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I
believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden
nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it
doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.[26]

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he suggested that space was the Earth's long term hope. [27]
He continued this theme at a 2008 Charlie Rose interview.[28]
Existence and nature of extraterrestrial life

Hawking has indicated that he is almost certain that alien life exists in other parts of the universe and
uses a mathematical basis for his assumptions. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make
thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually
be like." He believes alien life not only certainly exists on planets but perhaps even in other places,
like within stars or even floating in outer space. He also warns that a few of these species might be
intelligent and threaten Earth. Contact with such species might be devastating for humanity. [29] "If
aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn
out well for the Native Americans," he said. He advocated that, rather than try to establish contact,
man should try to avoid contact with alien life forms.[30]

Illness

Hawking on 5 May 2006, during the press conference at the Bibliothèque nationale de France to
inaugurate the Laboratory of Astronomy and Particles in Paris and the French release of his work
God Created the Integers

Stephen Hawking is severely disabled by motor neurone disease also known as amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS). Hawking's illness is markedly different from typical ALS in the fact that his form of
ALS would make for the most protracted case ever documented. A survival for more than ten years
after diagnosis is uncommon for ALS; the longest documented durations are thirty-two and thirty-
nine years and these cases were termed benign because of the lack of the typical progressive course.
[31]

When he was young, he enjoyed riding horses and playing with other children. At Oxford, he coxed a
rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at the university. Symptoms of
the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at University of Cambridge; he lost his balance and
fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius, he took the Mensa
test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact. [32] The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came
when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more
than two or three years. Hawking gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and as of 2009
has been almost completely paralysed.

During a visit to the research centre CERN in Geneva in 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia,
which in his condition was life-threatening as it further restricted his already limited respiratory
capacity. He had an emergency tracheotomy, and as a result lost what remained of his ability to
speak. He has since used an electronic voice synthesizer to communicate.

The DECtalk DTC01 voice synthesizer he uses, which has an American English accent, is no longer
being produced. Asked why he has still kept it after so many years, Hawking mentioned that he has
not heard a voice he likes better and that he identifies with it. Hawking is said to be looking for a
replacement since, aside from being obsolete, the synthesizer is both large and fragile by current
standards. As of mid 2009, he was said to be using NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesizer.[33]

In Hawking's many media appearances, he appears to speak fluently through his synthesizer, but in
reality, it is a tedious drawn-out process. Hawking's setup uses a predictive text entry system, which
requires only the first few characters in order to auto-complete the word, but as he is only able to use
his cheek for data entry, constructing complete sentences takes time. His speeches are prepared in
advance, but having a live conversation with him provides insight as to the complexity and work
involved. During a Technology, Entertainment, & Design Conference talk, it took him seven minutes
to answer a question.[34]

He describes himself as lucky despite his disease. Its slow progression has allowed him time to make
influential discoveries and has not hindered him from having, in his own words, "a very attractive
family."[35] When his wife, Jane, was asked why she decided to marry a man with a three-year life
expectancy, she responded, "Those were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had a rather
short life expectancy."

On 20 April 2009, Cambridge University released a statement saying that Hawking was "very ill"
with a chest infection, and was admitted to Addenbrooke's Hospital.[36][37] The following day, it was
reported that his new condition is "comfortable" and he should make a full recovery from the
infection.[38]

As popular science advocate

Main article: Stephen Hawking in popular culture

Hawking has played himself on numerous television shows and has been portrayed in many more. He
has played himself on a Red Dwarf anniversary special, played a hologram of himself on the episode
"Descent" of Star Trek: The Next Generation, appeared in a skit on Late Night with Conan O'Brien,
and appeared on the Discovery Channel special Alien Planet.[39] He has also played himself in several
episodes of The Simpsons and Futurama. When he was portrayed on episodes of Family Guy, the
voice was actually done by a speech synthesizer on a Macintosh computer, according to DVD
commentary. In The Fairly OddParents, it is mentioned that he was Denzel Croker's college
roommate. He has also appeared in an episode of the Dilbert cartoon. His actual synthesizer voice
was used on parts of the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking" from the 1994 album The Division Bell, as
well as on Turbonegro's "Intro: The Party Zone" on their 2005 album Party Animals, Wolfsheim's
"Kein Zurück (Oliver Pinelli Mix)". As well as being fictionalised as nerdcore hip hop artist MC
Hawking, he was impersonated in duet with Richard Cheese on a cover of "The Girl Is Mine". In
2008, Hawking was the subject of and featured in the documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master
of the Universe for Channel 4. He was also portrayed in the movie Superhero Movie by Robert Joy.
In the TV series Dark Angel Logan's technology savvy colleague Sebastian is characterised with
many similarities to the actual physicist. In September 2008, Hawking presided over the unveiling of
the 'Chronophage' (time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College Cambridge.[40]

Recognition

Acclaim

On 19 December 2007, a statue of Hawking by renowned late artist Ian Walters was unveiled at the
Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge. [41] In May 2008 the statue of Hawking
was unveiled at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. The Stephen W.
Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador is named in honour of Stephen Hawking,
citing his scientific distinction and perseverance in dealing with adversity.[42] Stephen Hawking
Building in Cambridge, opened on 17 April 2007. The building belongs to Gonville and Caius
College and is used as an undergraduate accommodation and conference facility.[43]

Distinctions

Hawking's belief that the lay person should have access to his work led him to write a series of
popular science books in addition to his academic work. The first of these, A Brief History of Time,
was published on 1 April 1988 by Hawking, his family and friends, and some leading physicists. It
surprisingly became a best-seller and was followed by The Universe in a Nutshell (2001). Both books
have remained highly popular all over the world. A collection of essays titled Black Holes and Baby
Universes (1993) was also popular. His most recent book, A Briefer History of Time (2005), co-
written by Leonard Mlodinow, aims to update his earlier works and make them accessible to an even
wider audience. He and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, have recently published a children's book
focusing on science that has been described to be "like Harry Potter, but without the magic." This
book is called George's Secret Key to the Universe and includes information on Hawking radiation.

Hawking is also known for his wit; he is famous for his oft-made statement, "When I hear of
Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol." This was a deliberately ironic paraphrase of "Whenever I
hear the word culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning", from the play Schlageter (Act 1,
Scene 1) by German playwright and Nazi Poet Laureate Hanns Johst. His wit has both entertained the
non-specialist public and helped them to understand complex questions. Asked in October 2005 on
the British daytime chat show Richard & Judy, to explain his assertion that the question "What came
before the Big Bang?" was meaningless, he compared it to asking "What lies north of the North
Pole?"

Hawking has generally avoided talking about politics at length, but he has appeared on a political
broadcast for the United Kingdom's Labour Party. He supports the children's charity SOS Children's
Villages UK.[44]

Awards and honours

 1975 Eddington Medal

  1976 Hughes Medal of the Royal Society
 1979 Albert Einstein Medal
 1981 Franklin Medal
 1982 Order of the British Empire (Commander)
 1985 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
 1986 Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
 1988 Wolf Prize in Physics
 1989 Prince of Asturias Awards in Concord
 1989 Companion of Honour
 1999 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society[45]
 2003 Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University
 2006 Copley Medal of the Royal Society[46]
 2008 Fonseca Price of the University of Santiago de Compostela[47]
 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States[4]

Personal life

Hawking revealed that he did not see much point in obtaining a doctorate if he were to die soon.
Hawking later said that the real turning point was his 1965 marriage to Jane Wilde, a language
student.[11] After gaining his Ph.D. at Trinity Hall, Stephen became first a Research Fellow, and later
on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

Jane Hawking (née Wilde), Hawking's first wife, cared for him until 1991 when the couple separated,
reportedly because of the pressures of fame and his increasing disability. They had three children:
Robert (b. 1967), Lucy (b. 1969), and Timothy (b. 1979). Hawking then married his nurse, Elaine
Mason (who was previously married to David Mason, the designer of the first version of Hawking's
talking computer), in 1995. In October 2006, Hawking filed for divorce from his second wife.[48]

In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, detailing her own long-term
relationship with a family friend whom she later married. Hawking's daughter, Lucy, is a novelist.
Their oldest son, Robert, emigrated to the United States, married, and has one child, George Edward
Hawking. Reportedly, Hawking and his first family were reconciled in 2007.[49]

Hawking was asked about his IQ in a 2004 newspaper interview, and replied, "I have no idea. People
who boast about their I.Q. are losers."[50]

Religious views

Hawking has repeatedly used the word "God" (in metaphorical meanings) [51] to illustrate points made
in his books and public speeches. His ex-wife, Jane said during their divorce proceedings that he was
an atheist.[52][53] Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that
"the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God
does not intervene to break the laws."[54] Hawking compared religion and science in 2010, saying:
"There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science,
which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."[55] On September
2010, Hawking wrote in his new book The Grand Design that "Because there is a law such as
gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there
is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke
God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."[56][57]
Selected publications

Technical

 Singularities in Collapsing Stars and Expanding Universes with Dennis William Sciama,
1969 Comments on Astrophysics and Space Physics Vol 1 #1
 The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with George Ellis, 1973 ISBN 0521099064
 The Nature of Space and Time with Roger Penrose, foreword by Michael Atiyah, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-691-05084-8
 The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind, (with Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and
Roger Penrose), Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-56330-5 (hardback), ISBN
0-521-65538-2 (paperback), Canto edition: ISBN 0-521-78572-3
 Information Loss in Black Holes, Cambridge University Press, 2005
 God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History, Running
Press, 2005 ISBN 0762419229

Popular

 A Brief History of Time, (Bantam Press 1988) ISBN 055305340X

 Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, (Bantam Books 1993) ISBN 0553374117
 The Universe in a Nutshell, (Bantam Press 2001) ISBN 055380202X
 On The Shoulders of Giants. The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy, (Running Press
2002) ISBN 076241698X
 A Briefer History of Time, (Bantam Books 2005) ISBN 0553804367
 The Grand Design coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, (Bantam Press 2010) ISBN
0553805371

Footnote: On Hawking's website, he denounces the unauthorised publication of The Theory of

Everything and asks consumers to be aware that he was not involved in its creation.

Children's fiction

These are co-written with his daughter Lucy.

 George's Secret Key to the Universe, (Random House, 2007) ISBN 9780385612708
 George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt, (Simon & Schuster, 2009) ISBN 9781416986713

Films and series

 A Brief History of Time

 Stephen Hawking's Universe
 Horizon: The Hawking Paradox[58]
 Masters of Science Fiction
 Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe
 Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking