persistent in his pursuit of knowledge
Stephen Hawking has unlocked new
pathways of discovery and inspired
people around the world
Stephen William Hawking was born in
Oxford England on the 300th anniversary
of the death of Galileo on January 8
1942 at 17 years old he entered Oxford
University Stephen Hawking has admitted
in many cases that he was not the most
ambitious student one day he calculated
that he spent about maybe an hour a day
on schoolwork in 1962 Hawking moved to
Cambridge University for a PhD in
cosmology and one year later was
diagnosed with ALS Lou Gehrig's disease
als is a progressive motor neuron
disease so over time the victim loses
functionality of muscles and over the
past decade Stephen Hawking has
gradually lost the use of most of his
muscles but his mind was quite you I
think that once he was hit with this
earth-shattering diagnosis he actually
sought a refuge in doing physics and if
anything had helped him become one of
the world's great scientists although
his diagnosis only gave him two and a
half years to live Hawking married in
1965 and stunned the science world in
1974 with his PhD on black holes
Stephen taught us how to define a black
hole he then made a brilliant discovery
that black holes can radiate Hawking
radiation that then showed the whole
world
the connection between black hole
physics and thermodynamics and that
connection has been a central theme in
theoretical physics ever since
he became the Sherman Fairchild
distinguished scholar at Caltech in 1974
and five years later Hawking was named
Cambridge University's Lucasian
Professor of mathematics an honor
bestowed on only fourteen people since
1663 Stephen Hawking is a theoretical
physicist of a very specific kind he
studies cosmology particle physics
gravity that's trying to understand the
very basic laws of physics as well as
where the universe itself came from
talking sees things that other people
didn't see time and again he just thinks
more deeply than most of the rest of us
and those insights have had big
consequences even though Hawking
deteriorated to the point that he needed
a computerized speech synthesizer to
speak he wrote a brief history of time
in 1988 selling more than 10 million
copies Stephen Hawking's book a brief
history of time which was a best-seller
for weeks and weeks was about some of
the most profound questions that face
humanity it's really about where we come
from and where we're headed from a
physicists point of view after expanding
upon his work with several more books
Hawking increased his popularity by
guest starring in TV shows like The
Simpsons Star Trek The Next Generation
and the Big Bang Theory
I think Hawking is absolutely the most
popular physicist probably since
Einstein there are plenty of other
physicists who are working very deeply
at nature secrets but Hawking has
celebrity status that very few
scientists reach Hawking received the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009
although he retired from teaching that
same year Stephen Hawking continues to
be hailed as one of the greatest
scientific minds of all time
Stephen Hawking is a scientist has had a
tremendous impact on our understanding
of the universe and the laws of nature
the same time
as a human being he has been an
inspiration to the world to his
colleagues and to people with
disabilities everywhere