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Stephen
Hawking's parents lived in London where his father was undertaking
research into medicine. However, London was a dangerous place during
World War II and Stephen's mother was sent to the safer town of
Oxford where Stephen was born. The family were soon back together
living in Highgate, north London, where Stephen began his schooling.
In
1950 Stephen's father moved to the Institute for Medical Research
in Mill Hill. The family moved to St Albans so that the journey
to Mill Hill was easier. Stephen atte nded
St Albans High School for Girls (which took boys up to the age of
10). When he was older he attended St Albans school but his father
wanted him to take the scholarship examination to go to Westminster
public school. However Stephen was ill at the time of the examinations
and remained at St Albans school which he had attended from the
age of 11. Stephen writes in [2]:-
I
got an education there that was as good as, if not better than,
that I would have had at Westminster. I have never found that my
lack of social graces has been a hindrance.
Hawking
wanted to specialise in mathematics in his last couple of years at
school where his mathematics teacher had inspired him to study the
subject. However Hawking's father was strongly against the idea and
Hawking was persuaded to make chemistry his main school subject. Part
of his father's reasoning was that he wanted Hawking to go to University
College, Oxford, the College he himself had attended, and that College
had no mathematics fellow.
In
March 1959 Hawking took the scholarship examinations with the aim
of studying natural sciences at Oxford. He was awarded a scholarship,
despite feeling that he had performed badly, and at University College
he specialised in physics in his natural sciences degree. He only
just made a First Class degree in 1962 and in [1] he explains how
the attitude of the time worked against him:-
The
prevailing attitude at Oxford at that time was very anti-work. You
were supposed to be brilliant without effort, or accept your limitations
and get a fourth-class degree. To work hard to get a better class
of degree was regarded as the mark of a grey man - the worst epithet
in the Oxford vocabulary.
From
Oxford, Hawking moved to Cambridge to take up research in general
relativity and cosmology, a difficult area for someone with only a
little mathematical background. Hawking had noticed that he was becoming
rather clumsy during his last year at Oxford and, when he returned
home for Christmas 1962 at the end of his first term at Cambridge,
his mother persuaded him to see a doctor.
In
early 1963 he spent two weeks having tests in hospital and motor
neurone disease (Lou Gehrig's disease) was diagnosed. His condition
deteriorated quickly and the doctors predicted that he would not
live long enough to complete his doctorate. However Hawking writes:-
...
although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found to my
surprise that I was enjoying life in the present more than I had
before. I began to make progress with my research...
The
reason that his research progressed was that he met a girl he wanted
to marry and realised he had to complete his doctorate to get a job
so:-
...
I therefore started working for the first time in my life. To my
surprise I found I liked it.
After
completing his doctorate in 1966 Hawking was awarded a fellowship
at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At first his position was
that of Research Fellow, but later he became a Professorial Fellow
at Gonville and Caius College. In 1973 he left the Institute of Astronomy
and joined to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical
Physics at Cambridge. He became Professor of Gravitational Physics
at Cambridge in 1977. In 1979 Hawking was appointed Lucasian Professor
of Mathematics at Cambridge. The man born 300 years to the day after
Galileo died now held Newton's chair at Cambridge.
Between
1965 and 1970 Hawking worked on singularities in the theory of general
relativity devising new mathematical techniques to study this area
of cosmology. Much of his work in this area was done in collaboration
with Roger Penrose who, at that time, was at Birkbeck College, London.
From 1970 Hawking began to apply his previous ideas to the study
of black holes.
Continuing
this work on black holes, Hawking discovered in 1970 a remarkable
property. Using quantum theory and general relativity he was able
to show that black holes can emit radiation. His success with proving
this made him work from that time on combining the theory of general
relativity with quantum theory. In 1971 Hawking investigated the
creation of the Universe and predicted that, following the big bang,
many objects as heavy as 109 tons but only the size of
a proton would be created. These mini black holes have large gravitational
attraction governed by general relativity, while the laws of quantum
mechanics would apply to objects that small.
Another
remarkable achievement of Hawking's using these techniques was his
no boundary proposal made in 1983 with Jim Hartle of Santa Barbara.
Hawking explains that this would mean:-
...
that both time and space are finite in extent, but they don't have
any boundary or edge. ... there would be no singularities, and the
laws of science would hold everywhere, including at the beginning
of the universe.
In
1982 Hawking decided to write a popular book on cosmology. By 1984
he had produced a first draft of A Brief History of Time. However
Hawking was to suffer a further illness:-
I
was in Geneva, at CERN, the big particle accelerator, in the summer
of 1985. ... I caught pneumonia and was rushed to hospital.
The hospital in Geneva suggested to my wife that it was not worth
keeping the life support machine on. But she was having none of
that. I was flown back to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where
a surgeon called Roger Grey carried out a tracheotomy. That operation
saved my life but took away my voice.
Hawking
was given a computer system to enable him to have an electronic voice.
It was with these difficulties that he revised the draft of A Brief
History of Time which was published in 1988. The book broke sales
records in a way that it would have been hard to predict. By May 1995
it had been in The Sunday Times best-sellers list for 237 weeks
breaking the previous record of 184 weeks. This feat is recorded in
the 1998 Guinness Book of Records. Also recorded there is the
fact that the paperback edition was published on 6 April 1995 and
reached number one in the best sellers in 3 days. By April 1993 there
had been 40 hardback editions of A Brief History of Time in
the United States and 39 hardback editions in the UK.
Of
course Hawking has received, and continues to receive, a large number
of honours. He was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1974,
being one of its youngest fellows. He was awarded the CBE in 1982,
and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. Hawking has also received
many foreign awards and prizes and was elected a Member of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States.
In
addition to his popular writing he has also published The Large
Scale Structure of Space-Time (1973; co-authored with G F R
Ellis), Superspace and Supergravity (1981), The Very Early
Universe (1983), General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary
Survey (co-authored with W Israel), and 300 Years of Gravity
(co-authored with W Israel).
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