Today we want to tell you about the Great Man, the legendary person whose works and discoveries will live for many years. He will remain forever in the history of humanity, as one of the best scientists in the world and just a talented and extraordinary person.
Steven Hawking is gone. He was the most recognizable modern scientist and the main expert on the universe. So he was called in the press, and in the scientific circles the physicist was considered the most authoritative expert in the field of studying black holes. He was 76 years old, and his whole life is achievements that seemed impossible in principle.
Stephen Hawking: Biography
The theoretical physicist and world-renowned scientist Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, UK, to a family of physicians
After graduating from high school, Stephen entered Oxford University, after which he received a bachelor’s degree in 1962. Two and a half years later, in 1966, the young man became one of the first doctors of philosophy at the Trinity College at Cambridge University.
Disease
At age 21, he had a disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which began to progress rapidly, and soon led to complete paralysis.
In 1985, Hawking had a throat surgery, after which the scientist almost completely lost the ability to speak, since then the scientist communicated with the help of a speech synthesizer, which he controlled with the help of the last movable mimic muscle of the cheek and sensor opposite.
Despite this, in the photo Stephen Hawking always appears with a good smile. Being chained to a wheelchair, Stephen did not stop in mental development, studied self-education, studied scientific literature, attended seminars. It’s funny that as a professor of mathematics, Hawking did not have a proper education. And while teaching in Oxford he studied mathematics in parallel with his students ahead of them for only two weeks.
The guy struggled every minute. His morale helped in 1974 to gain permanent membership in the Royal Society of London, and in 2007 to experience the conditions of flight in weightlessness, having traveled on a special flying vehicle, and in 2009 he set himself the goal to fly into space.
«Space, here I am!» — he said, after experiencing weightlessness.
Personal life
Hawking loved women, was twice married and twice divorced. In general, he was a very earthly man, despite the fact that the future of mankind was seen in the exploration of the cosmos.
In 1965, when he was expected to die, Hawking married Jane Wilde. The girl gave birth to two sons and a daughter. The personal life of Stephen Hawking and his wife did not work out, and in 1991 they had a divorce.
Already in 1995, Stephen Hawking married for the second time, on his nurse Elaine Mason. After an eleven-year marriage, Hawking also divorced his wife.
The Black holes.
6/Science will remember Hawking primarily as the author of the theory of black holes. 7/The scientists came to the conclusion that when a giant star shrinks after producing a «resource» (the material for the reaction of thermonuclear fusion in the nucleus sooner or later ends), the gravity of the luminary becomes so strong that even the light can never leave it again. 8/Actually, an area from which nothing can come out, called a black hole.
If we talk about Hawking, then his main scientific achievements were the application of thermodynamics to the description of black holes and 9/the development of the theory that black holes «evaporate» due to a phenomenon called «Hawking radiation.» 10/This theory is that a black hole not only absorbs everything around it, but also emits different particles, which ultimately leads to its disappearance. That is:
a) some quanta can leave the black hole;
b) black holes exist not forever.
11/The concept of black holes, as objects that emit nothing, but only can absorb matter, was true until specialists began to take into account quantum effects. 12/And it was the work of Stephen Hawking that gave a full-fledged start to the study of the behavior of elementary particles near a black hole from the position of quantum mechanics. 13/The British theoretical physicist came to the conclusion that particles can extend beyond the black hole and that it cannot be «absolutely black».
There were other important achievements of the scientist. 14/The transformation of virtual particles into real particles will require energy. Their emergence «out of nothing» comes into contradiction with the law of conservation of energy. 15/Hawking calculated that a black hole as a result of such a transformation loses some of the energy equal to energy of a particle that flew «out». In this case, a black hole can take energy only from its own mass. So eventually it evaporates.
16/In the prestigious scientific journal Physical Review Letters, physicist Stephen Hawking, in collaboration with two of his colleagues, published an article in which it is affirms that black holes represent the path to an alternate universe. According to scientists, if it confirmed, their theory will resolve the main paradox of these space objects.
The popularization of science.
Also Stephen Hawking is known as an active popularizer of science. His first popular work was the book «A Brief History of Time» published in 1988, which is still a bestseller. Hawking is the author of the book «Black Holes and Baby Universes» (published in 1993) and «The Universe in a Nutshell» published in 2001. In 2005, the popular scholar reprinted his «Brief History …». The book was published under the title «The Shortest History of Time». In collaboration with his daughter Lucy, Hawking released a popular science book for children, «George and the Secrets of the Universe» (2006).
He is the author of a series of documentary films about the universe. There are popular science films with Hawking’s participation: the six-part «Stephen Hawking Universe» (1997) and the three-part «Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking» (2010). Stephen Hawking is widely mentioned in literary, musical, cinematographic works of art.
Death
Among all the achievements of Stephen Hawking, the main thing, perhaps, is not even his contribution to the theory of black holes, but a refutation of the theory that a person chained to a wheelchair is doomed to loneliness and oblivion. Lost the ability to move and talk, the scientist traveled, lectured, wrote books, starred in TV shows, soared in weightlessness.
He lived for half a century longer than promised by doctors.
British media reported that early in the morning on March 14, 2018, Stephen Hawking died in his home. The children of the scientist confirmed this information, stating:
«Once he said:» In the universe there would be no special meaning if it was not the house in which our beloved people live. «We will always miss him».
Thank you for attention.