Stephen Hawking is the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and author of A Brief History of Time which was an international bestseller. Now Director of Research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and Founder of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge, his other books for the general reader include A Briefer History of Time, the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universe and The Universe in a Nutshell.
In 1963, Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. From 1979 to 2009 he held the post of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663. Professor Hawking has over a dozen honorary degrees and was awarded the CBE in 1982. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Science. Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein.
Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. Among his significant scientific works have been a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vocal supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Hawking is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.
Hawking has achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his A Brief History of Time stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
Hawking has a motor neuron disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years. He is almost entirely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. He married twice and has three children.
Early life
Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 to Frank and Isobel Hawking. Despite their families' financial constraints, both parents attended the University of Oxford, where Frank studied medicine and Isobel, Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The two met shortly after the beginning of the Second World War at a medical research institute where she was working as a secretary and he as a medical researcher. They lived in Highgate, but as London was under attack in those years, his mother went to Oxford to give birth in greater safety. Stephen has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. He began his schooling at the Byron House School; he later blamed its "progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school.
On their return to England, Hawking attended Radlett School for a year and from September 1952, St Albans School. The family placed a high value on education. Hawking's father wanted his son to attend the well-regarded Westminster School, but the 13-year-old Hawking was ill on the day of the scholarship examination. His family could not afford the school fees without the financial aid of a scholarship, so Hawking remained at St Albans. A positive consequence was that Hawking remained with a close group of friends with whom he enjoyed board games, the manufacture of fireworks, model aeroplanes and boats, and long discussions about Christianity and extrasensory perception. From 1958, and with the help of the mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta, they built a computer from clock parts, an old telephone switchboard and other recycled components. Although at school he was known as "Einstein," Hawking was not initially successful academically. With time, he began to show considerable aptitude for scientific subjects, and inspired by Tahta, decided to study mathematics at university.Hawking's father advised him to study medicine, concerned that there were few jobs for mathematics graduates. He wanted Hawking to attend University College, Oxford, his own alma mater. As it was not possible to read mathematics there at the time, Hawking decided to study physics and chemistry. Despite his headmaster's advice to wait until the next year, Hawking was awarded a scholarship after taking the examinations in March 1959.
University
Hawking began his university education at the University of Oxford in October 1959 at the age of 17. For the first 18 months, he was bored and lonely: he was younger than many other students, and found the academic work "ridiculously easy." His physics tutor Robert Berman later said, "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." A change occurred during his second and third year when, according to Berman, Hawking made more effort "to be one of the boys". He developed into a popular, lively and witty college member, interested in classical music and science fiction. Part of the transformation resulted from his decision to join the college Boat Club, where he coxed a rowing team. The rowing trainer at the time noted that Hawking cultivated a daredevil image, steering his crew on risky courses that led to damaged boats. Hawking has estimated that he studied about 1,000 hours during his three years at Oxford. These unimpressive study habits made sitting his Finals a challenge, and he decided to answer only theoretical physics questions rather than those requiring factual knowledge. A first-class honours degree was a condition of acceptance for his planned graduate study in cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Anxious, he slept poorly the night before the examinations and the final result was on the borderline between first- and second-class honours, making a viva necessary. Hawking was concerned that he was viewed as a lazy and difficult student, so when asked at the oral examination to describe his future plans, he said, "If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First." He was held in higher regard than he believed: as Berman commented, the examiners "were intelligent enough to realise they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves." After receiving a first-class BA (Hons.) degree, and following a trip to Iran with a friend, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in October 1962.
Hawking's first year as a doctoral student was difficult. He was initially disappointed to find that he had been assigned Dennis William Sciama as a supervisor rather than Fred Hoyle, and he found his training in mathematics inadequate for work in general relativity and cosmology. He also struggled with his health. Hawking had experienced increasing clumsiness during his final year at Oxford, including a fall on some stairs and difficulties when rowing. The problems worsened, and his speech became slightly slurred; his family noticed the changes when he returned home for Christmas and medical investigations were begun. The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21. At the time, doctors gave him a life expectancy of two years. After his diagnosis, Hawking fell into a depression; though his doctors advised that he continue with his studies, he felt there was little point. At the same time, however, his relationship with Jane Wilde, friend of his sister, and whom he had met shortly before his diagnosis, continued to develop. The couple were engaged in October 1964. Hawking later said that the engagement "gave him something to live for." Despite the disease's progression—Hawking had difficulty walking without support, and his speech was almost unintelligible—he now returned to his work with enthusiasm. Hawking started developing a reputation for brilliance and brashness when he publicly challenged the work of Fred Hoyle and his student Jayant Narlikar at a lecture in June 1964.
When Hawking began his graduate studies, there was much debate in the physics community about the prevailing theories of the creation of the universe: the Big Bang and the Steady State theories. Inspired by Roger Penrose's theorem of a spacetime singularity in the centre of black holes, Hawking applied the same thinking to the entire universe, and during 1965 wrote up his thesis on this topic. There were other positive developments: Hawking received a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, and he and Jane were married on 14 July 1965. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in March 1966, and his essay entitled "Singularities and the Geometry of Space-Time" shared top honours with one by Penrose to win that year's Adams Prize.
Later life and career
1966–1975
During their first years of marriage, Jane lived in London during the week as she completed her degree and they travelled to the United States several times for conferences and physics-related visits. The couple had difficulty finding housing that was within Hawking's walking distance to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). Jane began a Ph.D. program, and a son, Robert, was born in May 1967. In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theorem 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. In 1970 they published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedmann, then it must have begun as a singularity.
During the late 1960s, Hawking's physical abilities declined once more: he began to use crutches and ceased lecturing regularly. As he slowly lost the ability to write, he developed compensatory visual methods, including seeing equations in terms of geometry. The physicist Werner Israel later compared the achievements to Mozart composing an entire symphony in his head. Hawking was, however, fiercely independent and unwilling to accept help or make concessions for his disabilities. He preferred to be regarded as "a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all the ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person." Jane Hawking later noted that "Some people would call it determination, some obstinacy. I've called it both at one time or another." He required much persuasion to accept the use of a wheelchair at the end of the 1960s, but ultimately became notorious for the wildness of his wheelchair driving. Hawking was a popular and witty colleague, but his illness as well as his reputation for brashness and intelligence distanced him from some. In 1969, Hawking accepted a specially created 'Fellowship for Distinction in Science' to remain at Caius.
A daughter, Lucy, was born in 1970.Soon after Hawking discovered what became known as the second law of black hole dynamics, that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller. With James M. Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. To Hawking's irritation, Jacob Bekenstein, a graduate student of John Wheeler, went further—and ultimately correctly—applying thermodynamic concepts literally. In the early 1970s, Hawking's work with Carter, Werner Israel and David C. Robinson strongly supported Wheeler's no-hair theorem that no matter what the original material from which a black hole is created it can be completely described by the properties of mass, electrical charge and rotation. His essay titled "Black Holes" won the Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971. Hawking's first book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time written with George Ellis was published in 1973.
Beginning in 1973, Hawking moved into the study of quantum gravity and quantum mechanics. His work in this area was spurred by a visit to Moscow and discussions with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Alexei Starobinsky, whose work showed that according to the uncertainty principle rotating black holes emit particles. To Hawking's annoyance, his much-checked calculations produced findings that contradicted his second law, which claimed black holes could never get smaller, and supported Bekenstein's reasoning about their entropy. His results, which Hawking presented from 1974, showed that black holes emit radiation, known today as Hawking radiation, which may continue until they exhaust their energy and evaporate. Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial. However by the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a significant breakthrough in theoretical physics. In March 1974, a few weeks after the announcement of Hawking radiation, Hawking was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the youngest scientists to be so honored.
Hawking rarely discussed his illness and physical challenges, even—in a precedent set during their courtship—with Jane. Hawking's disabilities meant that the responsibilities of home and family rested firmly on his wife's increasingly overwhelmed shoulders, leaving him more time to think about physics. When in 1974 Hawking was appointed to the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Jane proposed that a graduate or post-doctoral student live with them and help with his care. Hawking accepted, and Bernard Carr travelled to California with them as the first of many students who fulfilled this role. The family spent a generally happy and stimulating year in Pasadena. Hawking worked with his friend on the faculty, Kip Thorne, and engaged him in a scientific wager about whether the dark star Cygnus X-1 was a black hole. The wager was a surprising "insurance policy" against the proposition that black holes did not exist. Hawking acknowledged that he had lost the bet in 1990, which was the first of several that he was to make with Thorne and others. Hawking has maintained ties to Caltech, spending a month there almost every year since this first visit.
1975–1990
Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a new home, a new job—as Reader. Don Page, with whom Hawking had begun a close friendship at Caltech, arrived to work as the live-in graduate student assistant. With Page's help and that of a secretary, Jane's responsibilities were reduced so she could return to her thesis and her new interest in singing. The mid to late 1970s were a period of growing public interest in black holes and of the physicist who was studying them. Hawking was regularly interviewed for print and television. He also received increasing academic recognition of his work. In 1975 he was awarded both the Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal, and in 1976 the Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Prize and the Hughes Medal. Hawking was appointed a professor with a chair in gravitational physics in 1977. The following year he received the Albert Einstein Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.
Hawking's speech deteriorated, and by the late 1970s he could only be understood by his family and closest friends. To communicate with others, someone who knew him well would translate his speech into intelligible speech. Spurred by a dispute with the university over who would pay for the ramp needed for him to enter his workplace, Hawking and his wife campaigned for improved access and support for those with disabilities in Cambridge, including adapted student housing at the university. In general, however, Hawking had ambivalent feelings about his role as a disability rights champion: while wanting to help others, he sought to detach himself from his illness and its challenges. His lack of engagement led to some criticism. The Hawking family welcomed a third child, Timothy, in April 1979. That autumn Hawking was appointed the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
Hawking's inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics was titled: "Is the end in sight for Theoretical Physics" and proposed N=8 Supergravity as the leading theory to solve many of the outstanding problems physicists were studying. Hawking's promotion coincided with a health crisis which led to Hawking accepting, albeit reluctantly, some nursing services at home. At the same time he was also making a transition in his approach to physics, becoming more intuitive and speculative rather than insisting on mathematical proofs. "I would rather be right than rigorous" he told Kip Thorne. In 1981 he proposed that information in a black hole is irretrievably lost when a black hole evaporates. This information paradox violates the fundamental tenet of quantum mechanics, and was to lead to years of debate, including "the Black Hole War" with Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft.
Hawking did not rule out the existence of a Creator, asking in A Brief History of Time "Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?" In his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense. In A Brief History of Time he wrote: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessary to explain the origin of the universe. Later discussions with Neil Turok led to the realization that it is also compatible with an open universe.
Further work by Hawking in the area of arrows of time led to the 1985 publication of a paper theorizing that if the no-boundary proposition were correct, then when the universe stopped expanding and eventually collapsed, time would run backwards. A paper by Don Page and Raymond Laflamme led Hawking to withdraw this concept. Honours continued to be awarded: in 1981 he was awarded the American Franklin Medal, and in 1982 made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Awards do not pay the bills, however, and motivated by the need to finance the children's education and home expenses, in 1982 Hawking determined to write a popular book about the universe that would be accessible to the general public. Instead of publishing with an academic press, he signed a contract with Bantam Books, a mass market publisher, and received a large advance for his book. A first draft of the book, called A Brief History of Time, was completed in 1984.
During a visit to CERN in Geneva in the summer of 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia which in his condition was life-threatening; he was so ill that Jane was asked if life support should be terminated. She refused but the consequence was a tracheotomy, which would require round-the-clock nursing care, and remove what remained of his speech. The National Health Service would pay for a nursing home but Jane was determined that he would live at home. The cost of the care was funded by an American foundation. Nurses were hired for the three shifts required to provide the round-the-clock support he required. One of those employed was Elaine Mason, who was to become Hawking's second wife. For his communication, Hawking initially raised his eyebrows to choose letters on a spelling card. But he then received a computer program called the "Equalizer" from Walt Woltosz. In a method he uses to this day, using a switch he selects phrases, words or letters from a bank of about 2500–3000 that are scanned. The program was originally run on a desktop computer. However, Elaine Mason's husband David, a computer engineer, adapted a small computer and attached it to his wheelchair.[190] Released from the need to use somebody to interpret his speech, Hawking commented that "I can communicate better now than before I lost my voice." The voice he uses has an American accent and is no longer produced. Despite the availability of other voices, Hawking has retained his original voice, saying that he prefers his current voice and identifies with it. At this point, Hawking activated a switch using his hand and could produce up to 15 words a minute. Lectures were prepared in advance, and sent to the speech synthesiser in short sections as they were delivered.
One of the first messages Hawking produced with his speech generating device was a request for his assistant to help him finish writing A Brief History of Time. Peter Guzzardi, his editor at Bantam, pushed him to explain his ideas clearly in non-technical language, a process that required multiple revisions from an increasingly irritated Hawking. The book was published in April 1988 in the US and in June in the UK, and proved to be an extraordinary success, rising quickly to the top of bestseller lists in both countries and remaining there for weeks and months. The book was translated into multiple languages, and ultimately sold an estimated 9 million copies. Media attention was intense, and Newsweek magazine cover and a television special both described him as "Master of the Universe". Success led to significant financial rewards, but also the challenges of celebrity status. Hawking travelled extensively to promote his work, and enjoyed partying and dancing[citation needed] into the small hours. He had difficulty refusing the invitations and visitors which left limited time for work and his students. Some colleagues were resentful of the attention Hawking received, feeling it was due to his disability. He received further academic recognition, including five further honorary degrees, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985), the Paul Dirac Medal (1987) and, jointly with Penrose, the prestigious Wolf Prize (1988). In 1989, he was named a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II. He reportedly declined a knighthood.
1990–2000
Hawking's marriage had been strained for many years. Jane felt overwhelmed by the intrusion into their family life of the required nurses and assistants. The impact of his celebrity was challenging for colleagues and family members, and in one interview Jane described her role as "simply to tell him that he's not God." Hawking's views of religion also contrasted with her strong Christian faith, and resulted in tension. In the late 1980s Hawking had grown close to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, to the dismay of some colleagues, caregivers and family members who were disturbed by her strength of personality and protectiveness. Hawking told Jane that he was leaving her for Mason, and departed the family home in February 1990. Following his divorce from Jane in the spring of 1995, Hawking married Mason in September, declaring "It's wonderful—I have married the woman I love."
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's Newton Institute, Hawking and Penrose delivered a series of six lectures, which were published in 1996 as "The Nature of Space and Time". In 1997 he conceded a 1991 public scientific wager made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Hawking had bet that Penrose's proposal of a "cosmic censorship conjecture"—that there could be no "naked singularities" unclothed within a horizon—was correct. After discovering his concession might have been premature, a new, more refined, wager was made. This specified that such singularities would occur without extra conditions. The same year, Thorne, Hawking and Preskill made another bet, this time concerning the black hole information paradox. Thorne and Hawking argued that since general relativity made it impossible for black holes to radiate and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking Radiation must be "new", and not from inside the black hole event horizon. Since this contradicted the quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics theory would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the concept of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way.
Hawking also maintained his public profile, including bringing science to a wider audience. A film version of A Brief History of Time, directed by Errol Morris and produced by Steven Spielberg, premiered in 1992. Hawking had wanted the film to be scientific rather than biographical, but was persuaded otherwise. The film, while a critical success, was however not widely released. A popular-level collection of essays, interviews and talk titled Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays was published in 1993 and six-part television series Stephen Hawking's Universe and companion book appeared in 1997. As Hawking insisted, this time the focus was entirely on science. He also made several appearances in popular media. At the release party for the home video version of the A Brief History of Time, Leonard Nimoy, who had played Spock on Star Trek, learned that Hawking was interested in appearing on the show. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993. The same year, his synthesiser voice was recorded for the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking", and in 1999 for an appearance on The Simpsons.
In the 1990s, Hawking accepted more openly the mantle of role model for disabled people, including lecturing on the subject and participating in fundraising activities. At the turn of the century, he and eleven other luminaries signed the "Charter for the Third Millennium on Disability" which called on governments to prevent disability and protect disabled rights. In 1999 Hawking was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society. The same year, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, describing her marriage to Hawking and its breakdown. Its revelations caused a sensation in the media, but as was his usual practice regarding his personal life, Hawking made no public comment except to say that he did not read biographies about himself.
2000–present
Following his second marriage, Hawking's family felt excluded and marginalised from his life. For a period of about five years in the early 2000s, his family and staff became increasingly worried that he was being physically abused. Police investigations took place, but were closed as Hawking refused to make a complaint.
Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The Universe in a Nutshell in 2001, and A Briefer History of Time which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works to make them accessible to a wider audience, and God Created the Integers, which appeared in 2006. Along with Thomas Hertog at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (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. Top-down cosmology posits that 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.
In 2006 Hawking and Elaine quietly divorced, following which Hawking resumed closer relationships with Jane, his children and grandchildren. Reflecting this happier period, a revised version of Jane's book called Traveling to Infinity, My Life with Stephen appeared in 2007. That year Hawking and his daughter Lucy published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book designed to explain theoretical physics in an accessible fashion and featuring characters similar to those in the Hawking family. The book was followed by sequels in 2009 and 2011.
Hawking continued to feature regularly on the screen: documentaries entitled :The Real Stephen Hawking: (2001) and Stephen Hawking: Profile (2002), a TV film Hawking about the period around the onset of Hawking's illness (2004), and a documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe (2008).Hawking made further appearances in animated form on The Simpsons, and Futurama in which he does his own voice acting, and in person on The Big Bang Theory. Hawking continued to travel widely, including trips to Chile, Easter Island, South Africa and Spain (to receive the Fonseca Prize in 2008) Canada and multiple trips to the United States. For practical reasons related to his disability Hawking increasingly travelled by private jet, and by 2011 that had become his only mode of international travel.
Over the years, Hawking maintained his public profile with a series of attention-getting and often controversial statements:he has asserted that computer viruses were a form of life, that humans should use genetic engineering to avoid being outsmarted by computers, and that aliens likely exist and contact with them should be avoided. Hawking has expressed his concerns that life on earth is at risk due to "a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of". He views spaceflight and the colonization of space as necessary for the future of humanity. Motivated by the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential of people with disabilities, in 2007 he participated in zero-gravity flight in a "Vomit Comet", courtesy of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times
A longstanding Labour Party supporter, Hawking has also increasingly made his views known on a variety of political subjects. He recorded a tribute for the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a "war crime", boycotted a conference in Israel due to concerns about Israel's policies towards Palestinians, maintained his longstanding campaigning for nuclear disarmament, and has supported stem cell research, universal health care, and action to prevent climate change. Hawking has also used his fame to advertise products, including a wheelchair, National Savings, British Telecom, Specsavers and Egg Banking, and Go Compare.
In the area of physics, by 2003, consensus was growing that Hawking was wrong about the loss of information in a black hole. In a 2004 lecture in Dublin, the physicist conceded his 1997 bet with Preskill, but described his own, somewhat controversial solution, to the information paradox problem, involving the possibility that black holes have more than one topology. In the 2005 paper he published on the subject, he argued that the information paradox was explained by examining all the alternative histories of universes, with the information loss in those with black holes being cancelled out by those without. In January 2014 he called the alleged loss of information in black holes his "biggest blunder."
As part of another longstanding scientific dispute, Hawking had emphatically argued, and bet, that the Higgs Boson would never be found. The particle, proposed to exist as part of the Higgs Field theory by Peter Higgs in 1964, became discoverable with the advent of the Fermilab near Chicago and the Large Electron Positron and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Hawking and Higgs engaged in a heated and public debate over the matter in 2002 and again in 2008, with Higgs criticising Hawking's work and complaining that Hawking's "celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have." The particle was discovered at CERN in July 2012: Hawking quickly conceded that he had lost his bet and said that Higgs should win the Nobel Prize for Physics.
As part of another longstanding scientific dispute, Hawking had emphatically argued, and bet, that the Higgs Boson would never be found. The particle, proposed to exist as part of the Higgs Field theory by Peter Higgs in 1964, became discoverable with the advent of the Fermilab near Chicago and the Large Electron Positron and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Hawking and Higgs engaged in a heated and public debate over the matter in 2002 and again in 2008, with Higgs criticising Hawking's work and complaining that Hawking's "celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have." The particle was discovered at CERN in July 2012: Hawking quickly conceded that he had lost his bet and said that Higgs should win the Nobel Prize for Physics.
In 2007 he posed this open question on the Internet: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?" A month later he confessed: “I don’t know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face.” The Guardian, Britain.
Hawking's disease-related deterioration has continued, and in 2005 he began to control his communication device with movements of his cheek muscles, with a rate of about one word per minute. With this decline there is a risk of him acquiring locked-in syndrome, so Hawking is collaborating with researchers on systems that could translate Hawking's brain patterns or facial expressions into switch activations. By 2009 he could no longer drive his wheelchair independently. He has increased breathing difficulties, requiring a ventilator at times, and has been hospitalized several times. In 2002, following a UK-wide vote, the BBC included him in their list of the 100 Greatest Britons. Hawking was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society (2006), America's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009), and the Russian Fundamental Physics Prize (2012).
Several buildings have been named after him, including the Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador, the Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge, and the Stephen Hawking Centre at Perimeter Institute in Canada. Appropriately, given Hawking's association with time, he unveiled the mechanical "Chronophage" (or time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College Cambridge in September 2008.
As required by university regulations, Hawking retired as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 2009. Despite suggestions that he might leave the United Kingdom as a protest against public funding cuts to basic scientific research, Hawking has continued to work as director of research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and has indicated no plans to retire.
In 2007 Hawking posed an open question on the Internet: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?" A month later he confessed: “I don’t know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face.”
Hawking has expressed concern that life on earth is at risk due to "a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of". He views spaceflight and the colonization of space as necessary for the future of humanity. Hawking has stated that, given the vastness of the Universe, aliens likely exist, but that contact with them should be avoided. Hawking has argued super intelligent artificial intelligence could be pivotal in steering humanity's fate, stating that "the potential benefits are huge... Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. It might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."
Hawking has argued that computer viruses should be considered a new form of life, and has stated that "maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image."
"We are all different – but we share the same human spirit. Perhaps it's human nature that we adapt – and survive." – Stephen Hawking, Hawking
Stephen Hawking gives a lecture during the Starmus Festival on the Spanish Canary island of Tenerife on September 23th, 2014.
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For the first time, Stephen Hawking turns his gaze inward for a revealing look at his own life and intellectual evolution.
My Brief History recounts Stephen Hawking’s improbable journey, from his post-war London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. Illustrated with rarely seen photographs, this concise, witty and candid account introduces readers to the inquisitive schoolboy whose classmates nicknamed him ‘Einstein’; the jokester who once placed a bet with a colleague over the existence of a black hole; and the young husband and father striving to gain a foothold in the world of academia.
Writing with humility and humour, Hawking opens up about the challenges that confronted him following his diagnosis of ALS aged twenty-one. Tracing his development as a thinker, he explains how the prospect of an early death urged him onward through numerous intellectual breakthroughs, and talks about the genesis of his masterpiece A Brief History of Time – one of the iconic books of the twentieth century.
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You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.
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Time
Time is the fourth dimension and a measure in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them. Time has long been a major subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars. Nevertheless, diverse fields such as business, industry, sports, the sciences, and the performing arts all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems. Some simple, relatively uncontroversial definitions of time include "time is what clocks measure" and "time is what keeps everything from happening at once".
Two contrasting viewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe—a dimension independent of events, in which events occur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time. The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be traveled.
Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in both the International System of Units and International System of Quantities. Time is used to define other quantities—such as velocity—so defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition. An operational definition of time, wherein one says that observing a certain number of repetitions of one or another standard cyclical event (such as the passage of a free-swinging pendulum) constitutes one standard unit such as the second, is highly useful in the conduct of both advanced experiments and everyday affairs of life. The operational definition leaves aside the question whether there is something called time, apart from the counting activity just mentioned, that flows and that can be measured. Investigations of a single continuum called spacetime bring questions about space into questions about time, questions that have their roots in the works of early students of natural philosophy.
Furthermore, it may be that there is a subjective component to time, but whether or not time itself is "felt", as a sensation, or is a judgement, is a matter of debate.
Temporal measurement has occupied scientists and technologists, and was a prime motivation in navigation and astronomy. Periodic events and periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time. Examples include the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the swing of a pendulum, and the beat of a heart. Currently, the international unit of time, the second, is defined in terms of radiation emitted by caesium atoms (see below). Time is also of significant social importance, having economic value ("time is money") as well as personal value, due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in human life spans.
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e-folding
In science, e-folding is the time interval in which an exponentially growing quantity increases by a factor of e; it is the base-e analog of doubling time. This term is often used in many areas of science, such as in atmospheric chemistry, medicine and theoretical physics, especially when cosmic inflation is investigated. Physicists and chemists often talk about the e-folding time scale that is determined by the proper time in which the length of a patch of space or spacetime increases by the factor e mentioned above.
In finance the logarithmic return or continuously compounded return, also known as force of interest, is the reciprocal of the e-folding time.
The term e-folding time is also sometimes used similarly in the case of exponential decay, to refer to the timescale for a quantity to decrease to 1/e of its previous value.
The process of evolving to equilibrium is often characterized by a time scale called the e-folding time, τ. This time is used for processes which evolve exponentially toward a final state (equilibrium). In other words if we examine an observable, X, associated with a system, (temperature or density for example) then after a time, τ, the initial difference between the initial value of the observable and the equilibrium value, ΔXi, will have decreased to ΔXi /e where the number e ~ 2.71828.
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Chemical physics of protein folding
Protein molecules generally fold into precise three-dimensional shapes. While of direct interest to biochemists, the question of how folding occurs has attracted the interest of a much broader audience of scientists ranging from the traditional chemical scientists to computer scientists and physicists. Also changing over time has been the very meaning of the question of protein folding. To the descriptive scientist it may be sufficient to assert that folding occurs on a time scale no slower than protein biosynthesis, and that the information required to find the precise three-dimensional shape is contained in the one-dimensional sequence. Although exceptions to these generalizations recently have begun to emerge; in the study of prion-associated diseases , they have sufficient generality to allow us to treat the folding process as a black box for transcribing one-dimensional information into three-dimensional structures. It is, however, necessary to probe deeper into the mechanism if the prediction of protein structure from sequence and the design of truly novel protein-like molecules are to be achieved. These goals are of great practical significance in biology and medicine. The question of the mechanism of folding was once thought to be entirely analogous to the question of mechanism in intermediary metabolism or classical organic chemistry. In those problems the small number of participating species and the relatively specific routes by which they interconvert owing to the large scale of covalent energy barriers compared with thermal energies means that a small number of fairly discrete chemical steps can be isolated. This is the classic notion of a protein folding pathway with a series of discrete intermediates. Such discrete intermediates do occur in the late stages of protein folding, and to a great extent, the chemical kinetic details of these interconversions have been catalogued . However, to answer the practical questions of structure prediction and design, one must go a considerable distance beyond this phenomenology—a new viewpoint on folding is required.
This new viewpoint is that of the chemical physicists rather than the classical chemists. The chemical physics view brings the problem in much closer connection to the underlying forces and the underlying microscopic events. This view has required a new set of theoretical ideas, computational techniques, and major advances in experimental methodology.
Energy landscape theory provides the theoretical framework, asserting that a full understanding of the folding process requires a global overview of the landscape. The folding landscape of a protein resembles a partially rough funnel riddled with traps where the protein can transiently reside. There is no unique pathway but a multiplicity of convergent folding routes toward the native state. Although we focus on developments from our groups in this paper, several other groups have participated in developing this new view.
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Ultracold atomPersonally always liked Physics. It was my favorite stuff to learn in University.
Geez one day personally bored in the 80's found a physics "paper" written by a pilot visiting Vietnam around the late 50's?
Made for some very interesting reading topics about plane travels in the future and what to look for in a physical abstract sense....
Just a song from a movie.
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Stephen Hawking unveils 'life changing' new voice technology in London
By Rhiannon Williams 12:17PM GMT 02 Dec 2014
Stephen Hawking has spoken of the 'life changing' new technology he and Intel have developed over the past three years.
Professor Stephen Hawking has unveiled a new communications platform which he hailed as "life changing".
Speaking at an event in London, Professor Hawking said “We are pushing the boundaries of what is possible”, and claimed that without the new platform he would not be able to speak today.
“Medicine has not been able to cure me, so I rely on technology to help me communicate and live,” he said. “The development of this system has the potential to improve the lives of disabled people around the world and is leading the way in terms of human interaction and the ability to overcome communication boundaries that once stood in the way.”
Computing giant Intel offered to help Professor Hawking with his computing and speech synthesiser in the mid-nineties, and he approached the company several years ago to help modernise his current communication system.
Lama Nachman, Principle Engineer at Intel, said the new system had been developed over the past three years, and is hooked over Professor Hawking's glasses and onto his cheek. Motion in the cheek is detected through an infra-red sensor, allowing him to select a letter of the alphabet, which in turn triggers numerous word suggestions.
"We're able to speed up some of the common tasks he does on his machine by about 10 times," she said. "Stephen was looking for something very familiar, that is similar to his current interface but much more effective."
One of the problems Professor Hawking encountered with his previous system was that his word-per-minute rate was decreasing. Intel decided to reduce the amount of characters needed to be typed in order to complete full words, and were approached by British software application developers SwiftKey to help tailor the system to his needs. Their text prediction technology means Professor Hawking now needs to type fewer than one in five of the letters for the words he uses.
The new platform has been designed to mimic Professor Hawking's current system exactly, featuring a near-identical user interface, and communicates with the current speech synthesiser.
"My old system is more than 20 years old, and I was finding it very difficult to continue to communicate effectively and do the things I love to do every day," Professor Hawking said.
"This new system is life-changing for me, and I hope that it will serve me well for the next 20 years."
Pete Denman, user experience designer at Intel Labs, praised Professor Hawking for allowing the company "unprecedented access" into his life, allowing the team to watch hours of video of him working, as well as travelling with him and seeing him relax.
SwiftKey produced a bespoke language model by analysing Professor Hawking's lectures, books and unpublished documents, which now continually adapts to his writing style the more he interacts with it.
Intel said they planned to make the system open-source and free for users.
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Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind
2 December 2014 Last updated at 08:02 ET
By Rory Cellan-Jones Technology correspondent
Here is a little video (HBO and a bit of a comedy) dated June 14, 2014
Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence.
He told the BBC:"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI.
But others are less gloomy about AI's prospects.
The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.
Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next.
Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.
"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said.
Celverbot Cleverbot is software that is designed to chat like a human would
"Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
But others are less pessimistic.
"I believe we will remain in charge of the technology for a decently long time and the potential of it to solve many of the world problems will be realised," said Rollo Carpenter, creator of Cleverbot.
Cleverbot's software learns from its past conversations, and has gained high scores in the Turing test, fooling a high proportion of people into believing they are talking to a human.
Rise of the robots
Mr Carpenter says we are a long way from having the computing power or developing the algorithms needed to achieve full artificial intelligence, but believes it will come in the next few decades.
"We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it," he says.
But he is betting that AI is going to be a positive force.
Prof Hawking is not alone in fearing for the future.
In the short term, there are concerns that clever machines capable of undertaking tasks done by humans until now will swiftly destroy millions of jobs.
In the longer term, the technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has warned that AI is "our biggest existential threat".
Robotic voice
In his BBC interview, Prof Hawking also talks of the benefits and dangers of the internet.
He quotes the director of GCHQ's warning about the net becoming the command centre for terrorists: "More must be done by the internet companies to counter the threat, but the difficulty is to do this without sacrificing freedom and privacy."
He has, however, been an enthusiastic early adopter of all kinds of communication technologies and is looking forward to being able to write much faster with his new system.
But one aspect of his own tech - his computer generated voice - has not changed in the latest update.
Prof Hawking concedes that it's slightly robotic, but insists he didn't want a more natural voice.
"It has become my trademark, and I wouldn't change it for a more natural voice with a British accent," he said.
"I'm told that children who need a computer voice, want one like mine."
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The Theory of Everything (2014)
The Theory of Everything is a 2014 British biographical romantic drama film directed by James Marsh[1] and written by Anthony McCarten. The film was inspired by the memoir Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Wilde Hawking, which deals with her relationship with her ex-husband theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, his diagnosis of motor neuron disease, and his success in physics.
This is the sixth feature film directed by Marsh. Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones star with Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, and David Thewlis featured in supporting roles.
The Theory of Everything had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in theaters on November 7, 2014. Focus Features will distribute the film in the United States, Entertainment One Films will distribute the film in Canada, and Universal Pictures will distribute the film in remaining territories.
Monday 12th of January 2015
Andrew Griffin
The Independant
Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others call for research to avoid dangers of artificial intelligence
Hundreds of scientists and technologists have signed an open letter calling for research into the problems of artificial intelligence in an attempt to combat the dangers of the technology.
Signatories to the letter created by the Future of Life Institute including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, who has warned that AI could be the end of humanity. Anyone can sign the letter, which now includes hundreds of signatures.
It warns that “it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls”. It says that “our AI systems must do what we want them to do” and lays out research objectives that will “help maximize the societal benefit of AI”.
That will be a project that involves not just scientists and technology experts, they warn. Because it involves society as well as AI, it will also require help from experts in “economics, law and philosophy to computer security, formal methods and, of course, various branches of AI itself”.
A document laying out those research priorities points out concerns about autonomous vehicles — which people are already “horrified” by — as well as machine ethics, autonomous weapons, privacy and professional ethics.
Elon Musk has also repeatedly voiced concerns about artificial intelligence, describing it as “summoning the demon” and the “biggest existential threat there is”.
The document is signed by many representatives from Google and artificial intelligence companies DeepMind and Vicarious. Academics from many of the world’s biggest universities have also signed it, including those from Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and MIT.
15th of January, 2015
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING team release Academy Award Nominations statements
BEST MOTION PICTURE
BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE - EDDIE REDMAYNE
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE - FELICITY JONES
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – JOHANN JOHANNSSON
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – ANTHONY MCCARTEN
24th of February, 2015
"I'm very proud of you," the famous physicist wrote on Facebook
Stephen Hawking, who joined Facebook just a few months ago, used the social media site to write a brief but touching note to Eddie Redmayne, who won the Best Actor Oscar Sunday night. In The Theory of Everything, Redmayne portrayed the world-renowned physicist and his struggle with ALS.
Shortly after the Academy Awards ceremony, Hawking shared the following post, saying he was “very proud” of the actor:
In his acceptance speech, Redmayne said, “I’m fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man. This Oscar belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS.”
20th of March, 2015
Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir David Attenborough (right) launched the exhibition
Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir David Attenborough have joined forces to open an exhibition about geniuses.
The celebrated physicist and award-winning broadcaster unveiled the Marks Of Genius exhibition at Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries.
Prof Hawking, who studied at Oxford as an undergraduate, said: " The works featured in the Bodleian Libraries' Marks of Genius exhibition truly are the product of genius, be it Einstein, Newton or Shakespeare.
"I hope that thousands of people, young and old, will visit the exhibition and be inspired to develop ideas of their own, to experiment, try out new ways of thinking, and share their ideas with others.
"Who knows, perhaps the Bodleian's exhibition will stimulate the next Euclid, Newton, or Dorothy Hodgkin to put down their ideas on paper or pixels and make new Marks Of Genius."
The exhibition, held at the newly renovated Weston Library, will open to the public tomorrow.
"Works of genius" such as Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio and scientific works by Isaac Newton will be on display.
During the visit, Prof Hawking and Sir David were presented with the Bodley Medal by Librarian Richard Ovenden and University of Oxford Vice Chancellor Andrew Hamilton.
The medal is awarded for outstanding contributions to the worlds of culture, learning, science and communication.
Playwright Alan Bennett, film director Lord Richard Attenborough and the novelist Dame Hilary Mantel are among its former recipients.
Sir David said: "I am deeply honoured to receive the Bodley Medal and to be opening the Bodleian's Marks Of Genius exhibition.
"The exhibition shows the importance of libraries as places where knowledge is preserved and shared from one generation to the next."
13th of April, 2015
Monty Python - Galaxy Song
Galaxy Song - Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - Nov 13, 2008
18 of April, 2015
The most surprising thing about Stephen Hawking
Nicky Phillips
His intellect and survival is mystifying, but to many people the most baffling thing about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is his daughter Lucy. "A lot of people don't realise that my father had any children at all," said 45-year-old Ms Hawking, who also has two brothers Tim and Robert. "Some people were just so astonished that a person with a disability could have children that they couldn't get past that," she said. The recent blockbuster biopic, The Theory of Everything, which focuses on Professor Hawking's early life, his marriage to first wife Jane Wilde and his diagnosis with a type of motor neurone disease, may have redressed this error, but misconceptions are part of life when you're the child of the world's most recognisable scientist. Growing up many people assumed Ms Hawking had an intellect to match her famous father's, while others thought, "oh well, you're a girl so of course you don't understand anything at all". Next Saturday night, Ms Hawking will introduce her father for his first talk to Australian audiences at the Sydney Opera House. "One of the things I'm going to talk about are perceptions of disability," she said. While Ms Hawking will be on stage, her father will be beamed in live from the University of Cambridge. He plans to talk about his early life, his scientific work and achievements, she said. "He thought the whole idea of a live projection would be a really fun thing to do," said Ms Hawking, a journalist and author. It has become increasingly complicated for Professor Hawking to travel because of his condition. "Flying is really not possible." Despite his lack of physical presence, Ms Hawking said his lectures will be very entertaining, directed at a general audience and featuring his trademark off-beat sense of humour and quick wit. "He really is a showman," she said. Of the film that depicts the life of her parents, she has nothing but glowing remarks. "It's a very beautiful film. "Eddie Redmayne performance is astonishing. He really deserved that Oscar. He spent a long time with people with motor neuron disease, he learnt how to understand them and how they felt as their condition progressed. "He also manages to project a personality through that - the personality of my father - and I think that's really the great towering strength of that film."
She said there was a tendency for people to talk across people in wheelchairs, to talk to their carers or to shout at them. "I hope the film goes some way to addressing the public reaction to disability," she said. Since 2007 the pair have written a series of children's books, which explain complex science, including physics, through the adventures of a young boy named George. The idea for the books came to Ms Hawking at her son's birthday party. "I heard a young child asking my father a question. "They said, 'Stephen what would happen if I fell in a black hole'?" "The children were so excited to hear what would happen and Dad said, 'well you would be torn into spaghetti'," she said. That was the light-bulb moment for me; I was a writer and dad has this extraordinary ability to express complex concepts in very simple language, let's put those things together." But for someone who intentionally pursued a career in the arts, "it's an irony that physics caught me in the end," she said.
An Evening with Stephen Hawking is on at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday/Sunday April 25/26.
24 of April, 2015
The Theory Of Everything was ‘surreal’ says Stephen Hawking’s daughter
Chris Hook
The Daily Telegraph
April 24, 2015 7:58AM
All kids ask their dads endless questions about the world. But not many of us had dads who knew everything. Or at least the theory of everything.
And if you’re Lucy Hawking, you kind of took it for granted. After all, her father Stephen Hawking — one of the modern era’s greatest minds — was just Dad.
“Nobody sees their parents like that (as a genius) and I do think that’s helpful, because it would be slightly odd otherwise,” explains the 44-year-old middle child of Hawking’s three kids with his first wife Jane.
“You just take your parents as your parents and you ask questions and get answers and I don’t think there’s anything unusual in that.
“Dad was always very recognisable and distinctive but he didn’t become famous the way he is now until A Brief History Of Time was published in the late 1980s (1988) and then suddenly he started to appear everywhere.
“It was quite odd the way he’d pop up in things — even random mentions in novels as his name became shorthand for somebody who was very clever and it was quite disconcerting at first.”
Indeed over the past couple of decades, Hawking has appeared on The Simpsons, Futurama, Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the past few months a bunch of episodes on The Big Bang Theory. And, of course, the recent biopic The Theory Of Everything which picked up its star Eddie Redmayne an Oscar.
The Theory Of Everything was ‘surreal’ says Stephen Hawking’s daughter
Chris Hook
The Daily Telegraph
April 24, 2015 7:58AM
Lucy Hawking with her father Stephen. Picture: Angela Micu
Lucy Hawking with her father Stephen. Picture: Angela Micu
All kids ask their dads endless questions about the world. But not many of us had dads who knew everything. Or at least the theory of everything.
And if you’re Lucy Hawking, you kind of took it for granted. After all, her father Stephen Hawking — one of the modern era’s greatest minds — was just Dad.
“Nobody sees their parents like that (as a genius) and I do think that’s helpful, because it would be slightly odd otherwise,” explains the 44-year-old middle child of Hawking’s three kids with his first wife Jane.
“You just take your parents as your parents and you ask questions and get answers and I don’t think there’s anything unusual in that.
“Dad was always very recognisable and distinctive but he didn’t become famous the way he is now until A Brief History Of Time was published in the late 1980s (1988) and then suddenly he started to appear everywhere.
“It was quite odd the way he’d pop up in things — even random mentions in novels as his name became shorthand for somebody who was very clever and it was quite disconcerting at first.”
Indeed over the past couple of decades, Hawking has appeared on The Simpsons, Futurama, Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the past few months a bunch of episodes on The Big Bang Theory. And, of course, the recent biopic The Theory Of Everything which picked up its star Eddie Redmayne an Oscar.
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything.
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything.
“He was definitely one of the highlights of the film, because his performance is so good, so authentic and nuanced, and very beautifully portrayed, but it was odd,” Lucy says.
“It actually became quite surreal and at one point I actually lost the sense I was watching a film about my own life. It was as though I’d just gone to see this film about a family and then all of a sudden I come on and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, that’s me’.
“I must meet somebody else who’s been portrayed on screen and find out how they reacted to it, and find out if their reaction and thoughts are similar to the ones I had.”
The word “odd” pops up a lot in Hawking’s conversation. And it would have been. Besides being daughter to a genius, Lucy Hawking also had a lot more responsibility than most kids, as her father’s health deteriorated, his body assaulted by Lou Gehrig’s disease.
15 of May, 2015
Stephen Hawking Agrees With Alex Jones Renowned professor warns of artificial intelligence takeover
by Infowars.com | May 14, 2015
In late April Stephen Hawking said in a televised speech that humanity had 1,000 years to get off the planet or it would cease to exist. Alex Jones offered a rebuttal the next day saying that with all that is going on in the world we had closer to 50 years. Just two days later Hawking came back and said we had about 100 years before AI would become our overlords. It seems as if Hawking has become more Jonesish in his outlook for humanity.
8th of June, 2015
Stephen Hawking19th of June, 2015
Why is Stephen Hawking appearing at Glastonbury?
25th of June, 2015
In 1963, Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. From 1979 to 2009 he held the post of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663. Professor Hawking has over a dozen honorary degrees and was awarded the CBE in 1982. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Science. Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein.
Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. Among his significant scientific works have been a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vocal supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Hawking is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.
Hawking has achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his A Brief History of Time stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
Hawking has a motor neuron disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years. He is almost entirely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. He married twice and has three children.
Early life
Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 to Frank and Isobel Hawking. Despite their families' financial constraints, both parents attended the University of Oxford, where Frank studied medicine and Isobel, Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The two met shortly after the beginning of the Second World War at a medical research institute where she was working as a secretary and he as a medical researcher. They lived in Highgate, but as London was under attack in those years, his mother went to Oxford to give birth in greater safety. Stephen has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. He began his schooling at the Byron House School; he later blamed its "progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school.
On their return to England, Hawking attended Radlett School for a year and from September 1952, St Albans School. The family placed a high value on education. Hawking's father wanted his son to attend the well-regarded Westminster School, but the 13-year-old Hawking was ill on the day of the scholarship examination. His family could not afford the school fees without the financial aid of a scholarship, so Hawking remained at St Albans. A positive consequence was that Hawking remained with a close group of friends with whom he enjoyed board games, the manufacture of fireworks, model aeroplanes and boats, and long discussions about Christianity and extrasensory perception. From 1958, and with the help of the mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta, they built a computer from clock parts, an old telephone switchboard and other recycled components. Although at school he was known as "Einstein," Hawking was not initially successful academically. With time, he began to show considerable aptitude for scientific subjects, and inspired by Tahta, decided to study mathematics at university.Hawking's father advised him to study medicine, concerned that there were few jobs for mathematics graduates. He wanted Hawking to attend University College, Oxford, his own alma mater. As it was not possible to read mathematics there at the time, Hawking decided to study physics and chemistry. Despite his headmaster's advice to wait until the next year, Hawking was awarded a scholarship after taking the examinations in March 1959.
University
Hawking began his university education at the University of Oxford in October 1959 at the age of 17. For the first 18 months, he was bored and lonely: he was younger than many other students, and found the academic work "ridiculously easy." His physics tutor Robert Berman later said, "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." A change occurred during his second and third year when, according to Berman, Hawking made more effort "to be one of the boys". He developed into a popular, lively and witty college member, interested in classical music and science fiction. Part of the transformation resulted from his decision to join the college Boat Club, where he coxed a rowing team. The rowing trainer at the time noted that Hawking cultivated a daredevil image, steering his crew on risky courses that led to damaged boats. Hawking has estimated that he studied about 1,000 hours during his three years at Oxford. These unimpressive study habits made sitting his Finals a challenge, and he decided to answer only theoretical physics questions rather than those requiring factual knowledge. A first-class honours degree was a condition of acceptance for his planned graduate study in cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Anxious, he slept poorly the night before the examinations and the final result was on the borderline between first- and second-class honours, making a viva necessary. Hawking was concerned that he was viewed as a lazy and difficult student, so when asked at the oral examination to describe his future plans, he said, "If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First." He was held in higher regard than he believed: as Berman commented, the examiners "were intelligent enough to realise they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves." After receiving a first-class BA (Hons.) degree, and following a trip to Iran with a friend, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in October 1962.
Hawking's first year as a doctoral student was difficult. He was initially disappointed to find that he had been assigned Dennis William Sciama as a supervisor rather than Fred Hoyle, and he found his training in mathematics inadequate for work in general relativity and cosmology. He also struggled with his health. Hawking had experienced increasing clumsiness during his final year at Oxford, including a fall on some stairs and difficulties when rowing. The problems worsened, and his speech became slightly slurred; his family noticed the changes when he returned home for Christmas and medical investigations were begun. The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21. At the time, doctors gave him a life expectancy of two years. After his diagnosis, Hawking fell into a depression; though his doctors advised that he continue with his studies, he felt there was little point. At the same time, however, his relationship with Jane Wilde, friend of his sister, and whom he had met shortly before his diagnosis, continued to develop. The couple were engaged in October 1964. Hawking later said that the engagement "gave him something to live for." Despite the disease's progression—Hawking had difficulty walking without support, and his speech was almost unintelligible—he now returned to his work with enthusiasm. Hawking started developing a reputation for brilliance and brashness when he publicly challenged the work of Fred Hoyle and his student Jayant Narlikar at a lecture in June 1964.
When Hawking began his graduate studies, there was much debate in the physics community about the prevailing theories of the creation of the universe: the Big Bang and the Steady State theories. Inspired by Roger Penrose's theorem of a spacetime singularity in the centre of black holes, Hawking applied the same thinking to the entire universe, and during 1965 wrote up his thesis on this topic. There were other positive developments: Hawking received a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, and he and Jane were married on 14 July 1965. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in March 1966, and his essay entitled "Singularities and the Geometry of Space-Time" shared top honours with one by Penrose to win that year's Adams Prize.
Later life and career
1966–1975
During their first years of marriage, Jane lived in London during the week as she completed her degree and they travelled to the United States several times for conferences and physics-related visits. The couple had difficulty finding housing that was within Hawking's walking distance to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). Jane began a Ph.D. program, and a son, Robert, was born in May 1967. In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theorem 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. In 1970 they published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedmann, then it must have begun as a singularity.
During the late 1960s, Hawking's physical abilities declined once more: he began to use crutches and ceased lecturing regularly. As he slowly lost the ability to write, he developed compensatory visual methods, including seeing equations in terms of geometry. The physicist Werner Israel later compared the achievements to Mozart composing an entire symphony in his head. Hawking was, however, fiercely independent and unwilling to accept help or make concessions for his disabilities. He preferred to be regarded as "a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all the ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person." Jane Hawking later noted that "Some people would call it determination, some obstinacy. I've called it both at one time or another." He required much persuasion to accept the use of a wheelchair at the end of the 1960s, but ultimately became notorious for the wildness of his wheelchair driving. Hawking was a popular and witty colleague, but his illness as well as his reputation for brashness and intelligence distanced him from some. In 1969, Hawking accepted a specially created 'Fellowship for Distinction in Science' to remain at Caius.
A daughter, Lucy, was born in 1970.Soon after Hawking discovered what became known as the second law of black hole dynamics, that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller. With James M. Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. To Hawking's irritation, Jacob Bekenstein, a graduate student of John Wheeler, went further—and ultimately correctly—applying thermodynamic concepts literally. In the early 1970s, Hawking's work with Carter, Werner Israel and David C. Robinson strongly supported Wheeler's no-hair theorem that no matter what the original material from which a black hole is created it can be completely described by the properties of mass, electrical charge and rotation. His essay titled "Black Holes" won the Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971. Hawking's first book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time written with George Ellis was published in 1973.
Beginning in 1973, Hawking moved into the study of quantum gravity and quantum mechanics. His work in this area was spurred by a visit to Moscow and discussions with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Alexei Starobinsky, whose work showed that according to the uncertainty principle rotating black holes emit particles. To Hawking's annoyance, his much-checked calculations produced findings that contradicted his second law, which claimed black holes could never get smaller, and supported Bekenstein's reasoning about their entropy. His results, which Hawking presented from 1974, showed that black holes emit radiation, known today as Hawking radiation, which may continue until they exhaust their energy and evaporate. Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial. However by the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a significant breakthrough in theoretical physics. In March 1974, a few weeks after the announcement of Hawking radiation, Hawking was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the youngest scientists to be so honored.
Hawking rarely discussed his illness and physical challenges, even—in a precedent set during their courtship—with Jane. Hawking's disabilities meant that the responsibilities of home and family rested firmly on his wife's increasingly overwhelmed shoulders, leaving him more time to think about physics. When in 1974 Hawking was appointed to the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Jane proposed that a graduate or post-doctoral student live with them and help with his care. Hawking accepted, and Bernard Carr travelled to California with them as the first of many students who fulfilled this role. The family spent a generally happy and stimulating year in Pasadena. Hawking worked with his friend on the faculty, Kip Thorne, and engaged him in a scientific wager about whether the dark star Cygnus X-1 was a black hole. The wager was a surprising "insurance policy" against the proposition that black holes did not exist. Hawking acknowledged that he had lost the bet in 1990, which was the first of several that he was to make with Thorne and others. Hawking has maintained ties to Caltech, spending a month there almost every year since this first visit.
1975–1990
Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a new home, a new job—as Reader. Don Page, with whom Hawking had begun a close friendship at Caltech, arrived to work as the live-in graduate student assistant. With Page's help and that of a secretary, Jane's responsibilities were reduced so she could return to her thesis and her new interest in singing. The mid to late 1970s were a period of growing public interest in black holes and of the physicist who was studying them. Hawking was regularly interviewed for print and television. He also received increasing academic recognition of his work. In 1975 he was awarded both the Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal, and in 1976 the Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Prize and the Hughes Medal. Hawking was appointed a professor with a chair in gravitational physics in 1977. The following year he received the Albert Einstein Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.
Hawking's speech deteriorated, and by the late 1970s he could only be understood by his family and closest friends. To communicate with others, someone who knew him well would translate his speech into intelligible speech. Spurred by a dispute with the university over who would pay for the ramp needed for him to enter his workplace, Hawking and his wife campaigned for improved access and support for those with disabilities in Cambridge, including adapted student housing at the university. In general, however, Hawking had ambivalent feelings about his role as a disability rights champion: while wanting to help others, he sought to detach himself from his illness and its challenges. His lack of engagement led to some criticism. The Hawking family welcomed a third child, Timothy, in April 1979. That autumn Hawking was appointed the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
Hawking's inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics was titled: "Is the end in sight for Theoretical Physics" and proposed N=8 Supergravity as the leading theory to solve many of the outstanding problems physicists were studying. Hawking's promotion coincided with a health crisis which led to Hawking accepting, albeit reluctantly, some nursing services at home. At the same time he was also making a transition in his approach to physics, becoming more intuitive and speculative rather than insisting on mathematical proofs. "I would rather be right than rigorous" he told Kip Thorne. In 1981 he proposed that information in a black hole is irretrievably lost when a black hole evaporates. This information paradox violates the fundamental tenet of quantum mechanics, and was to lead to years of debate, including "the Black Hole War" with Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft.
Hawking did not rule out the existence of a Creator, asking in A Brief History of Time "Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?" In his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense. In A Brief History of Time he wrote: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessary to explain the origin of the universe. Later discussions with Neil Turok led to the realization that it is also compatible with an open universe.
Further work by Hawking in the area of arrows of time led to the 1985 publication of a paper theorizing that if the no-boundary proposition were correct, then when the universe stopped expanding and eventually collapsed, time would run backwards. A paper by Don Page and Raymond Laflamme led Hawking to withdraw this concept. Honours continued to be awarded: in 1981 he was awarded the American Franklin Medal, and in 1982 made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Awards do not pay the bills, however, and motivated by the need to finance the children's education and home expenses, in 1982 Hawking determined to write a popular book about the universe that would be accessible to the general public. Instead of publishing with an academic press, he signed a contract with Bantam Books, a mass market publisher, and received a large advance for his book. A first draft of the book, called A Brief History of Time, was completed in 1984.
During a visit to CERN in Geneva in the summer of 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia which in his condition was life-threatening; he was so ill that Jane was asked if life support should be terminated. She refused but the consequence was a tracheotomy, which would require round-the-clock nursing care, and remove what remained of his speech. The National Health Service would pay for a nursing home but Jane was determined that he would live at home. The cost of the care was funded by an American foundation. Nurses were hired for the three shifts required to provide the round-the-clock support he required. One of those employed was Elaine Mason, who was to become Hawking's second wife. For his communication, Hawking initially raised his eyebrows to choose letters on a spelling card. But he then received a computer program called the "Equalizer" from Walt Woltosz. In a method he uses to this day, using a switch he selects phrases, words or letters from a bank of about 2500–3000 that are scanned. The program was originally run on a desktop computer. However, Elaine Mason's husband David, a computer engineer, adapted a small computer and attached it to his wheelchair.[190] Released from the need to use somebody to interpret his speech, Hawking commented that "I can communicate better now than before I lost my voice." The voice he uses has an American accent and is no longer produced. Despite the availability of other voices, Hawking has retained his original voice, saying that he prefers his current voice and identifies with it. At this point, Hawking activated a switch using his hand and could produce up to 15 words a minute. Lectures were prepared in advance, and sent to the speech synthesiser in short sections as they were delivered.
One of the first messages Hawking produced with his speech generating device was a request for his assistant to help him finish writing A Brief History of Time. Peter Guzzardi, his editor at Bantam, pushed him to explain his ideas clearly in non-technical language, a process that required multiple revisions from an increasingly irritated Hawking. The book was published in April 1988 in the US and in June in the UK, and proved to be an extraordinary success, rising quickly to the top of bestseller lists in both countries and remaining there for weeks and months. The book was translated into multiple languages, and ultimately sold an estimated 9 million copies. Media attention was intense, and Newsweek magazine cover and a television special both described him as "Master of the Universe". Success led to significant financial rewards, but also the challenges of celebrity status. Hawking travelled extensively to promote his work, and enjoyed partying and dancing[citation needed] into the small hours. He had difficulty refusing the invitations and visitors which left limited time for work and his students. Some colleagues were resentful of the attention Hawking received, feeling it was due to his disability. He received further academic recognition, including five further honorary degrees, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985), the Paul Dirac Medal (1987) and, jointly with Penrose, the prestigious Wolf Prize (1988). In 1989, he was named a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II. He reportedly declined a knighthood.
1990–2000
Hawking's marriage had been strained for many years. Jane felt overwhelmed by the intrusion into their family life of the required nurses and assistants. The impact of his celebrity was challenging for colleagues and family members, and in one interview Jane described her role as "simply to tell him that he's not God." Hawking's views of religion also contrasted with her strong Christian faith, and resulted in tension. In the late 1980s Hawking had grown close to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, to the dismay of some colleagues, caregivers and family members who were disturbed by her strength of personality and protectiveness. Hawking told Jane that he was leaving her for Mason, and departed the family home in February 1990. Following his divorce from Jane in the spring of 1995, Hawking married Mason in September, declaring "It's wonderful—I have married the woman I love."
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's Newton Institute, Hawking and Penrose delivered a series of six lectures, which were published in 1996 as "The Nature of Space and Time". In 1997 he conceded a 1991 public scientific wager made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Hawking had bet that Penrose's proposal of a "cosmic censorship conjecture"—that there could be no "naked singularities" unclothed within a horizon—was correct. After discovering his concession might have been premature, a new, more refined, wager was made. This specified that such singularities would occur without extra conditions. The same year, Thorne, Hawking and Preskill made another bet, this time concerning the black hole information paradox. Thorne and Hawking argued that since general relativity made it impossible for black holes to radiate and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking Radiation must be "new", and not from inside the black hole event horizon. Since this contradicted the quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics theory would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the concept of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way.
Hawking also maintained his public profile, including bringing science to a wider audience. A film version of A Brief History of Time, directed by Errol Morris and produced by Steven Spielberg, premiered in 1992. Hawking had wanted the film to be scientific rather than biographical, but was persuaded otherwise. The film, while a critical success, was however not widely released. A popular-level collection of essays, interviews and talk titled Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays was published in 1993 and six-part television series Stephen Hawking's Universe and companion book appeared in 1997. As Hawking insisted, this time the focus was entirely on science. He also made several appearances in popular media. At the release party for the home video version of the A Brief History of Time, Leonard Nimoy, who had played Spock on Star Trek, learned that Hawking was interested in appearing on the show. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993. The same year, his synthesiser voice was recorded for the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking", and in 1999 for an appearance on The Simpsons.
In the 1990s, Hawking accepted more openly the mantle of role model for disabled people, including lecturing on the subject and participating in fundraising activities. At the turn of the century, he and eleven other luminaries signed the "Charter for the Third Millennium on Disability" which called on governments to prevent disability and protect disabled rights. In 1999 Hawking was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society. The same year, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, describing her marriage to Hawking and its breakdown. Its revelations caused a sensation in the media, but as was his usual practice regarding his personal life, Hawking made no public comment except to say that he did not read biographies about himself.
2000–present
Following his second marriage, Hawking's family felt excluded and marginalised from his life. For a period of about five years in the early 2000s, his family and staff became increasingly worried that he was being physically abused. Police investigations took place, but were closed as Hawking refused to make a complaint.
Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The Universe in a Nutshell in 2001, and A Briefer History of Time which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works to make them accessible to a wider audience, and God Created the Integers, which appeared in 2006. Along with Thomas Hertog at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (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. Top-down cosmology posits that 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.
In 2006 Hawking and Elaine quietly divorced, following which Hawking resumed closer relationships with Jane, his children and grandchildren. Reflecting this happier period, a revised version of Jane's book called Traveling to Infinity, My Life with Stephen appeared in 2007. That year Hawking and his daughter Lucy published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book designed to explain theoretical physics in an accessible fashion and featuring characters similar to those in the Hawking family. The book was followed by sequels in 2009 and 2011.
Hawking continued to feature regularly on the screen: documentaries entitled :The Real Stephen Hawking: (2001) and Stephen Hawking: Profile (2002), a TV film Hawking about the period around the onset of Hawking's illness (2004), and a documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe (2008).Hawking made further appearances in animated form on The Simpsons, and Futurama in which he does his own voice acting, and in person on The Big Bang Theory. Hawking continued to travel widely, including trips to Chile, Easter Island, South Africa and Spain (to receive the Fonseca Prize in 2008) Canada and multiple trips to the United States. For practical reasons related to his disability Hawking increasingly travelled by private jet, and by 2011 that had become his only mode of international travel.
Over the years, Hawking maintained his public profile with a series of attention-getting and often controversial statements:he has asserted that computer viruses were a form of life, that humans should use genetic engineering to avoid being outsmarted by computers, and that aliens likely exist and contact with them should be avoided. Hawking has expressed his concerns that life on earth is at risk due to "a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of". He views spaceflight and the colonization of space as necessary for the future of humanity. Motivated by the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential of people with disabilities, in 2007 he participated in zero-gravity flight in a "Vomit Comet", courtesy of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times
A longstanding Labour Party supporter, Hawking has also increasingly made his views known on a variety of political subjects. He recorded a tribute for the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a "war crime", boycotted a conference in Israel due to concerns about Israel's policies towards Palestinians, maintained his longstanding campaigning for nuclear disarmament, and has supported stem cell research, universal health care, and action to prevent climate change. Hawking has also used his fame to advertise products, including a wheelchair, National Savings, British Telecom, Specsavers and Egg Banking, and Go Compare.
In the area of physics, by 2003, consensus was growing that Hawking was wrong about the loss of information in a black hole. In a 2004 lecture in Dublin, the physicist conceded his 1997 bet with Preskill, but described his own, somewhat controversial solution, to the information paradox problem, involving the possibility that black holes have more than one topology. In the 2005 paper he published on the subject, he argued that the information paradox was explained by examining all the alternative histories of universes, with the information loss in those with black holes being cancelled out by those without. In January 2014 he called the alleged loss of information in black holes his "biggest blunder."
As part of another longstanding scientific dispute, Hawking had emphatically argued, and bet, that the Higgs Boson would never be found. The particle, proposed to exist as part of the Higgs Field theory by Peter Higgs in 1964, became discoverable with the advent of the Fermilab near Chicago and the Large Electron Positron and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Hawking and Higgs engaged in a heated and public debate over the matter in 2002 and again in 2008, with Higgs criticising Hawking's work and complaining that Hawking's "celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have." The particle was discovered at CERN in July 2012: Hawking quickly conceded that he had lost his bet and said that Higgs should win the Nobel Prize for Physics.
As part of another longstanding scientific dispute, Hawking had emphatically argued, and bet, that the Higgs Boson would never be found. The particle, proposed to exist as part of the Higgs Field theory by Peter Higgs in 1964, became discoverable with the advent of the Fermilab near Chicago and the Large Electron Positron and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Hawking and Higgs engaged in a heated and public debate over the matter in 2002 and again in 2008, with Higgs criticising Hawking's work and complaining that Hawking's "celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have." The particle was discovered at CERN in July 2012: Hawking quickly conceded that he had lost his bet and said that Higgs should win the Nobel Prize for Physics.
In 2007 he posed this open question on the Internet: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?" A month later he confessed: “I don’t know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face.” The Guardian, Britain.
Hawking's disease-related deterioration has continued, and in 2005 he began to control his communication device with movements of his cheek muscles, with a rate of about one word per minute. With this decline there is a risk of him acquiring locked-in syndrome, so Hawking is collaborating with researchers on systems that could translate Hawking's brain patterns or facial expressions into switch activations. By 2009 he could no longer drive his wheelchair independently. He has increased breathing difficulties, requiring a ventilator at times, and has been hospitalized several times. In 2002, following a UK-wide vote, the BBC included him in their list of the 100 Greatest Britons. Hawking was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society (2006), America's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009), and the Russian Fundamental Physics Prize (2012).
Several buildings have been named after him, including the Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador, the Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge, and the Stephen Hawking Centre at Perimeter Institute in Canada. Appropriately, given Hawking's association with time, he unveiled the mechanical "Chronophage" (or time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College Cambridge in September 2008.
As required by university regulations, Hawking retired as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 2009. Despite suggestions that he might leave the United Kingdom as a protest against public funding cuts to basic scientific research, Hawking has continued to work as director of research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and has indicated no plans to retire.
In 2007 Hawking posed an open question on the Internet: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?" A month later he confessed: “I don’t know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face.”
Hawking has expressed concern that life on earth is at risk due to "a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of". He views spaceflight and the colonization of space as necessary for the future of humanity. Hawking has stated that, given the vastness of the Universe, aliens likely exist, but that contact with them should be avoided. Hawking has argued super intelligent artificial intelligence could be pivotal in steering humanity's fate, stating that "the potential benefits are huge... Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. It might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."
Hawking has argued that computer viruses should be considered a new form of life, and has stated that "maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image."
"We are all different – but we share the same human spirit. Perhaps it's human nature that we adapt – and survive." – Stephen Hawking, Hawking
Stephen Hawking gives a lecture during the Starmus Festival on the Spanish Canary island of Tenerife on September 23th, 2014.
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For the first time, Stephen Hawking turns his gaze inward for a revealing look at his own life and intellectual evolution.
My Brief History recounts Stephen Hawking’s improbable journey, from his post-war London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. Illustrated with rarely seen photographs, this concise, witty and candid account introduces readers to the inquisitive schoolboy whose classmates nicknamed him ‘Einstein’; the jokester who once placed a bet with a colleague over the existence of a black hole; and the young husband and father striving to gain a foothold in the world of academia.
Writing with humility and humour, Hawking opens up about the challenges that confronted him following his diagnosis of ALS aged twenty-one. Tracing his development as a thinker, he explains how the prospect of an early death urged him onward through numerous intellectual breakthroughs, and talks about the genesis of his masterpiece A Brief History of Time – one of the iconic books of the twentieth century.
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You can order your copy at amazon.com or amazon.co.uk.
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-.../dp/B004WY3D0O
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Publications
Books
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Time
Time is the fourth dimension and a measure in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them. Time has long been a major subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a manner applicable to all fields without circularity has consistently eluded scholars. Nevertheless, diverse fields such as business, industry, sports, the sciences, and the performing arts all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems. Some simple, relatively uncontroversial definitions of time include "time is what clocks measure" and "time is what keeps everything from happening at once".
Two contrasting viewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe—a dimension independent of events, in which events occur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time. The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be traveled.
Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in both the International System of Units and International System of Quantities. Time is used to define other quantities—such as velocity—so defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition. An operational definition of time, wherein one says that observing a certain number of repetitions of one or another standard cyclical event (such as the passage of a free-swinging pendulum) constitutes one standard unit such as the second, is highly useful in the conduct of both advanced experiments and everyday affairs of life. The operational definition leaves aside the question whether there is something called time, apart from the counting activity just mentioned, that flows and that can be measured. Investigations of a single continuum called spacetime bring questions about space into questions about time, questions that have their roots in the works of early students of natural philosophy.
Furthermore, it may be that there is a subjective component to time, but whether or not time itself is "felt", as a sensation, or is a judgement, is a matter of debate.
Temporal measurement has occupied scientists and technologists, and was a prime motivation in navigation and astronomy. Periodic events and periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time. Examples include the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the swing of a pendulum, and the beat of a heart. Currently, the international unit of time, the second, is defined in terms of radiation emitted by caesium atoms (see below). Time is also of significant social importance, having economic value ("time is money") as well as personal value, due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in human life spans.
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e-folding
In science, e-folding is the time interval in which an exponentially growing quantity increases by a factor of e; it is the base-e analog of doubling time. This term is often used in many areas of science, such as in atmospheric chemistry, medicine and theoretical physics, especially when cosmic inflation is investigated. Physicists and chemists often talk about the e-folding time scale that is determined by the proper time in which the length of a patch of space or spacetime increases by the factor e mentioned above.
In finance the logarithmic return or continuously compounded return, also known as force of interest, is the reciprocal of the e-folding time.
The term e-folding time is also sometimes used similarly in the case of exponential decay, to refer to the timescale for a quantity to decrease to 1/e of its previous value.
The process of evolving to equilibrium is often characterized by a time scale called the e-folding time, τ. This time is used for processes which evolve exponentially toward a final state (equilibrium). In other words if we examine an observable, X, associated with a system, (temperature or density for example) then after a time, τ, the initial difference between the initial value of the observable and the equilibrium value, ΔXi, will have decreased to ΔXi /e where the number e ~ 2.71828.
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Chemical physics of protein folding
Protein molecules generally fold into precise three-dimensional shapes. While of direct interest to biochemists, the question of how folding occurs has attracted the interest of a much broader audience of scientists ranging from the traditional chemical scientists to computer scientists and physicists. Also changing over time has been the very meaning of the question of protein folding. To the descriptive scientist it may be sufficient to assert that folding occurs on a time scale no slower than protein biosynthesis, and that the information required to find the precise three-dimensional shape is contained in the one-dimensional sequence. Although exceptions to these generalizations recently have begun to emerge; in the study of prion-associated diseases , they have sufficient generality to allow us to treat the folding process as a black box for transcribing one-dimensional information into three-dimensional structures. It is, however, necessary to probe deeper into the mechanism if the prediction of protein structure from sequence and the design of truly novel protein-like molecules are to be achieved. These goals are of great practical significance in biology and medicine. The question of the mechanism of folding was once thought to be entirely analogous to the question of mechanism in intermediary metabolism or classical organic chemistry. In those problems the small number of participating species and the relatively specific routes by which they interconvert owing to the large scale of covalent energy barriers compared with thermal energies means that a small number of fairly discrete chemical steps can be isolated. This is the classic notion of a protein folding pathway with a series of discrete intermediates. Such discrete intermediates do occur in the late stages of protein folding, and to a great extent, the chemical kinetic details of these interconversions have been catalogued . However, to answer the practical questions of structure prediction and design, one must go a considerable distance beyond this phenomenology—a new viewpoint on folding is required.
This new viewpoint is that of the chemical physicists rather than the classical chemists. The chemical physics view brings the problem in much closer connection to the underlying forces and the underlying microscopic events. This view has required a new set of theoretical ideas, computational techniques, and major advances in experimental methodology.
Energy landscape theory provides the theoretical framework, asserting that a full understanding of the folding process requires a global overview of the landscape. The folding landscape of a protein resembles a partially rough funnel riddled with traps where the protein can transiently reside. There is no unique pathway but a multiplicity of convergent folding routes toward the native state. Although we focus on developments from our groups in this paper, several other groups have participated in developing this new view.
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Ultracold atomPersonally always liked Physics. It was my favorite stuff to learn in University.
Geez one day personally bored in the 80's found a physics "paper" written by a pilot visiting Vietnam around the late 50's?
Made for some very interesting reading topics about plane travels in the future and what to look for in a physical abstract sense....
Just a song from a movie.
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Stephen Hawking unveils 'life changing' new voice technology in London
By Rhiannon Williams 12:17PM GMT 02 Dec 2014
Stephen Hawking has spoken of the 'life changing' new technology he and Intel have developed over the past three years.
Professor Stephen Hawking has unveiled a new communications platform which he hailed as "life changing".
Speaking at an event in London, Professor Hawking said “We are pushing the boundaries of what is possible”, and claimed that without the new platform he would not be able to speak today.
“Medicine has not been able to cure me, so I rely on technology to help me communicate and live,” he said. “The development of this system has the potential to improve the lives of disabled people around the world and is leading the way in terms of human interaction and the ability to overcome communication boundaries that once stood in the way.”
Computing giant Intel offered to help Professor Hawking with his computing and speech synthesiser in the mid-nineties, and he approached the company several years ago to help modernise his current communication system.
Lama Nachman, Principle Engineer at Intel, said the new system had been developed over the past three years, and is hooked over Professor Hawking's glasses and onto his cheek. Motion in the cheek is detected through an infra-red sensor, allowing him to select a letter of the alphabet, which in turn triggers numerous word suggestions.
"We're able to speed up some of the common tasks he does on his machine by about 10 times," she said. "Stephen was looking for something very familiar, that is similar to his current interface but much more effective."
One of the problems Professor Hawking encountered with his previous system was that his word-per-minute rate was decreasing. Intel decided to reduce the amount of characters needed to be typed in order to complete full words, and were approached by British software application developers SwiftKey to help tailor the system to his needs. Their text prediction technology means Professor Hawking now needs to type fewer than one in five of the letters for the words he uses.
The new platform has been designed to mimic Professor Hawking's current system exactly, featuring a near-identical user interface, and communicates with the current speech synthesiser.
"My old system is more than 20 years old, and I was finding it very difficult to continue to communicate effectively and do the things I love to do every day," Professor Hawking said.
"This new system is life-changing for me, and I hope that it will serve me well for the next 20 years."
Pete Denman, user experience designer at Intel Labs, praised Professor Hawking for allowing the company "unprecedented access" into his life, allowing the team to watch hours of video of him working, as well as travelling with him and seeing him relax.
SwiftKey produced a bespoke language model by analysing Professor Hawking's lectures, books and unpublished documents, which now continually adapts to his writing style the more he interacts with it.
Intel said they planned to make the system open-source and free for users.
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Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind
2 December 2014 Last updated at 08:02 ET
By Rory Cellan-Jones Technology correspondent
Here is a little video (HBO and a bit of a comedy) dated June 14, 2014
Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence.
He told the BBC:"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI.
But others are less gloomy about AI's prospects.
The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.
Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next.
Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.
"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said.
Celverbot Cleverbot is software that is designed to chat like a human would
"Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
But others are less pessimistic.
"I believe we will remain in charge of the technology for a decently long time and the potential of it to solve many of the world problems will be realised," said Rollo Carpenter, creator of Cleverbot.
Cleverbot's software learns from its past conversations, and has gained high scores in the Turing test, fooling a high proportion of people into believing they are talking to a human.
Rise of the robots
Mr Carpenter says we are a long way from having the computing power or developing the algorithms needed to achieve full artificial intelligence, but believes it will come in the next few decades.
"We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it," he says.
But he is betting that AI is going to be a positive force.
Prof Hawking is not alone in fearing for the future.
In the short term, there are concerns that clever machines capable of undertaking tasks done by humans until now will swiftly destroy millions of jobs.
In the longer term, the technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has warned that AI is "our biggest existential threat".
Robotic voice
In his BBC interview, Prof Hawking also talks of the benefits and dangers of the internet.
He quotes the director of GCHQ's warning about the net becoming the command centre for terrorists: "More must be done by the internet companies to counter the threat, but the difficulty is to do this without sacrificing freedom and privacy."
He has, however, been an enthusiastic early adopter of all kinds of communication technologies and is looking forward to being able to write much faster with his new system.
But one aspect of his own tech - his computer generated voice - has not changed in the latest update.
Prof Hawking concedes that it's slightly robotic, but insists he didn't want a more natural voice.
"It has become my trademark, and I wouldn't change it for a more natural voice with a British accent," he said.
"I'm told that children who need a computer voice, want one like mine."
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The Theory of Everything (2014)
The Theory of Everything is a 2014 British biographical romantic drama film directed by James Marsh[1] and written by Anthony McCarten. The film was inspired by the memoir Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Wilde Hawking, which deals with her relationship with her ex-husband theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, his diagnosis of motor neuron disease, and his success in physics.
This is the sixth feature film directed by Marsh. Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones star with Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, and David Thewlis featured in supporting roles.
The Theory of Everything had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in theaters on November 7, 2014. Focus Features will distribute the film in the United States, Entertainment One Films will distribute the film in Canada, and Universal Pictures will distribute the film in remaining territories.
Monday 12th of January 2015
Andrew Griffin
The Independant
Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others call for research to avoid dangers of artificial intelligence
Hundreds of scientists and technologists have signed an open letter calling for research into the problems of artificial intelligence in an attempt to combat the dangers of the technology.
Signatories to the letter created by the Future of Life Institute including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, who has warned that AI could be the end of humanity. Anyone can sign the letter, which now includes hundreds of signatures.
It warns that “it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls”. It says that “our AI systems must do what we want them to do” and lays out research objectives that will “help maximize the societal benefit of AI”.
That will be a project that involves not just scientists and technology experts, they warn. Because it involves society as well as AI, it will also require help from experts in “economics, law and philosophy to computer security, formal methods and, of course, various branches of AI itself”.
A document laying out those research priorities points out concerns about autonomous vehicles — which people are already “horrified” by — as well as machine ethics, autonomous weapons, privacy and professional ethics.
Elon Musk has also repeatedly voiced concerns about artificial intelligence, describing it as “summoning the demon” and the “biggest existential threat there is”.
The document is signed by many representatives from Google and artificial intelligence companies DeepMind and Vicarious. Academics from many of the world’s biggest universities have also signed it, including those from Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and MIT.
15th of January, 2015
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING team release Academy Award Nominations statements
BEST MOTION PICTURE
BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE - EDDIE REDMAYNE
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE - FELICITY JONES
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – JOHANN JOHANNSSON
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – ANTHONY MCCARTEN
24th of February, 2015
"I'm very proud of you," the famous physicist wrote on Facebook
Stephen Hawking, who joined Facebook just a few months ago, used the social media site to write a brief but touching note to Eddie Redmayne, who won the Best Actor Oscar Sunday night. In The Theory of Everything, Redmayne portrayed the world-renowned physicist and his struggle with ALS.
Shortly after the Academy Awards ceremony, Hawking shared the following post, saying he was “very proud” of the actor:
In his acceptance speech, Redmayne said, “I’m fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man. This Oscar belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS.”
Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking
Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir David Attenborough (right) launched the exhibition
Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir David Attenborough have joined forces to open an exhibition about geniuses.
The celebrated physicist and award-winning broadcaster unveiled the Marks Of Genius exhibition at Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries.
Prof Hawking, who studied at Oxford as an undergraduate, said: " The works featured in the Bodleian Libraries' Marks of Genius exhibition truly are the product of genius, be it Einstein, Newton or Shakespeare.
"I hope that thousands of people, young and old, will visit the exhibition and be inspired to develop ideas of their own, to experiment, try out new ways of thinking, and share their ideas with others.
"Who knows, perhaps the Bodleian's exhibition will stimulate the next Euclid, Newton, or Dorothy Hodgkin to put down their ideas on paper or pixels and make new Marks Of Genius."
The exhibition, held at the newly renovated Weston Library, will open to the public tomorrow.
"Works of genius" such as Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio and scientific works by Isaac Newton will be on display.
During the visit, Prof Hawking and Sir David were presented with the Bodley Medal by Librarian Richard Ovenden and University of Oxford Vice Chancellor Andrew Hamilton.
The medal is awarded for outstanding contributions to the worlds of culture, learning, science and communication.
Playwright Alan Bennett, film director Lord Richard Attenborough and the novelist Dame Hilary Mantel are among its former recipients.
Sir David said: "I am deeply honoured to receive the Bodley Medal and to be opening the Bodleian's Marks Of Genius exhibition.
"The exhibition shows the importance of libraries as places where knowledge is preserved and shared from one generation to the next."
13th of April, 2015
Monty Python - Galaxy Song
Galaxy Song - Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - Nov 13, 2008
18 of April, 2015
The most surprising thing about Stephen Hawking
Nicky Phillips
His intellect and survival is mystifying, but to many people the most baffling thing about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is his daughter Lucy. "A lot of people don't realise that my father had any children at all," said 45-year-old Ms Hawking, who also has two brothers Tim and Robert. "Some people were just so astonished that a person with a disability could have children that they couldn't get past that," she said. The recent blockbuster biopic, The Theory of Everything, which focuses on Professor Hawking's early life, his marriage to first wife Jane Wilde and his diagnosis with a type of motor neurone disease, may have redressed this error, but misconceptions are part of life when you're the child of the world's most recognisable scientist. Growing up many people assumed Ms Hawking had an intellect to match her famous father's, while others thought, "oh well, you're a girl so of course you don't understand anything at all". Next Saturday night, Ms Hawking will introduce her father for his first talk to Australian audiences at the Sydney Opera House. "One of the things I'm going to talk about are perceptions of disability," she said. While Ms Hawking will be on stage, her father will be beamed in live from the University of Cambridge. He plans to talk about his early life, his scientific work and achievements, she said. "He thought the whole idea of a live projection would be a really fun thing to do," said Ms Hawking, a journalist and author. It has become increasingly complicated for Professor Hawking to travel because of his condition. "Flying is really not possible." Despite his lack of physical presence, Ms Hawking said his lectures will be very entertaining, directed at a general audience and featuring his trademark off-beat sense of humour and quick wit. "He really is a showman," she said. Of the film that depicts the life of her parents, she has nothing but glowing remarks. "It's a very beautiful film. "Eddie Redmayne performance is astonishing. He really deserved that Oscar. He spent a long time with people with motor neuron disease, he learnt how to understand them and how they felt as their condition progressed. "He also manages to project a personality through that - the personality of my father - and I think that's really the great towering strength of that film."
She said there was a tendency for people to talk across people in wheelchairs, to talk to their carers or to shout at them. "I hope the film goes some way to addressing the public reaction to disability," she said. Since 2007 the pair have written a series of children's books, which explain complex science, including physics, through the adventures of a young boy named George. The idea for the books came to Ms Hawking at her son's birthday party. "I heard a young child asking my father a question. "They said, 'Stephen what would happen if I fell in a black hole'?" "The children were so excited to hear what would happen and Dad said, 'well you would be torn into spaghetti'," she said. That was the light-bulb moment for me; I was a writer and dad has this extraordinary ability to express complex concepts in very simple language, let's put those things together." But for someone who intentionally pursued a career in the arts, "it's an irony that physics caught me in the end," she said.
An Evening with Stephen Hawking is on at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday/Sunday April 25/26.
24 of April, 2015
The Theory Of Everything was ‘surreal’ says Stephen Hawking’s daughter
Chris Hook
The Daily Telegraph
April 24, 2015 7:58AM
All kids ask their dads endless questions about the world. But not many of us had dads who knew everything. Or at least the theory of everything.
And if you’re Lucy Hawking, you kind of took it for granted. After all, her father Stephen Hawking — one of the modern era’s greatest minds — was just Dad.
“Nobody sees their parents like that (as a genius) and I do think that’s helpful, because it would be slightly odd otherwise,” explains the 44-year-old middle child of Hawking’s three kids with his first wife Jane.
“You just take your parents as your parents and you ask questions and get answers and I don’t think there’s anything unusual in that.
“Dad was always very recognisable and distinctive but he didn’t become famous the way he is now until A Brief History Of Time was published in the late 1980s (1988) and then suddenly he started to appear everywhere.
“It was quite odd the way he’d pop up in things — even random mentions in novels as his name became shorthand for somebody who was very clever and it was quite disconcerting at first.”
Indeed over the past couple of decades, Hawking has appeared on The Simpsons, Futurama, Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the past few months a bunch of episodes on The Big Bang Theory. And, of course, the recent biopic The Theory Of Everything which picked up its star Eddie Redmayne an Oscar.
The Theory Of Everything was ‘surreal’ says Stephen Hawking’s daughter
Chris Hook
The Daily Telegraph
April 24, 2015 7:58AM
Lucy Hawking with her father Stephen. Picture: Angela Micu
Lucy Hawking with her father Stephen. Picture: Angela Micu
All kids ask their dads endless questions about the world. But not many of us had dads who knew everything. Or at least the theory of everything.
And if you’re Lucy Hawking, you kind of took it for granted. After all, her father Stephen Hawking — one of the modern era’s greatest minds — was just Dad.
“Nobody sees their parents like that (as a genius) and I do think that’s helpful, because it would be slightly odd otherwise,” explains the 44-year-old middle child of Hawking’s three kids with his first wife Jane.
“You just take your parents as your parents and you ask questions and get answers and I don’t think there’s anything unusual in that.
“Dad was always very recognisable and distinctive but he didn’t become famous the way he is now until A Brief History Of Time was published in the late 1980s (1988) and then suddenly he started to appear everywhere.
“It was quite odd the way he’d pop up in things — even random mentions in novels as his name became shorthand for somebody who was very clever and it was quite disconcerting at first.”
Indeed over the past couple of decades, Hawking has appeared on The Simpsons, Futurama, Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the past few months a bunch of episodes on The Big Bang Theory. And, of course, the recent biopic The Theory Of Everything which picked up its star Eddie Redmayne an Oscar.
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything.
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything.
“He was definitely one of the highlights of the film, because his performance is so good, so authentic and nuanced, and very beautifully portrayed, but it was odd,” Lucy says.
“It actually became quite surreal and at one point I actually lost the sense I was watching a film about my own life. It was as though I’d just gone to see this film about a family and then all of a sudden I come on and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, that’s me’.
“I must meet somebody else who’s been portrayed on screen and find out how they reacted to it, and find out if their reaction and thoughts are similar to the ones I had.”
The word “odd” pops up a lot in Hawking’s conversation. And it would have been. Besides being daughter to a genius, Lucy Hawking also had a lot more responsibility than most kids, as her father’s health deteriorated, his body assaulted by Lou Gehrig’s disease.
15 of May, 2015
Stephen Hawking Agrees With Alex Jones Renowned professor warns of artificial intelligence takeover
by Infowars.com | May 14, 2015
In late April Stephen Hawking said in a televised speech that humanity had 1,000 years to get off the planet or it would cease to exist. Alex Jones offered a rebuttal the next day saying that with all that is going on in the world we had closer to 50 years. Just two days later Hawking came back and said we had about 100 years before AI would become our overlords. It seems as if Hawking has become more Jonesish in his outlook for humanity.
8th of June, 2015
Stephen Hawking19th of June, 2015
Why is Stephen Hawking appearing at Glastonbury?
25th of June, 2015
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