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Professor Stephen William Hawking, CH , CBE , FRS , (born 8 January , 1942 ) is considered one of the world's leading Theoretical Physicist s. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University Of Cambridge (a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton ), and a fellow of Gonville And Caius College, Cambridge . Despite enduring severe disability and, of late, being rendered Tetraplegic by Motor Neurone Disease , he has had a successful career for many years, and has achieved status as an academic celebrity. BIOGRAPHY Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford , England , on 8 January , 1942 . His parents were Frank and Isobel Hawking. He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adoptive brother, Edward. Of his family, Hawking was closest to his mother, who was active in Left-wing politics. She later said that around the time of his birth she bought an astronomical atlas from Blackwell's in Oxford, which her sister-in-law later remarked to have been a rather prophetic purchase. Hawking showed great talent in Mathematics and Physics at an early age. When he was eleven he went to St Albans School in Hertfordshire , near London . He then progressed on to University College , Oxford , where he wanted to study mathematics. When mathematics wasn't available for him to study, he studied physics instead. Initially, his father wanted him to study Medicine . He read for his Ph.D. at Trinity Hall , Cambridge, where he is currently an honorary fellow. Hawking was elected as one of the youngest fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, was created a Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire in 1982, and became a Companion Of Honour in 1989. He is a respected Physicist , with many works recognised by both the International Association Of Natural Physics and the American Physics-Astronomy Guild Of Amherst . RESEARCH FIELDS Hawking's principal fields of research are Theoretical Cosmology and Quantum Gravity . In 1971, in collaboration with Sir Roger Penrose , he proved the first of many Singularity Theorems ; such theorems provide a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a Singularity in Space-time . This work showed that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a fairly generic feature of General Relativity . Hawking also suggested that, after the Big Bang, primordial or mini Black Hole s were formed. With Bardeen and Carter, he proposed the four Laws Of Black Hole Mechanics , drawing an analogy with Thermodynamics . In 1974, he calculated that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known as Hawking Radiation , until they exhaust their energy and evaporate. In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a model in which the Universe had no boundary in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to the North pole; while one cannot travel North of the North pole, there is no boundary there. While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a Closed Universe , discussions with Neil Turok led to the realization that the no-boundary proposal is consistent with a Universe which is not closed also. ILLNESS Despite being severely disabled by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis , or ALS (a type of Motor Neurone Disease commonly known in the United States as Lou Gehrig's Disease), Hawking is highly active in physics, writing, and public life. The disease makes it necessary for Hawking to carry out the long and complex calculations that his work requires in his head. When he was young, he was athletic and enjoyed riding horses and playing with the other children. At Oxford, he Coxed a rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at university. Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge. Diagnosis came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years. He battled the odds and has survived much longer than any other known sufferer of ALS, although he has become increasingly disabled by the gradual progress of the disease. He has used an electronic Voice Synthesiser to communicate since a Tracheostomy in 1985 that followed severe Pneumonia . He gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and is now almost completely paralysed. The computer system attached to his Wheelchair is operated by Hawking via an infra-red 'blink switch' clipped onto his glasses. By scrunching his right cheek up, he is able to talk, compose speeches, research papers, browse the World Wide Web and write e-mail. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors in his home and office. When Hawking (now confined to a wheelchair and unable to dress himself) and his wife were first living together, they received no outside assistance other than physics students, who helped in exchange for extra attention with their work. As he grew more disabled Hawking needed a team of nurses to provide round-the-clock care. He also needed a wheelchair that would help him not be distracted by his disability. Despite his disease, he describes himself as "lucky" — not only has the slow progress provided time to make influential discoveries, it has also afforded time to have, in his own words, "a very attractive family" {Link without Title} . When Jane was asked why she decided to marry a man with a 3-year life expectancy, she responded: "These were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had rather a short life expectancy." Hawking's wife cared for him until 1991, when the couple separated under the pressures of fame, his increasing disability, and the consequent need to employ round-the-clock nurses, one with whom he became involved with. He and his nurse, Elaine Mason , were married in 1995. A 2004 '' Vanity Fair '' article by Judy Bachrach contains allegations of violence between the couple that were made by his first family, though a police investigation in the same year ended inconclusively. In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, '' Music To Move The Stars '', detailing her own long-term relationship with a family friend whom she later married. Their daughter Lucy Hawking became a novelist. DISTINCTION In addition to academic work, Hawking believed that the average person should have access to these concepts and wrote a series of popular science books. His first book, '''' (2001). Both books have remained highly popular all over the world. A collection of essays, '' Black Holes And Baby Universes '' (1993) was also popular. He has now written a new book, '' A Briefer History Of Time '' (2005) that aims to update his earlier works and make them more accessible to a wider audience. Hawking is also known for his Wit ; he is famous for his oft-made statement, "When I hear of Schrödinger's Cat , I reach for my gun." This was a deliberately Ironic paraphrase of the phrase "''Whenever I hear the word culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning !''", from a play Schlageter (Act 1, Scene 1) by German Playwright and Nazi Poet Laureate, Hanns Johst . His wit has both entertained the non-specialist public and helped them to understand complex questions. Asked in October 2005 to explain his assertion on the British daytime chat show Richard And Judy that the question, "What came before the Big Bang ?" was meaningless, he compared it to asking, "What lies north of the north pole?" Hawking is an active supporter of various causes. He appeared on a political broadcast for the ) children's charity, SOS Children's Villages UK . LOSING AN OLD BET Hawking was in the news in July 2004 for presenting a new theory about black holes which goes against his own long-held belief about their behavior, thus losing a Bet he made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech . Classically, it can be shown that information crossing the Event Horizon of a black hole is lost to our universe, and that as a consequence all black holes are identical, beyond their mass, Electrical Charge and Angular Velocity (the " No Hair Theorem "). The problem with this theorem is that it implies the black hole will emit the same Radiation regardless of what goes into it, and as a consequence that if a pure quantum state is thrown into a black hole, an "ordinary" mixed state will be returned. This runs counter to the rules of quantum mechanics and is known as the Black Hole Information Paradox . ''(For further detail see Thorne Hawking Preskill Bet )'' One other bet — about the existence of black holes — was described by Hawking as an "insurance policy" of sorts. To quote from his book, ''A Brief History of Time'', "This was a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would win me four years of the magazine '' Private Eye ''. If black holes do exist, Kip (Kip Thorne) will get one year of '' Penthouse ''. When we made the bet in 1975 , we were 80% certain that Cygnus was a black hole. By now, I would say that we are about 95 per cent certain, but the bet has yet to be settled." ( 1988 ) Hawking had earlier speculated that the Singularity at the centre of a black hole could form a bridge to a "baby universe" into which the lost information could pass; such theories have been very popular in science fiction. But according to Hawking's new idea, presented at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation , on 21 July , 2004 in Dublin , Ireland , black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow: ''The Euclidean path integral over all Topologically trivial metrics can be done by Time Slicing and so is unitary when Analytically Continued to the Lorentzian . On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is Asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path Integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and Evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon.'' Having concluded that information is conserved, Hawking conceded his bet in Preskill's favour, awarding him ''Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia'', an Encyclopedia from which information is easily retrieved. However, Thorne remains unconvinced of Hawking's proof and declined to contribute to the award. AWARDS
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N.B. On Hawking's website , he denounces the unauthorised publication of '' The Theory Of Everything '' and asks consumers to boycott this book. Full list of Hawking's publications is available on his website. POPULAR CULTURE '']]
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