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Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking at NASA, 1980s
Born
Stephen William Hawking

(1942-01-08) 8 January 1942 (age 82)
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
Alma mater
Known for
Spouses
  • Jane Hawking
  • (m. 1965–1991, divorced)
  • Elaine Mason
    (m. 1995–2006, divorced)
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Doctoral advisorDennis Sciama
Other academic advisorsRobert Berman

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. His key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation).

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009. Subsequently, he became research director at the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

Hawking has a motor neurone disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition that has progressed over the years. He is now almost completely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. He has been married twice and has three children. Hawking has achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Early life and education

Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 to Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking.[1] He has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward.[2] Although Hawking's parents were living in North London, they moved to Oxford while his mother was pregnant with Stephen, desiring a safer location for the birth of their first child (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe).[3]

After Hawking was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research.[1] In 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire, where he attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to 1953 (At that time, boys could attend the girls' school until the age of 10).[2][3] From the age of 11, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not exceptional, student.[4]

Inspired by his mathematics teacher, Hawking originally wanted to study the subject at university. However, Hawking's father wanted him to apply to University College, Oxford, where his father had attended. As University College did not have a mathematics fellow at that time, applications were not accepted from students who wished to study that discipline. Hawking therefore applied to read natural sciences, in which he gained a scholarship. Once at University College, Hawking specialised in physics.[3] His interests during this time were in thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. While at Oxford, he coxed a rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at the university.[5] His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in The New York Times Magazine: "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. ... Of course, his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries".[4]

Hawking's unimpressive study habits[6] resulted in a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination: "And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves".[7] After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford in 1962, he left for graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.[7] He earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1966 and has over a dozen honorary degrees.[8]

Career

Hawking in Cambridge
Hawking with string theorists David Gross and Edward Witten

Almost as soon as he arrived at Cambridge, Hawking started developing symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, known colloquially in the United States as Lou Gehrig's disease), a type of motor neurone disease which would cost him almost all neuromuscular control. During his first two years at Cambridge, he did not distinguish himself, but, after the disease had stabilised and with the help of his doctoral tutor, Dennis William Sciama, he returned to working on his PhD.[4]

In the late 1960s, he and his Cambridge friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, applied a new, complex mathematical model they had created from Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.[9] This led, in 1970, to Hawking proving the first of many singularity theorems; such theorems provide a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a gravitational singularity in space-time. This work showed that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a fairly generic feature of general relativity.[10]

Hawking was elected one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974,[11] and in the same year he accepted the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to work with his friend, Kip Thorne, who was a faculty member there.[12] He continues to have ties with Caltech, spending a month each year there since 1992.[13]

He supplied a mathematical proof, along with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, of John Wheeler's no-hair theorem – that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.[14] Following analysis of gamma ray emissions, Hawking suggested that after the Big Bang, primordial miniature black holes were formed. With Bardeen and Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics.[15] In 1974, he calculated that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known today as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, until they exhaust their energy and evaporate.[16]

In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a model in which the universe had no boundary in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to the North Pole: one cannot travel north of the North Pole, as there is no boundary.[17] While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a universe which is not closed.[18]

Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN, in 2006 Hawking proposed a theory of "top-down cosmology", which says that the universe had no unique initial state, and therefore it is inappropriate for physicists to attempt to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state.[19] Top-down cosmology posits that in some sense, the present "selects" the past from a superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the fine-tuning question.[20]

Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for 30 years, taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on 1 October 2009.[21][22] Subsequently, he became research director at the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology. He is also a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a distinguished research chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.[23]

Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet

U.S. President Barack Obama talks with Stephen Hawking in the Blue Room of the White House before a ceremony presenting him and 15 others the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 12 August 2009. The Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honour.

In 1997 Hawking made a public scientific wager with Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech concerning the black hole information paradox.[24] Thorne and Hawking argued that since general relativity made it impossible for black holes to radiate, and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking Radiation must be "new", and must not originate from inside the black hole event horizon. Since this contradicted the idea under quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the view of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way.[25] The winner of the bet was to receive an encyclopedia of the loser's choice, from which information may be accessed.[24]

In 2004, Hawking announced that he was conceding the bet, and that he now believed that black hole horizons should fluctuate and leak information, in doing so providing Preskill with a copy of Total Baseball.[24] Comparing the useless information obtainable from a black hole to "burning an encyclopedia", Hawking commented, "I gave John an encyclopedia of baseball, but maybe I should just have given him the ashes".[24]

Illness

Hawking on 5 May 2006, during the press conference at the Bibliothèque nationale de France to inaugurate the Laboratory of Astronomy and Particles in Paris and the French release of his work God Created the Integers

Hawking has a motor neurone disease that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years. He is now almost completely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. Hawking's illness has progressed more slowly than typical cases of ALS: survival for more than 10 years after diagnosis is uncommon.[26][27]

Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at University of Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head.[5] The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years. By 1974, he was unable to feed himself or get out of bed. His speech became slurred so that he could be understood only by people who knew him well. During a visit to CERN in Geneva in 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening as it further restricted his already limited respiratory capacity. He had an emergency tracheotomy, and as a result lost what remained of his ability to speak.[28] A speech generating device was built in Cambridge, using software from an American company, that enabled Hawking to write onto a computer with small movements of his body, and then have a voice synthesiser speak what he typed.[29]

The particular voice synthesiser hardware that he once used, which has an American English accent, is no longer being produced. Asked why he has still kept the same voice after so many years, Hawking stated that he has not heard a voice he likes better and that he identifies with it even though the synthesiser is both large and fragile by current standards. Although a mid-2009 corporate press release said that he had chosen NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesiser as his new voice,[30] a 30 December 2011 interview with Hawking's technician indicates that Hawking is still using an older synthesiser containing a card "which dates back to the 1980s" and that any upgrade would have to be the same voice, otherwise "it wouldn't be Stephen's voice any more".[31]

For lectures and media appearances, Hawking appears to speak fluently through his synthesiser; however when preparing answers his system produces words at a rate of about one per minute.[31] Hawking's setup uses a predictive text entry system, which requires only the first few characters in order to auto-complete the word, but as he is only able to use his cheek for data entry, constructing complete sentences takes time.[31] During a TED Conference talk, it took him seven minutes to provide a brief answer to a question.[32]

He describes himself as lucky, despite his disease. Its slow progression has allowed him time to make influential discoveries and has not hindered him from having, in his own words, "a very attractive family".[29] When his wife, Jane, was asked why she decided to marry a man with a three-year life expectancy, she responded, "Those were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had a rather short life expectancy".

Recognition

Acclaim

On 19 December 2007, a statue of Hawking by artist Ian Walters was unveiled at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge.[33] The Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador, is named in honour of Stephen Hawking, citing his scientific distinction and perseverance in dealing with adversity.[34] The Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge opened on 17 April 2007. The building belongs to Gonville and Caius College and is used as an undergraduate accommodation and conference facility.[35]

Awards and honours

Personal life

Stephen Hawking being presented by his daughter Lucy Hawking at the lecture he gave for NASA's 50th anniversary

Hawking has stated that, having been diagnosed with ALS during an early stage of his graduate work, he did not see much point in obtaining a doctorate if he were to die soon after. Hawking later said that the real turning point was his 1965 marriage to Jane Wilde, a language student.[4] Jane cared for him until 1990 when the couple separated.[1] They had three children: Robert, Lucy, and Timothy.[1] Hawking married his personal care assistant, Elaine Mason, in 1995; [1] the couple divorced In October 2006[41] amid claims by former nurses that she had abused him.[42] In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, detailing the marriage and its breakdown; in 2010 she published a revised version, Travelling to Infinity, My Life with Stephen.[43]

Hawking supports the children's charity SOS Children's Villages UK.[44] and has stated that his view on how to live life is to "seek the greatest value of our action".[45] He strongly opposed the Iraq War, calling it "a war crime" and "based on two lies" at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square, where he participated in a public reading of the names of Iraqi war victims.[46][47]

Hawking has named his secondary school mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta as an inspiration.[48] He maintains his connection with St Albans School, giving his name to one of the four houses and to an extracurricular science lecture series.[49]

In popular culture

Hawking in 2007, experiencing zero gravity

Hawking has played himself on numerous television shows and has been portrayed in many more. He has played himself on a Red Dwarf anniversary special, played a hologram of himself on the episode "Descent" of Star Trek: The Next Generation,[50] and appeared on the Discovery Channel special Alien Planet.[51] He has also played himself in several episodes of The Simpsons and Futurama, and has had an action figure made of his Simpsons likeness.[52] In 2008, Hawking was the subject of and featured in the documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe for Channel 4. In September 2008, Hawking presided over the unveiling of the 'Chronophage' (time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College Cambridge.[53] His actual synthesiser voice was used on parts of the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking" from the 1994 album The Division Bell, as well as on Turbonegro's "Intro: The Party Zone" on their 2005 album Party Animals, Wolfsheim's "Kein Zurück (Oliver Pinelli Mix)". On 5 April 2012 he appeared as a guest star in an episode of The Big Bang Theory.[54]

Space and spaceflight

At the celebration of his 65th birthday on 8 January 2007, Hawking announced his plan to take a zero-gravity flight that year, with an intention to later take a sub-orbital spaceflight. Billionaire Richard Branson pledged to pay all expenses for a future flight on Virgin Galactic's space service, costing an estimated £100,000.[55] Stephen Hawking's zero-gravity flight in a "Vomit Comet" of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times, took place on 26 April 2007.[56] He became the first quadriplegic to float in zero gravity. The fee is normally US$3,750 for 10 to 15 plunges, but Hawking was not required to pay. Hawking was quoted before the flight saying:

Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.[57]

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he suggested that space was the Earth's long term hope.[58] He continued this theme at a 2008 Charlie Rose interview.[59]

Hawking has indicated that he is almost certain that alien life exists in other parts of the universe, "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like".[60] He believes alien life not only certainly exists on planets but perhaps even in other places, like within stars or even floating in outer space. He has also warned that a few of these species might be intelligent and threaten Earth.[61] "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said.[60] He has advocated that, rather than try to establish contact, humans should try to avoid contact with alien life forms.[60] At a George Washington University lecture in honour of NASA's fiftieth anniversary, Hawking discussed the existence of extraterrestrial life, believing that "primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare".[62]

Religious views

In his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense, such as in A Brief History of Time: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."[63] In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessary to explain the origin of the universe.[64] In the Channel 4 documentary Genius of Britain, in his 2010 book The Grand Design, and in interviews with the Telegraph, Hawking has clarified that he does not believe in a "personal" God.[65] Hawking writes, "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second."[65] He adds, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing."[66]

His ex-wife, Jane, has described him as an atheist.[67] Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws."[68] In an interview published in The Guardian newspaper, Hawking regarded the concept of Heaven as a myth, believing that there is "no heaven or afterlife" and that such a notion was a "fairy story for people afraid of the dark."[63][69] Hawking contrasted religion and science in 2010, saying: "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."[70]

Publications

Hawking's first popular science book, A Brief History of Time, was published on 1 April 1988. It stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.[71] A Brief History of Time was followed by The Universe in a Nutshell (2001). A collection of essays titled Black Holes and Baby Universes (1993) was also popular. His book, A Briefer History of Time (2005), co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, updated his earlier works to make them accessible to a wider audience. In 2007 Hawking and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book focusing on science that Lucy Hawking described as "a bit like Harry Potter but without the magic."[72]

Popular

Children's fiction

These are co-written with his daughter Lucy.

Films and series

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Larsen 2005, pp. x–xix.
  2. ^ a b Larsen 2005, pp. 3–5.
  3. ^ a b c O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. "Stephen William Hawking". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. University of St Andrews. Retrieved 1 October 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ a b c d Current Biography Yearbook: 1984. New York City: H. W. Wilson Company. 1985. ISBN 978-99942-3-211-6.
  5. ^ a b Hawking, Stephen W. (1 May 1992). Stephen Hawking's A brief history of time: a reader's companion. Bantam Books. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-553-07772-8. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  6. ^ Firth, Niall (22 October 2010). "Stephen Hawking: I didn't learn to read until I was eight and I was a lazy student". Daily Mail. UK. Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  7. ^ a b Ferguson 2011, Chapter 3.
  8. ^ "Stephen Hawking Brief Biography". Stephen Hawking: The Official Website. Retrieved 01 April 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  9. ^ "Origins of the universe: Stephen Hawking's J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecture". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on 15 June 2008. Retrieved 19 May 2008.
  10. ^ Hawking, Stephen (January 1970). "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 314 (1519): 529–548. Bibcode:1970RSPSA.314..529H. doi:10.1098/rspa.1970.0021. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ Larsen 2005, p. 44.
  12. ^ Ferguson 2011, Chapter 7.
  13. ^ "Stephen Hawking Returns to Caltech – One Night Only". Caltech Features. 6 January 2011. Retrieved 7 January 2011.
  14. ^ Hawking, Stephen W.; Israel, Werner (30 March 1989). Three Hundred Years of Gravitation. Cambridge University Press. p. 278. ISBN 978-0-521-37976-2. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  15. ^ Larsen 2005, p. 38.
  16. ^ Hawking, Stephen W. (1974). "Black Hole Explosions". Nature. 248 (1): 30–31. Bibcode:1974Natur.248...30H. doi:10.1038/248030a0. Retrieved 23 March 2007.
  17. ^ Baird, Eric (30 September 2007). Relativity in Curved Spacetime: Life Without Special Relativity. Chocolate Tree Books. p. 234. ISBN 978-0-9557068-0-6. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  18. ^ Yulsman, Tom (2003). Origins: the quest for our cosmic roots. CRC Press. pp. 174–176. ISBN 978-0-7503-0765-9. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  19. ^ Ball, Philip (21 June 2006). "Hawking Rewrites History ... Backwards". Nature News Online. Retrieved 19 April 2010.
  20. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.73.123527, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1103/PhysRevD.73.123527 instead.
  21. ^ "Stephen Hawking to give up prestigious Cambridge title". CBC News. Associated Press. 24 October 2008. Retrieved 1 October 2009.
  22. ^ "Hawking gives up academic title". BBC News. 30 September 2009. Retrieved 1 October 2009.
  23. ^ "Stephen Hawking accepts post at Ontario institute". CTV.ca. Retrieved 27 November 2008.
  24. ^ a b c d Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.72.084013, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1103/PhysRevD.72.084013 instead.
  25. ^ Preskill, John. "John Preskill's comments about Stephen Hawking's concession". California Institute of Technology. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  26. ^ Mitsumoto, Hiroshi; Munsat, Theodore L. (1 January 2001). Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a guide for patients and families. Demos Medical Publishing. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-888799-28-6. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  27. ^ "How Has Stephen Hawking Lived to 70 with ALS?: Scientific American". Scientific American. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  28. ^ Larsen 2005, p. 72–81.
  29. ^ a b "Living with ALS – Stephen Hawking". Retrieved 24 February 2012.
  30. ^ "Stephen Hawking chooses a new voice". Gizmag. Retrieved 10 August 2009.
  31. ^ a b c de Lange, Catherine (30 December 2011). "The man who saves Stephen Hawking's voice". New Scientist.
  32. ^ "Stephen Hawking: Asking big questions about the universe (Video time index 8:25)". TED Conferences, LLC. Retrieved 28 May 2008.
  33. ^ "Vice-Chancellor unveils Hawking statue". University of Cambridge. 21 December 2007. Retrieved 19 May 2008.
  34. ^ Komar, Oliver (October 2000). "The Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador Central America Honours the Fortitude of a Great Living Scientist". Journal of College Science Teaching. XXX (2). Archived from the original on 30 July 2009. Retrieved 28 September 2008. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  35. ^ "The Stephen Hawking Building". BBC News. 18 April 2007. Retrieved 24 February 2012.
  36. ^ Larsen 2005, p. 63.
  37. ^ "Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize". American Physical Society. Retrieved 29 August 2008.
  38. ^ "Oldest, space-travelled, science prize awarded to Hawking". The Royal Society. 24 August 2006. Retrieved 29 August 2008.
  39. ^ "Fonseca Prize 2008". University of Santiago de Compostela. Retrieved 7 August 2009.
  40. ^ MacAskill, Ewen (13 August 2009). "Obama presents presidential medal of freedom to 16 recipients". guardian.co.uk. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  41. ^ Sapsted, David (20 October 2006). "Hawking and second wife agree to divorce". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 18 March 2007.
  42. ^ "Hawking's nurse reveals why she is not surprised his marriage is over". Daily Mail. UK. 20 October 2006. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  43. ^ "Welcome back to the family, Stephen". The Times. UK. 6 May 2007. Archived from the original on 3 December 2008. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
  44. ^ "Our Friends". SOS Children's Villages. Retrieved 6 May 2006.
  45. ^ Hough, Andrew (16 May 2011). "Stephen Hawking: 'heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark'". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  46. ^ Campbell, Duncan (3 November 2004). "Hawking joins war protest tribute to Iraq dead". guardian.co.uk. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
  47. ^ "Stephen Hawking: Iraq War a 'Crime'". Fox News. 2 November 2004. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  48. ^ Hoare, Geoffrey; Love, Eric (5 January 2007). "Dick Tahta". guardian.co.uk. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  49. ^ "Hawking Lectures Sign Off with Dinner". St-albans.herts.sch.uk. 13 May 2006. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  50. ^ Okuda & Okuda 1999, p. 380.
  51. ^ "Discovery Channel :: Alien Planet :: About the Show". Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  52. ^ Cheng, Maria (5 January 2012). "Stephen Hawking to turn 70, defying disease". Boston. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
  53. ^ "Time to unveil Corpus Clock". Cambridgenetwork.co.uk. 22 September 2008. Retrieved 22 May 2009.
  54. ^ "Professor Stephen Hawking films Big Bang Theory cameo". BBC. 12 March 2012. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
  55. ^ Highfield, Roger (8 January 2007). "Stephen Hawking plans to see space". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 18 March 2007.
  56. ^ "Hawking takes zero-gravity flight". BBC News. 27 April 2007. Retrieved 26 April 2007.
  57. ^ "Physicist Hawking experiences zero gravity". CNN. 26 April 2007. Archived from the original on 4 May 2007. Retrieved 4 May 2007.
  58. ^ Highfield, Roger (16 October 2001). "Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 5 August 2007.
  59. ^ "Charlie Rose – A conversation with Dr. Stephen Hawking & Lucy Hawking". Charlie Rose LLC. Retrieved 24 February 2012.
  60. ^ a b c "Stephen Hawking warns over making contact with aliens". BBC News. 25 April 2010. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
  61. ^ Hickman, Leo (25 April 2010). "Stephen Hawking takes a hard line on aliens". guardian.co.uk. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 24 February 2012.
  62. ^ Highfield, Roger (22 April 2008). "Stephen Hawking: Aliens probably exist". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  63. ^ a b Sample, Ian (15 May 2011). "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'". guardian.co.uk. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 17 May 2011.
  64. ^ Burgess, Anthony (29 December 1991). "Towards a Theory of Everything". The Observer. p. 42. Though A Brief History of Time brings in God as a useful metaphor, Hawking is an atheist
  65. ^ a b Roberts, Laura (2 September 2010). "Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
  66. ^ Farmello, Graham (3 September 2010). "Has Stephen Hawking ended the God debate?". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 13 September 2010.
  67. ^ Adams, Tim (4 April 2004). "A Brief History of a First Wife". The Observer. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 5 March 2012. Jane took much of her dramatic hope at the time from her faith, and still sees something of the irony in the fact that her Christianity gave her the strength to support her husband, the most profound atheist. 'Stephen, I hope, had belief in me that I could make everything possible for him, but he did not share my religious – or spiritual – faith'.
  68. ^ "Pope sees physicist Hawking at evolution gathering | Science". Reuters. 31 October 2008. Retrieved 22 May 2009.
  69. ^ "Stephen Hawking: Heaven Is A Myth". www.huffingtonpost.com. The Huffington Post. 16 May 2011. Retrieved 24 February 2012. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help)
  70. ^ Heussner, Ki Mae (7 June 2010). "Stephen Hawking on Religion: 'Science Will Win'". ABC News. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
  71. ^ Radford, Tim (31 July 2009). "How God propelled Stephen Hawking into the bestsellers lists". guardian.co.uk. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  72. ^ "Man must conquer other planets to survive, says Hawking". Daily Mail. UK. 13 June 2006. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
  73. ^ a b c "Books – Stephen Hawking". Retrieved 28 February 2012.
  74. ^ "The Hawking Paradox". BBC. 2005. Retrieved 9 February 2012.
  75. ^ "Master of the Universe – Channel 4". channel4.com. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  76. ^ "Into the Universe, with Stephen Hawking". Discovery Channel. 2010. Retrieved 25 April 2010.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

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