About Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking more commonly known as Stephen Hawking’s brilliant mind on 8th January in the year 1942 in a small town somewhere in Oxford England. His family originally lived in Northern London, but later relocated to Oxford as it was considered to be a safer place during the Second World War. His family shifted to St. Albans, a town almost twenty or so miles at the North side of London when he was just 8 years old.

Academics and Achievements

As a child Stephen attended the St. Albans schools and then the University College in Oxford. His father wanted him to study medicine, but he was interested in mathematics. As his desired subject was not offered at the University College, he opted for Physics instead. Three years later, he earned an graduate degree for honors degree in Natural Science.

After that, Stephen went to Cambridge so as to carry out research on cosmology. He gained his PhD and then went on to become a Research Assistant becoming a Professor at Gonville and Caius College. He left the Astronomy Institute in the year 1973 and then went to apply in Applied Mathematics Departments and further in Theoretical Physics. There, he remained as a Lucasian Professor, starting in 1979 till 2009 - a total of 30 years. This post has been held by the likes of Isaac Newton in the past. Stephen still participates actively with the University of Cambridge and holds an office in the Department of Applied Mathematics ad Theoretical Physics.

Work

Stephen Hawking was quite interested in the basic rules governing the universe. He, along with Roger Penrose showed that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity implies that both time and space begin with the famous “big bang theory” finishing with another ideology of the black hole. His studies and insights showed the need for the merging of General Relativity and Quantum Theory. This was a great scientific achievement back then.

Stephen has many books to his name. Some of them are:

• A Brief History of Time
• The Universe in Nutshell
• The Grand Design
• My Brief History.

Disease

Only sometime after his 21st birthday, Stephen came down with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It is a type of a motor neuron disease which has gradually paralyzed him over the years. It has disabled him and now he relies on a wheel chair for movement and a computer based sound mechanism used to communicate.

Despite his health issues and old age, Stephen Hawking extended his research no theoretical physics, giving time to his family and dreamed of going to space eventually.