Divya Rabindra@NFC
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change,” Hawking
Stephen Hawking is one of the notable scientific minds of the 20th century. He shares a distinguished place among great geniuses such as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein who have given us better perspective of the evolving universe.
The British physicist and cosmologist was born in Oxford in January 8, 1942. He was admitted to a doctoral program in theoretical physics at the prestigious university of Cambridge in 1962. Shortly after that he was diagnosed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at age 21. It is a disease that slowly weakens nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that controls the muscles. Eventually making a person unable to walk, speak, write or feed oneself. He was given 2 years to live by the doctors and this really depressed Stephen. The following year Stephen met Jane Wilde and they wedded in 1965. He has said that she gave him the will and determination to live.
Despite his physical hindrance, in the early 1970’s, he studied and used the combination theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity to learn the behaviour of black holes, singularity and the origin and the evolution of the universe. His discovery of black holes emitting radiation due to quantum effects at the event horizon is often called ‘Hawking radiation’.
He wrote several books. Among them, ‘A brief history of time’ is considered the best selling scientific books of all times. He also made quite an appearance on television shows such as the Big Bang theory, Star Trek: the next generation and the Simpsons.
“I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer,” – Hawking