The name of Stephen Hawking is known today to almost everyone, regardless of proximity to mathematics or physics. After all, in addition to a significant contribution to the development of modern physics and cosmology, the scientist is famous for popularizing science, explaining in his books the complex concepts of the structure of the Universe in simple language.
Stephen Hawking. Biography
The future astrophysicist was born in January 1942. Hawking Stephen William became the first child in the family of medical center researcher Frank Hawking and his wife -
Isabelle Hawking. Later, two more girls appeared in the family. After leaving school, the eldest son enters Oxford University in 1959. After graduating in 1962, Stephen Hawking continues his own education and scientific work in the field of cosmology already in Cambridge. Today, everyone knows the image of an almost completely paralyzed scientist, chained to a wheelchair and able to communicate solely with the help of a voice-synthesizing device. This problem manifested itself at a young age. In his third year of university, when he was 21, the young man noticed that he had problems with spatial coordination. Examination of doctors gave disappointing results: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and moretwo years of life. However, the young man not only survived, but also retained an interest in the world around him, which gave him strength to engage in scientific activities.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to completely overcome the disease, and by the age of thirty Stephen Hawking was confined to a wheelchair. Moreover, the disease progresses inexorably to this day, nerve after nerve, muscle after muscle, immobilizing the scientist. However, this did not prevent him from leading an active social and personal life. In 1965 he married his university friend Jane Wilde, who later gave him three children. In 1979, Stephen Hawking became head of the Department of Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. The same department was once headed by Issac Newton. In 1991, the scientist is going through a divorce from Jane. And four years later he marries Alvin Mason, with whom he lived until 2006.
Scientific contributions
Stephen Hawking achieved such mass fame not so much due to his scientific developments, but rather due to the popularization of modern science among the
public. Worldwide popularity was brought to him by the World History of Time published in 1988. This book is original in that it tells about complex
theories of the structure of our universe in popular layman's language, without the use of complex mathematical formulas. As for the scientific field itself, the main research of the physicist falls on quantum gravity and astrophysics. Yes, StevenHawking is the foremost researcher on the mysterious black holes of the cosmos. He also made a significant contribution to the development of the Big Bang Theory, according to which our Universe appeared for no reason, suddenly and from nowhere. The initial state of the world is described by the concept of singularity, where all modern space was once concentrated in one tiny point with infinite density and temperature. The Large Hadron Collider, which is now on the lips of the media, is also partly the fruit of Hawking's activities. It was created to study the smallest particles (bosons, quarks), search for new elements and, possibly, new fundamental laws of physics at the micro level.
