Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Joseph de Ca'th Lon.
Joseph loves History, Anthropology, Astronomy and Science, and they have been talking about Stephen Hawking, the English theoretical physicist, and cosmologist who was born on a day like today in 1942.
Stephen William Hawking (8 January 1942-14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge at the time of his death. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.
Hawking was born in Oxford into a family of doctors. Hawking began his university education at University College, Oxford in October 1959 at the age of 17, where he received a first-class BA (Hons.) degree in physics.
He began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in October 1962, where he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specialising in general relativity and cosmology in March 1966. During this period (1963) Hawking was diagnosed with an early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, that gradually paralysed him over the decades.
After the loss of his speech, he was able to communicate through a speech-generating device -initially through use of a handheld switch, and eventually by using a single cheek muscle.
Hawking's scientific works included a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial.
By the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a significant breakthrough in theoretical physics.
Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
More information: Space
Hawking achieved commercial success with several works of popular science in which he discussed his theories and cosmology in general. His book A Brief History of Time appeared on the Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
Hawking was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He died on 14 March 2018 at the age of 76, after living with motor neurone disease for more than 50 years.
Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford to Frank (1905–1986) and Isobel Eileen Hawking.
In 1950, when Hawking's father became head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research, the family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. In St Albans, the family was considered highly intelligent and somewhat eccentric; meals were often spent with each person silently reading a book. They lived a frugal existence in a large, cluttered, and poorly maintained house and travelled in a converted London taxicab. During one of Hawking's father's frequent absences working in Africa, the rest of the family spent four months in Mallorca visiting his mother's friend Beryl and her husband, the poet Robert Graves.
In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theorem concepts first explored in his doctoral thesis. This included not only the existence of singularities but also the theory that the universe might have started as a singularity. Their joint essay was the runner-up in the 1968 Gravity Research Foundation competition.
In 1970, they published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedmann, then it must have begun as a singularity. Hawking postulated what became known as the second law of black hole dynamics, that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller.
Hawking's first book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, written with George Ellis, was published in 1973.
Beginning in 1973, Hawking moved into the study of quantum gravity and quantum mechanics.
More information: World Economic Forum
Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a more academically senior post, as reader in gravitational physics. The mid to late 1970s were a period of growing public interest in black holes and the physicists who were studying them.
Cosmological inflation -a theory proposing that following the Big Bang, the universe initially expanded incredibly rapidly before settling down to a slower expansion- was proposed by Alan Guth and also developed by Andrei Linde. Following a conference in Moscow in October 1981, Hawking and Gary Gibbons organised a three-week Nuffield Workshop in the summer of 1982 on The Very Early Universe at Cambridge University, a workshop that focused mainly on inflation theory.
Hawking pursued his work in physics: in 1993 he co-edited a book on Euclidean quantum gravity with Gary Gibbons and published a collected edition of his own articles on black holes and the Big Bang.
Hawking also maintained his public profile, including bringing science to a wider audience. A film version of A Brief History of Time, directed by Errol Morris and produced by Steven Spielberg, premiered in 1992. Hawking had wanted the film to be scientific rather than biographical, but he was persuaded otherwise. The film, while a critical success, was not widely released.
A popular-level collection of essays, interviews, and talks titled Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays was published in 1993, and a six-part television series Stephen Hawking's Universe and a companion book appeared in 1997. As Hawking insisted, this time the focus was entirely on science.
Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The Universe in a Nutshell in 2001, and A Briefer History of Time, which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works with the aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, and God Created the Integers, which appeared in 2006.
Hawking had a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease, MND; also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disease that results in the death of motor neurones in the brain and spinal cord, which gradually paralysed him over decades.
Hawking died at his home in Cambridge on 14 March 2018, at the age of 76. Although Hawking was an atheist the funeral took place with a traditional Anglican service. Following the cremation, a service of thanksgiving was held at Westminster Abbey on 15 June 2018, after which his ashes were interred in the Abbey's nave, between the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
More information: Live Science
Before we understand science,
it is natural to believe that God created the universe.
But now science offers a more convincing explanation.
What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is,
we would know everything that God would know,
if there were a God, which there isn't.
I'm an atheist.
Stephen Hawking
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