PHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWKING, WHO CONQUERED THE STARS, DIES AT 76
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| PHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWKING |
Stephen Hawking, who sought to explain some
of the most complicated questions of life while himself working under the
shadow of a likely premature death, has died at 76.
He died peacefully
at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in the early hours of
Wednesday.
“We are deeply
saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” his children Lucy, Robert
and Tim said in a statement.
Hawking’s formidable
mind probed the very limits of human understanding both in the vastness of
space and in the bizarre sub-molecular world of quantum theory, which he said
could predict what happens at the beginning and end of time.
His work ranged from
the origins of the universe itself, through the tantalising prospect of time
travel to the mysteries of space’s all-consuming black holes.
“He was a great
scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many
years,” his family said. “His courage and persistence with his brilliance and
humour inspired people across the world.”
The power of his
intellect contrasted cruelly with the weakness of his body, ravaged by the
wasting motor neurone disease he contracted at the age of 21.
Hawking was confined
for most of his life to a wheelchair. As his condition worsened, he had to
resort to speaking through a voice synthesiser and communicating by moving his
eyebrows.
The disease spurred
him to work harder but also contributed to the collapse of his two marriages,
he wrote in a 2013 memoir “My Brief History.”
In the book he
related how he was first diagnosed: “I felt it was very unfair - why should
this happen to me,” he wrote.
“At the time, I
thought my life was over and that I would never realize the potential I felt I
had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life.”
Hawking shot to
international fame after the 1988 publication of “A
Brief History of Time”, one of the most complex books ever to achieve mass
appeal, which stayed on the Sunday Times best-sellers list for no fewer than
237 weeks.
He said he wrote the
book to convey his own excitement over recent discoveries about the universe.
” My original aim
was to write a book that would sell on airport bookstalls,” he told reporters
at the time. “In order to make sure it was understandable I tried
the book out on my nurses. I think they understood most of it.”
He was particularly
proud that the book contains only one mathematical equation - relativity’s
famous E=MC squared.
His popular
recognition became such that he appeared as himself on the television show
“Star Trek: Next Generation” and his cartoon caricature appeared on “The
Simpsons”.
A 2014 film, The
Theory of Everything, with Eddie Redmayne playing Hawking, charted the onset of
his illness and his early life as the brilliant student grappling with black
holes and the concept of time.
TWO CONCEPTS OF TIME
Since 1974 he worked
extensively on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics - Einstein’s
General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena,
and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.
As a result of that
research, Hawking proposed a model of the universe based on two concepts of
time: ” real time”, or time as human beings
experience it, and quantum theory’s “imaginary
time”, on which the world may really run.
“Imaginary time may
sound like science fiction ... but it is a genuine scientific concept,” he
wrote in a lecture paper.
Real time could be
perceived as a horizontal line, he said.
“On the left, one
has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in
the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the
kind of time we normally experience - but in a sense, it is just as real as
what we call real time.”
In July 2002,
Hawking said in a lecture that although his quest was to explain everything, a
theory of determinism that would predict the universe in the past and forever
in the future probably could not be achieved.
He caused some
controversy among biologists when he said he saw computer viruses as a life
form, and thus the human race’s first act of creation.
” I think it says
something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far
is purely destructive,” he told a computer forum in Boston. “We’ve
created life in our own image.”
He also predicted
the development of a race of self-designing human beings, who will use
genetic engineering to improve their make-up.
Another major area
of his research was into black holes, the regions of space-time where gravity
is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.
When asked whether
God had a place in his work, Hawking once said: “In a way, if we understand the
universe, we are in the position of God.”
PERSONAL LIFE
His health, and
accidents involving his wheelchair, including one where he broke his hip after
crashing into a wall in December 2001 - “the wall won,” he observed - led to
his appearing in the news for reasons other than his work.
In 2004 he was
admitted to hospital in Cambridge suffering from pneumonia and was later
transferred to a specialist heart and lung hospital.
He was twice married
and divorced.
He married
undergraduate Jane Wilde in July 1965 and the couple had three children,
Robert, Lucy and Timothy. But Hawking tells in his 2013 memoir how Wilde became
more and more depressed as her husband’s condition worsened.
“She was worried I
was going to die soon and wanted someone who would give her and the children
support and marry her when I was gone,” he wrote.
Wilde took up with a
local musician and gave him a room in the family apartment, Hawking said.
“I would have objected but I too was expecting
an early death ...,” he said.
He went on: “I
became more and more unhappy about the increasingly close relationship between
(them). In the end I could stand the situation no longer and in 1990 I moved
out to a flat with one of my nurses, Elaine Mason.”
He divorced Wilde in
1990 and in 1995 married Mason, whose ex-husband David had designed the
electronic voice synthesiser that allowed him to communicate.
“My marriage to
Elaine was passionate and tempestuous,” he wrote in the memoir. “We had our ups
and downs but Elaine’s being a nurse saved my life on several occasions.”
It also took its
emotional toll on her, he noted, and the pair divorced in 2007.
LONG AND FULL LIFE
Stephen William
Hawking was born on Jan. 8, 1942, to Dr Frank Hawking, a research biologist in
tropical medicine, and his wife Isobel. He grew up in and around London.
After studying
physics at Oxford University, he was in his first year of research work at
Cambridge when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
“The realisation
that I had an incurable disease that was likely to kill me in a few years was a
bit of a shock,” he wrote in his memoir.
But after seeing a
boy die of leukaemia in a hospital ward, he observed some people were a lot
worse off than him and at least the condition didn’t make him feel sick.
In fact, there were
even advantages to being confined to a wheelchair and having to speak through a
voice synthesiser.
“I haven’t had to
lecture or teach undergraduates and I haven’t had to sit on tedious and
time-consuming committees. So I have been able to devote myself completely to
research,” he wrote in his memoir.
“I became possibly
the best-known scientist in the world. This is partly because scientists, apart
from Einstein, are not widely known rock stars, and partly because I fit the
stereotype of a disabled genius.”
Hawking was Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University from 1979 to 2009 - a post
held by Sir Issac Newton over 300 years earlier - wrote countless scientific
papers and books, received 12 honorary degrees and was made a Companion of
Honour by Queen Elizabeth in June 1989.
To celebrate turning
60, he satisfied a life-long ambition and travelled in a specially created hot
air balloon.
He narrated a major
segment of the opening ceremony of the London Paralympic Games in August 2012,
the year he turned 70.
“I have had a full
and satisfying life,” he said in his memoir. “I believe that disabled people
should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn’t prevent them from
doing and not regret those they can’t do.”
He added: “It has
been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics. I’m
happy if I have added something to our understanding of the universe.”
SOURCE: REUTERS
Got Bless Stephen Hawking .
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