- The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
One of the greatest scientists living on the planet today, Stephen Hawking needs no introduction. With science geeks and the non-scientific population of the world, he is equally popular, widely known and often compared to scientists like EINSTEIN and Galileo. A theoretical cosmologist and physicist, Stephen Hawking is the director of research at the Centre For Theoretical Cosmology in the University of Cambridge today. Hawking is most popular for his theories in the field of cosmology, in which he uses Einstein’s relativity theory and quantum mechanics. His book, A brief history of Time in which he explains his cosmology theories in a very simple manner understandable by the layman had been the bestseller for a really long time of 237 weeks. This book was what made him more reachable to the non-scientific masses along with the fact that he makes constant guest appearances on popular TV shows such as The Simpsons and Star Trek.
Childhood:
Stephen Hawking was born to the also highly-educated Frank and Isobel Hawking both of who went to Oxford.
His father Frank specialized in Medicine and Isobel, in Philosophy and Economics. Stephen, who was one among four of kids of the Hawking couple was surprisingly not very good at academics as he was at learning things in general. Although teachers often dismissed him off for his poor performance in academics, they knew that there was a hidden genius in him, which is probably why he was nicknamed ‘Einstein’ while in school.
Career:
1965
In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theoram concepts first explored in his doctoral thesis. This included not only the existence of singularities but also the theory that the universe might have started as a singularity. Their joint essay was the runner-up in the 1968 Gravity research foundation competition.
1975
Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a more academically senior post, as reader in gravitational physics. The mid to late 1970s were a period of growing public interest in black holes and of the physicists who were studying them. Hawking was regularly interviewed for print and television. He also received increasing academic recognition of his work.
1990
Hawking pursued his work in physics: in 1993 he co-edited a book on euclidean quantum gravity with Gary Gibbons and published a collected edition of his own articles on black holes and the Big Bang.In 1994, at Cambridge'Newton institute, Hawking and Penrose delivered a series of six lectures that were published in 1996 as "The Nature of Space and Time".
2000
Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The University in a nutshell in A breifer history of time, which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard mlodinow to update his earlier works with the aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, and god created the integers, which appeared in 2006.Along with Thomas hertog at cern and Jim Hartle, from 2006 on Hawking developed a theory of "top-down cosmology", which says that the universe had not one unique initial state but many different ones, and therefore that it is inappropriate to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state.
In August 2015, Hawking said that not all information is lost when something enters a black hole and there might be a possibility to retrieve information from a black hole according to his theory.In July 2017, Hawking was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from imperial college London.
StephenHawking's Quotes:
- I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.
- We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
- My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
