It was during this challenging period that Stephen began working on A Brief History of Time , an idea he first had in Determined to write a book about physics that would sell at airport book shops, sharing the excitement of science with a general audience, Stephen toiled over A Brief History of Time for six years.
His hard work paid off as this book became a surprise runaway best seller which also propelled him into an ever-widening public sphere with, at times, intense media speculation.
Its resounding success led to a spot on the UK best-selling list for a record-breaking 4. It was said that Stephen had answered the most fundamental questions of existence.
Stephen had always firmly believed that everyone should have a basic understanding of science in this increasingly scientific and technological world and dedicated an enormous amount of time and effort in order to engage the general public with science.
He has also co-authored a series of six adventure novels about science with his daughter, Lucy Hawking, in order to make science entertaining and accessible to a young readership. The s were another period of relentless work academically and now, increasingly, as a popular author and celebrity.
In he published Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays , a collection of works exploring ways in which the universe may be governed. This was followed in by Universe: The Cosmos Explained , clarifying the basis of our existence with more following in the s — Universe in a Nutshell , On the Shoulders of giants and The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe While these did not achieve the global accolade of A Brief History of Time , they all successfully contributed to our general body of scientific knowledge.
Academically, Stephen continued his work in physics and in co-edited a book on Euclidean quantum gravity with Gary Gibbons. Stephen also married again in to Elaine Mason, a former nurse.
In , with lifelong friend, the physicist Kip Thorne, Stephen approached the controversial notion of whether time travel is allowed by the laws of physics utilising the concept of wormholes, hypothetical tubes of space-time.
He wrote invitations, set a date, time and venue and provided precise GPS coordinates. But he did not send out the invitations until after the party date was over.
That way, only those who could genuinely travel back in time would know of it and be able to attend. On the due day Stephen sat politely and waited. But no-one came. And that was the point. And the champagne went back on ice. In a sensational scientific U-turn in , Stephen announced he had solved the black hole information paradox he had identified in , stating that black holes do not destroy all that is sucked into them and that information can be retrieved.
At the time, Stephen confessed that saying information was lost in black holes was his biggest blunder. However, physicists continue to argue about whether information is lost in black holes or not.
The marriage to Elaine broke down and the couple divorced in In April , Stephen undertook a zero-gravity flight in a Boeing jet in order to promote public interest in space travel and raise money for research into ALS.
He had been invited by space pioneer and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis who founded the X Prize. A keen advocate of the need for space travel to find alternative planets for human habitation, Stephen remained in the air for two hours and underwent eight zero-gravity dives, allowing him to experience weightlessness and to be freed from the frustrating restrictions of his wheelchair.
One of the most iconic of all the images of Stephen shows him floating, weightless, with an apple hovering above his shoulder and a huge smile on this face. A zero-gravity flight is the first step towards space travel.
Sadly, Stephen never got the chance to fly in space. The programme will perpetuate Stephen's legacy and will ensure the vitality and excellence of its ongoing research in cosmology and gravitation. This award was especially treasured by Stephen as it validated his lifelong discoveries without the need for experimental confirmation that, in this case, is very difficult to achieve. So difficult in fact, that this lack of experimental confirmation of Hawking radiation and other of his theories excluded Stephen from winning the Nobel prize for physics — the major disappointment in his academic life and career.
But the theory, too, remains controversial. Stephen was initially cautious about the film but once he met Redmayne and read the script, he changed his view and allowed the film to use his synthesised voice.
Overall both Stephen and Jane were pleased with the film although Stephen would have liked it to contain more physics. Stephen celebrated his 75th birthday in January , an incredible achievement for someone who was told he had two years to live in Twenty renowned scientists gave papers at the three-day conference. So, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist.
Hawking also proposed that the universe itself has no boundary, much like the Earth. Although the planet is finite, one can travel around it and through the universe infinitely, never encountering a wall that would be described as the "end. Hawking was a popular writer. His first book, " A Brief History of Time " 10th anniversary edition: Bantam, was first published in and became an international best seller.
In it, Hawking aimed to communicate questions about the birth and death of the universe to the layperson. Hawking went on to write other nonfiction books aimed at non-scientists. Hawking made several television appearances, including a playing hologram of himself on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and a cameo on the television show " Big Bang Theory.
In , a movie based on Hawking's life was released. Called "The Theory of Everything," the film drew praise from Hawking , who said it made him reflect on his own life. One day, I hope to go into space. A list of Hawking quotes would be incomplete without mentioning some of his more controversial statements. He frequently said that humans must leave Earth if we wished to survive. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.
It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth. He also said time travel should be possible , and that we should explore space for the romance of it. I was one of the first to write about the conditions under which this would be possible. I showed it would require matter with negative energy density, which may not be available. Other scientists took courage from my paper and wrote further papers on the subject," he told Parade in The two were married in The marriage put a strain on Hawking's relationship with his own children, who claimed Elaine closed off their father from them.
In , nurses looking after Hawking reported their suspicions to police that Elaine was physically abusing her husband. Hawking denied the allegations, and the police investigation was called off. In , Hawking and Elaine filed for divorce. In the following years, the physicist reportedly grew closer to his family. He reconciled with Jane, who had remarried. And he published five science-themed novels for children with his daughter, Lucy.
Over the years, Hawking wrote or co-wrote a total of 15 books. A few of the most noteworthy include:. In Hawking catapulted to international prominence with the publication of A Brief History of Time. The short, informative book became an account of cosmology for the masses and offered an overview of space and time, the existence of God and the future.
The work was an instant success, spending more than four years atop the London Sunday Times' best-seller list. Since its publication, it has sold millions of copies worldwide and been translated into more than 40 languages.
A Brief History of Time also wasn't as easy to understand as some had hoped. So in , Hawking followed up his book with The Universe in a Nutshell , which offered a more illustrated guide to cosmology's big theories. In , Hawking authored the even more accessible A Briefer History of Time , which further simplified the original work's core concepts and touched upon the newest developments in the field like string theory.
Together these three books, along with Hawking's own research and papers, articulated the physicist's personal search for science's Holy Grail: a single unifying theory that can combine cosmology the study of the big with quantum mechanics the study of the small to explain how the universe began. This kind of ambitious thinking allowed Hawking, who claimed he could think in 11 dimensions, to lay out some big possibilities for humankind.
He was convinced that time travel is possible, and that humans may indeed colonize other planets in the future. In September , Hawking spoke against the idea that God could have created the universe in his book The Grand Design. Hawking previously argued that belief in a creator could be compatible with modern scientific theories.
In this work, however, he concluded that the Big Bang was the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and nothing more. The Grand Design was Hawking's first major publication in almost a decade. Within his new work, Hawking set out to challenge Isaac Newton 's belief that the universe had to have been designed by God, simply because it could not have been born from chaos. 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 — but he didn't look into the problem until , during his first year at Cambridge.
For the most part, Hawking had kept these symptoms to himself. But when his father took notice of the condition, he took Hawking to see a doctor. For the next two weeks, the year-old college student made his home at a medical clinic, where he underwent a series of tests.
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. With the sudden realization that he might not even live long enough to earn his Ph. As physical control over his body diminished he'd be forced to use a wheelchair by , 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 mids, 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 he lost his voice for good following a tracheotomy.
The resulting situation required hour nursing care for the acclaimed physicist. It also put in peril Hawking's ability to do his work. The predicament caught the attention of a California 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, Hawking continued to write at a prolific rate.
His work included numerous scientific papers, of course, but also information for the non-scientific community.
0コメント