The name of Stephen Hawking is known today to almost everyone, regardless of proximity to classes in mathematics or physics. Indeed, in addition to a significant contribution to the development of modern physics and cosmology, the scientist is famous for popularizing science, explaining in his books the complex concepts of the structure of the Universe in simple language.
Stephen Hawking. Biography
The future astrophysicist was born in January 1942. Hawking Stephen William became the first child in the family of the researcher of the medical center Frank Hawking and his wife -
Isabelle Hawking. Later, two more girls appeared in the family. Upon graduation, the eldest son enters
Oxford University in 1959. After graduating in 1962, Stephen Hawking continues his own education and scientific activities in the field of cosmology already in Cambridge. Today, everyone knows the image of an almost completely paralyzed scientist, confined to
a wheelchair and able to communicate exclusively using a device that synthesizes voice. This problem manifested itself at a young age. In his third year at the university, when he was 21 years old, the young man noticed that he had problems with spatial coordination. A survey of doctors gave disappointing results:
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and only another two years of life. However, the young man not only survived, but also retained an interest in the world around him, which gave him strength to engage in scientific activities.
Unfortunately, the disease could not be completely overcome, and by the age of thirty, Stephen Hawking was confined to a wheelchair. Moreover, the disease is inexorably progressing to this day, nerve after nerve, muscle after muscle immobilizing the scientist. However, this did not prevent him from leading an active social and personal life. In 1965, he marries his university friend Jane Wilde, who later gave him three children. In 1979, Stephen Hawking became the head of the Department of Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics at Cambridge University. This same department was once headed by Issac Newton. In 1991, the scientist is undergoing a divorce from Jane. And four years later, he marries Alvin Mason, with whom he lived until 2006.
Scientific contribution
Stephen Hawking achieved such mass fame thanks not so much to his scientific developments, but rather to the popularization of modern science among
the public. World-wide popularity was brought to him by the published “World History of Time” published in 1988. This book is original in that it tells of complex
theories of the structure of our Universe in the popular philistine language, without the use of complex mathematical formulas. As for the scientific field itself, the main research of the physicist falls on quantum gravity and astrophysics. So, Stephen Hawking is an advanced researcher of mysterious
black holes in space. He made a significant contribution to the development of The Big Bang Theory, according to which our Universe appeared for no reason, suddenly and out of nowhere. The initial state of the world is described by the concept of singularity, where all modern space was once concentrated at one tiny point with infinite density and temperature. The Large Hadron Collider, which does not come off the lips of the media today, is also partly the result of Hawking’s activities. It was created to study the smallest particles (bosons, quarks), search for new elements and, possibly, new fundamental laws of physics at the micro level.