PRECIS

I chose to write about Stephen Hawking, because since I was in the 6th grade I have loved cosmology, I
being very curious about phenomena and I knew that Stephen Hawking was one of the people who
brought new perspectives and made lots of discoveries in this area. Even if my future plans no longer
involve this field, I am still willing to find more information about his career, his family, his evolution and
the way his disease affected him.

Another reason why I chose Stephen Hawking is that I have always been fascinated by people with
brilliant minds, people who made a change in the world we live in. It seems very interesting to me how
one person can do some many things with the power of their knowledge and logic.

To me, Stephen Hawking is not only a great cosmologist, but also a proof that perseverance can lead us
where we want, no matter what we encounter. I was really impressed by the fact that a severe disease
couldn`t stop him from becoming such an amazing personality with so many studies and discoveries.
 INTRODUCTION

Stephen William Hawking ,born 8 January 1942, was an English theoretical,physicist, cosmologist,
author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of
Cambridge. His scientific works include 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 out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of
the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds
interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Hawking was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts(FRSA), a lifetime member of
the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest
civilian award in the US. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest
Britons. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and
2009 and has achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own
theories and cosmology in general; his book A Brief History of Time appeared on the British Sunday
Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Hawking had a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that
has gradually paralysed him over the decades. He used to communicat using a single cheek muscle attached
to a speech-generating device.
 FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD

He was a British scientist, professor and author who has done groundbreaking work in physics and
cosmology, and whose books have helped to make science accessible to everyone. He was encouraged by
his father to focus on science and research.
His father, Frank, was born in Yorkshire, England and he was a researcher in the medical field. Her
mother was born in Scotland in a family of doctors, she was an inspector and then she was a
secretary. They lived in Highgate, in the north of London. He had two sisters, Mary and Philippa,
who he loved very much. He also had an adopted brother who died at an early age from unknown
causes, it is supposed that he was poisoned. Stephen never felt like a smart kid , he always thought
that Philippa was smarter than him.
Stephen lived in an average family, his father was very organized when it was about spending money
because he was raised up in a poor family. As very many of the kids, Stephen admitted that he was
ashamed with his parents. He remembers his parents bought a camper van for holidays so they had a
very good time during the holidays with his family.

He made a passion for little electrical trains and all he could dream of was having a toy train
which would function perfectly. Even if his father tried to please him buying him some of these little
trains he would never be fully satisfied with what he was offered.
Since he was little he loved to improve the things he had, to see the use of each and everything, to
repair or to make his toys become even better. After a few years he started to create his own little
planes and ships and even some complicated strategy games. He was not very handy, but he was
helped by some schoolmates. This passion for making his own games started to grow because he
needed to know how different systems function and how they could be controlled. Once he started
his doctorate this need was satisfied by his cosmology researches. He said: ``If you understand how
the univers works, you can control it.``
Stephen lived in an average family, his father was very organized when it was about spending
money because he was raised up in a poor family. As very many of the kids, Stephen admitted that
he was ashamed with his parents. He remembers his parents bought a camper van for holidays so
they had a very good time during the holidays with his family.
 STUDIES

Early in his academic life, Hawking, while recognized as bright, was not an exceptional student,
but he managed to enter the class category A which was known as the best. During his first year at
St. Albans School, he was third from the bottom of his class, he almost had to move to the class
category B. He wanted to get a scholarship at a better school but he got sick in the exam day, so he
continued his studies at St. Albans School. He was an average student, but his colleagues were
always calling him ``Einstein``, he started to be interested and curious about physics. He used to say
that in pshysics it doesn`t matter what school you attend, it only matters what you do by yourself.
His big wish was to understand the universe at a deeper level and everyday there were more and
more facts he wanted to know.

In 1959, Stephen took an exam in order to get a place at the Oxford University, he was sure that
he was going to fail, but he didn`t. Hawking entered University College at Oxford University at the
age of 17. Although he expressed a desire to study mathematics, Oxford didn't offer a degree in that
specialty, so Hawking gravitated toward physics and, more specifically, cosmology. All of his mates
were older than him and he tried to socialize and take part in different activities. In his final exam he
had to choose between going to Cambridge University or continue to study at Oxford, so he made
the decision based on his grades. He immediately began postgraduate studies at Cambridge
University in 1962. By his own account, Hawking didn't put much time into his studies. He would
later calculate that he averaged about an hour a day focusing on school. He was very keen on
studying cosmology and he would go in London weekly with some of his mates to attend the talks at
King`s College. During this period he met Jane Wilde, the love of his life, the girl he was going to
marry.
 THE DISEASE

One day he observed he was becoming more and more clumsy, he went to a doctor but he told
him to quit drinking. His mother saw what was happening to him and she took to another doctor him
where he was examined. The doctors told him he didn`t have multiple sclerosis, but they didn`t
know exactly what he had. It was clear to him and his family that he suffers from a severe disease
which was going to take his life soon. He was told to go back to Cambridge and continue his studies,
but it was very hard for him to concentrate on his work anymore. He felt like all his dreams and
hopes were falling apart until he realised that he could do lots of things before his death, he could do
something good for the others or for himself.

At the age of 21, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In a very
simple sense, the nerves that controlled his muscles were shutting down. At the time, doctors gave
him two and a half years to live.

Hawking first began to notice problems with his physical health while he was at Oxford, on
occasion he would trip and fall, or slur his speech, he didn't look into the problem until 1963, during
his first year at Cambridge. For the most part, Hawking had kept these symptoms to himself.

Eventually, however, doctors did diagnose Hawking with the early stages of ALS. It was
devastating news for him and his family, but a few events prevented him from becoming completely
despondent. The first of these came while Hawking was still in the hospital. There, he shared a room
with a boy suffering from leukemia. Relative to what his roommate was going through, Hawking
later reflected, his situation seemed more tolerable. Not long after he was released from the hospital,
Hawking had a dream that he was going to be executed. He said this dream made him realize that
there were still things to do with his life.

In a sense, Hawking's disease helped turn him into the noted scientist he became. Before the
diagnosis, Hawking hadn't always focused on his studies. "Before my condition was diagnosed, I had
been very bored with life," he said. "There had not seemed to be anything worth doing." With the
sudden realization that he might not even live long enough to earn his PhD, Hawking poured himself
into his work and research.

As physical control over his body diminished (he'd be forced to use a wheelchair by 1969), the
effects of his disease started to slow down. Over time, however, Hawking's ever-expanding career
was accompanied by an ever-worsening physical state. By the middle 1970s, the Hawking family
had taken in one of Hawking's graduate students to help manage his care and work. He could still
feed himself and get out of bed, but virtually everything else required assistance. In addition, his
speech had become increasingly slurred, so that only those who knew him well could understand
him. In 1985 he lost his voice for good following a tracheotomy. The resulting situation required 24-
hour nursing care for the acclaimed physicist.

His disease caught the attention of a californian computer programmer, who had developed a
speaking program that could be directed by head or eye movement. The invention allowed Hawking
to select words on a computer screen that were then passed through a speech synthesizer. At the time
of its introduction, Hawking, who still had use of his fingers, selected his words with a handheld
clicker. Eventually, with virtually all control of his body gone, Hawking directed the program
through a cheek muscle attached to a sensor.

Through the program, and the help of assistants, Stephen Hawking continued towrite at a prolific
rate. His work included numerous scientific papers, of course,but also information for the non-
scientific community.

Hawking's health remained a constant concern—a worry that was heightened in 2009 when he
failed to appear at a conference in Arizona because of a chest infection. In April, Hawking, who had
already announced he was retiring after 30 years from the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
at Cambridge, was rushed to the hospital for being what university officials described as "gravely
ill," though he later made a full recovery.
 MARRIAGE

At a New Year's party in 1963, shortly before he had been diagnosed with ALS, Stephen Hawking
met a young languages undergraduate named Jane Wilde. In order to earn a living, he thought of
being a researcher at a college so he was helped by Jane and another person to apply for that job,
because he was already too ill to write by himself. After getting the job he married Jane in 1965 who
was a student at Westfield in London and they moved together in the central area because it was very
hard for Stephen to move from a place to another. After two years of marriage their first child,
Robert, was born and after another three years they had a girl, Lucy. . A third child, Timothy, arrived
in 1979 Jane had to do the housekeep and take care of the children, because Stephen`s disease was
getting worse day by day.

In 1974, Stephen and his wife were invited at CalTech (The Technology Institute of California).
He loved California because he felt safer there with his disease than he felt in Great Britain, because
he started to use a wheelchair in order to move. His kids also loved California and Stephen was very
pleased to see them happy. One day he found out that he was given a medal by the Science Academy,
initially he wanted to refuse the medal, but he decided to accept it. He took the plane to England
where he met his parents and they went together to Rome where he received his prize.

At CalTech he met people he worked with, he made lots of researches and he started to work
more and more in order to discover everything he could about black holes. He had by his side a
student, Don Page, who moved with him when he went back to Cambridge in order to continue the
researches on black holes. Stephen was making progress day by day, his researches were recognized
world wide. When they turned back from CalTech, Stephen could hardly use the stairs of their house,
so they decided to move. He started to miss California because he felt like Americans are more
optimistic, he felt a little bit down until he found out he was chosen to be the holder of the
Mathematics Department, position occupied by Isaac Newton in the past.

Jane became very depressive because Stephen`s disease was getting worse and she needed
someone to be by her side after his death, so she found Jonathan Jones who was a musician.
In 1985, Hawking started to have episodes when he couldn`t breathe and right after that he had a
pneumonia while he was in Switzerland. The doctors wanted to disconnect him from the devices, but
Jane decided to bring him at a hospital in Cambridge where they fight to save his life. After
operating on him he couldn`t talk anymore.

In 1990, Hawking left his wife, Jane, for one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, because he felt like
Jane and Jonathan Jones were too closed. The two were married in 1995, few month later Jane and
Jonathan got married too. Stephen and Elaine had a beautiful relationship, he addmited that Elaine
saved his life for several times, but she finally got mentally tired and scared of the huge number of
times Stephens`s life was on her hands. They got divorced in 2007 and Hawking lived with his
housekeeper.

Stephen and Jane

Stephen at CalTech

Stephen and Elaine

 GRAVITATIONAL WAVES

In 1970, he went to Joseph Weber to examine his experiment on gravitational waves. These
experiment would have brought him more information about the black holes, so he decided to
continue doing research on this beside his stundent Gary Gibbons. They started to think of a better
experiment, a more efficient and sensible to the details one, but they had to give up on this idea
because Stephen couldn`t be an experimentator because of his illness, but he was very pleased with
the fact he remain only a theoretician.

BLACK HOLES

In 1974, Hawking's research turned him into a celebrity within the scientific world when he
showed that black holes aren't the information vacuums that scientists had thought they were. In
simple terms, Hawking demonstrated that matter, in the form of radiation, can escape the
gravitational force of a collapsed star. Another young cosmologist, Roger Penrose, had earlier
discovered groundbreaking findings about the fate of stars and the creation of black holes, which
tapped into Hawking's own fascination with how the universe began. The pair then began working
together to expand upon Penrose’s earlier work, setting Hawking on a career course marked by
awards, notoriety and distinguished titles that reshaped the way the world thinks about black holes
and the universe.

When Hawking’s radiation theory was born, the announcement sent shock waves of excitement
through the scientific world. Hawking was named a fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 32, and
later earned the prestigious Albert Einstein Award, among other honors. He also earned teaching
stints at Caltech in Pasadena, California, where he served as visiting professor, and at Gonville and
Caius College in Cambridge.

In August 2015, Hawking appeared at a conference in Sweden to discuss new theories about
black holes and the vexing "information paradox." Addressing the issue of what becomes of an
object that enters a black hole, Hawking proposed that information about the physical state of the
object is stored in 2D form within an outer boundary known as the "event horizon." Noting that
black holes "are not the eternal prisons they were once thought," he left open the possibility that the
information could be released into another universe.

DEATH

On March 14, 2018, Hawking finally succumbed to the disease that was supposed to have killed
him more than 50 years earlier. A family spokesman confirmed that the iconic scientist died at his
home in Cambridge, England.

The news touched many in his field and beyond. Fellow theoretical physicist and author Lawrence
Krauss tweeted: "A star just went out in the cosmos. We have lost an amazing human being. Stephen
Hawking fought and tamed the cosmos bravely for 76 years and taught us all something important
about what it truly means to celebrate about being human."

Hawking's children followed with a statement: "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father
passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will
live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people
across the world. He once said, 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people
you love.'

Later in the month, it was announced that Hawking's ashes would be interred at
Westminster Abbey in London, alongside other scientific luminaries like Newton and Charles
Darwin.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.telegraph.co.uk

http://articles.latimes.com/

https://www.biography.com/people/stephen-hawking-9331710

Stephen W. Hawking , ,,My brief history``