What is the name of the scientist in a wheelchair? Higher intelligence
Name: Stephen Hawking (Stephen William Hawking)
Age: 76 years old
Place of Birth: Oxford, UK
A place of death:: Cambridge
Activity: Scientist, theoretical physicist, mathematician
Family status: was divorced
Stephen Hawking - biography
During the Second World War, Oxford and Cambridge were the only places in Great Britain that were not reached by German bombers. Frank Hawking chose Oxford and moved there from London with his wife. Soon, on January 8, 1942, Isabel gave birth to her first child, a son, Stephen.
The boy grew up strong and healthy. Two daughters followed, so Stephen was left to his own devices. He sat for a long time, dismantling old watches and other mechanisms, he wanted to see how everything worked. School turned out to be much less interesting: the teachers were boring, the subjects were boring. Unless mathematics is the only worthwhile science...
Stephen's parents worked in the medical field and were confident that their son would follow in their footsteps. But he refused - mathematics or physics! I had to work hard to get into the university, because at school Stephen was almost the worst student in the class. Although I couldn’t dare call the boy stupid. On the contrary, his classmates gave him the nickname Einstein - apparently in advance.
Stephen's admission to Oxford was celebrated on a grand scale. Only the young man himself did not really appreciate what he had. As before, he was only interested in exact sciences. In addition, it turned out that Hawking did not have many friends, and this upset him. True, there was a way out. Rowers were considered the most popular in Oxford, and Stephen became one of them - he took the position of helmsman. It turned out badly, the team lost at the competition, but now everyone knew him by sight, and there was no end to new acquaintances.
At one of the student parties, Stephen met her - the one who could make him forget about both his friends and rowing. Jane Wilde was not only pretty, but also turned out to be an interesting conversationalist. Well, who else would listen to stories about physical phenomena and the latest discoveries? And she listened...
Young Hawking spent one frosty Christmas day in 1962 at the skating rink. I was in a great mood, the ice was slipping under my feet, and suddenly... Everything started spinning, my legs tangled, and Stephen fell backwards. This was not the first fall. Before him, the young man had already happened to fly from the stairs, porch, and slip out of the blue. The parents insisted on an examination, and the doctors issued a disappointing verdict - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This meant that over time the muscles would completely atrophy, and Stephen himself, at best, would remain a “vegetable.”
The doctor took the patient’s inconsolable mother aside.
I give him two and a half years, no more.
The main question Stephen asked himself after hearing the verdict was: “Why me?” And then he suddenly realized how many plans he had. In addition, Jane was nearby, who, having learned about the diagnosis, was not afraid. This means we can move on with our lives.
Stephen Hawking - personal life
The disease progressed. If Stephen came to his own wedding with a cane, then he met his first-born on crutches.
Speech also failed - it became inarticulate.
Meanwhile, a daughter and another son were born. Robert, Lucy and Timothy became the meaning of Hawking's life, his continuation. But it became increasingly difficult for Jane to cope with the children, and even to care for her husband. Fortunately, a modern wheelchair was available that Stephen could easily operate. And students often ran in to check on him and help if needed. By that time, Hawking was already a professor of mathematics. It is interesting that for the first time he covered many of the topics in the textbook almost in parallel with the students, ahead of them by only a couple of weeks.
In his free time, Hawking studied science. Most of all, he was fascinated by cosmology and black holes, which, as Stephen argued, “evaporate”, losing energy due to specific radiation. To this day it is still called Hawking radiation. The entire scientific world soon learned about the scientist’s discoveries. Prizes poured in one after another; Stephen did not expect such recognition.
Despite the obvious difficulties, the Hawking family looked quite happy from the outside.
But only from the outside... Jane has been haunted by the same nightmare for the last few years: her husband dies, and she is left alone with three children and accumulated problems.
Should we blame her for the fact that one day a woman could not stand it and succumbed to a new feeling? Jonathan Jones, a musician from the church choir, was strong, healthy, strong. On a voluntary basis, he helped the Hawking family and, in the meantime, won Jane's heart. Stephen understood what was happening, but... he let things take their course. He himself was afraid that his days were numbered, and he wanted his wife and children not to be left alone.
This triangle could have tormented its participants for a long time if not for chance. In 1985, while in Switzerland, Stephen contracted pneumonia. Complex operations did not yield results; the patient had to undergo a tracheotomy. From now on there was a tube sticking out of his throat, and he could no longer speak. Jane's hands dropped. She helped as best she could, but her enthusiasm was fading. A few years later, the couple divorced.
Those around him felt sorry for Stephen: who needs him now? To say something, he had to type it with his finger, and a speech synthesizer would reproduce what he had written. But nurse Elaine Mason understood him without words. Spending day after day with the physicist, the woman became attached to this smart and different person. In 1995, they quietly got married.
Over the long 11 years of their life together, Elaine saved Stephen from death several times. She was there when he was choking, coughing, and losing consciousness. But for her this burden was too heavy. They divorced, humbly letting each other go.
Stephen Hawking today
Stephen Hawking is alone today. However, one is not quite the right word. Next to him are his students and colleagues, with whom he never ceases to discuss the problems of modern science. He is confident that there are still many discoveries ahead. Children do not abandon the scientist - he and his daughter Lucy together wrote a children's book about the boy George and his adventures in the Universe.
73-year-old Hawking is not going to die, because there is still so much to do. After all, he still doesn't have a Nobel Prize, although he deserves one. If an award were given for willpower, desire to live and unshakable spirit, he undoubtedly would have received it long ago.
Death of a Scientist
British scientist Stephen Hawking today it is known to many who are at least somehow connected with or interested in such sciences as astrophysics and mathematics. He is also a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
Nicolaus Copernicus previously held the same position at Cambridge.
short biography
Stephen Hawking (full name: Stephen William Hawking) was born January 8, 1942 in Oxford, UK. His father - Frank Hawking, researcher at a medical research center. His mother - Isabel Hawking, secretary at a medical research center.
In total, Frank and Isabel had 4 children: two sons and two daughters. Stephen's brother Edward was adopted.
Study period
Stephen Hawking graduated in 1962 Oxford University and received a bachelor's degree. Then he decided to continue his studies and entered Cambridge, where he defended his degree in 1966 Doctor of Philosophy.
Terrible disease
In the early 60s, Stephen began to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Doctors said that the young scientist had time to live maximum 2.5 years. However, the progress of the disease was slower than doctors expected.
Despite this, over time, Stephen's body became completely paralyzed; from the late 60s, he was forced to start using a wheelchair. But this did not stop him from doing what he loved - scientific and teaching activities.
Scientific and teaching activities
While still studying at the University of Cambridge, Hawking began working on research at Gonville and Keyes College.
- In 1968-72, his research activities continued in Institute of Theoretical Astronomy.
- Then he practiced for a year Institute of Astronomy.
- In 1973-75, he worked at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics in Cambridge.
- He devoted the next 2 years to teaching the theory of gravity, and in 1979 he received the title Professor of Gravitational Physics. In the same year he became Professor of mathematics.
- In 1974, Stephen Hawking became a member Royal Society of London.
- From 1979 to 2009 he was Lucasovsky professor Cambridge University.
Participation in scientific events in the USSR
In 1973, Stephen Hawking visited Moscow, where he discussed black hole problems with Soviet scientists Ya. Zeldovich And A. Starobinsky.
The next time a British astrophysicist visited Moscow was in 1981 - he took part in an international seminar in quantum physics(the theory of gravity was discussed).
Complete loss of speech
In the mid-80s, Stephen Hawking suffered from severe pneumonia. Doctors were forced to perform several operations, including tracheotomy, after which the scientist completely lost the ability to speak.
His friends and associates gave him a computer speech synthesizer. Hawking controls it using the only moving muscle of your body - the facial muscle of the cheek.
Stephen Hawking's activism
Despite his serious illness, Stephen Hawking does not lose heart and leads an active life, both scientifically and socially:
- In 2007, he flew in zero gravity on a special plane.
- In 2009, he even planned a flight into space. But this event did not take place.
Hawking himself says that, despite the title of Professor of Mathematics, he never received any special education in this subject, apart from the school curriculum.
What other facts from the biography of Stephen Hawking do you know?
Stephen Hawking and Jen Wilde
Stephen Hawking is a scientist, popularizer of science and one of the most famous physicists of our time, suffering from a serious illness since his youth. But this did not stop him from having two weddings and becoming the father of three children. And both of his wives are unusual women who evoke conflicting feelings among students of Hawking’s biography.
Stephen Hawking's first wife
Hawking's first marriage was to Jen Wilde. She was a girl from an ordinary English family who studied at Oxford at the Faculty of Foreign Literature. The exact circumstances of their acquaintance with the scientist are unknown; according to some sources, Jen was friends with Stephen’s sister.
Now it’s hard to judge what exactly attracted the young and beautiful girl to Hawking, but they got married in 1965, when Stephen had already been seriously diagnosed and doctors predicted that he would die in the year of their wedding. But Jen was able to save her husband from depression, and the disease did not progress so quickly. Perhaps then the girl saved her husband for the first time.
Hawking's first wife truly loved him
Hawking's first wife - Jen Wilde
The first years of their marriage were quite happy, the couple traveled together, and Hawking showed great promise in science and earned enough money to support his family. Two years after the wedding, their first child was born, a year later - the second, and a year later - the third. Jen herself continued her studies at this time and also tried to engage in science by studying literature.
Problems in the marriage began with the birth of their third child. Stephen Hawking by that time had become very weak and was no longer able to move simply with the help of a stick, but was chained to a chair. The wife was forced to fully care for both her husband and three small children, and she already fell into depression. Fortunately, Hawking continued to work, and the family was relatively wealthy, but fatigue from a very difficult everyday life was destroying the marriage.
Doctors set another maximum sentence for Stephen, and this forced Jen Wild (by that time long ago Jen Hawking) to think about the life of children after Hawking’s possible death. As a result, she decided to find a man who could help both after her husband’s death and now.
He became the musician Jonathan Jones (by the way, she is now married to him), a friend of Hawking. To call a spade a spade, Jen moved her lover into their house, which dealt a heavy blow to Stephen. But in reality, he understood that this step was quite reasonable and justified, although it was difficult for him to be in this situation. But at the same time, Jen did not change her attitude towards Hawking, continued to look after him and treated him very well.
Stephen Hawking with his wife and children
In 1985, his wife saved Hawking's life for the second time, and this incident best characterizes her attitude towards her husband. Stephen became seriously ill with pneumonia (it was then that his trachea was removed and he stopped speaking), the doctors convinced his wife, the only one responsible for the possible decision, to disconnect him from life support devices. Hawking at that time was a very wealthy man, a millionaire, his entire fortune would have gone to his wife, but she insisted on continuing treatment and did not even consider the option of disconnecting her husband from the devices. As a result, Hawking survived and, despite his significantly worsened condition, continues to conduct scientific activities today, almost 20 years later.
As a result, the marriage of Jen Wilde and Stephen Hawking broke up
But from that moment on, one important change occurred in their marriage - Jen and her lover decided to hire nurses for Hawking. One of them was Elaine Jane, at that time the wife of the engineer who made a speech synthesizer for Stephen and who himself recommended her. As a result, feelings arose between Elaine and Stephen, and the marriage with Jen came to an end. They divorced in 1995, although Hawking moved out from Jen and Jonathan 5 years earlier.
On the one hand, this was a blessing for Jen - her husband found new love, and she was able to legitimize her relationship with Jonathon Jones. But Jen actually didn't approve of Hawking's new marriage, and for good reason.
Today, Jen continues to live with her second husband, sometimes acts in films, and has released several biographies dedicated to her first husband and their marriage.
Hawking's second wife - Elaine Jane
Stephen Hawking and his second wife Elaine Jane
If few people doubt Jen’s sincere feelings, despite all life’s difficulties, then, according to most people, the scientist’s second wife married him solely for convenience. This is a woman with red hair who behaved exclusively demonstratively in public, trying too hard to convince everyone around her of her love for Stephen.
In 1995, she convinced Hawking to legalize the relationship, having previously lived with him for almost 5 years. It is interesting that neither the children nor the first wife came to the wedding. Perhaps Stephen himself was happy, as he later said - their love was stormy and passionate.
Stephen William Hawking(English: Stephen William Hawking, born January 8, 1942, Oxford, UK) is one of the most influential and well-known theoretical physicists of our time.The details of the second marriage, which broke up in 2006, are almost unknown. They say that first of all, Elaine fired all the other nurses and hired new ones, and the main selection criterion was not professional qualities, but the ability to control them and not let them close to her husband.
Stephen Hawking born January 8, 1942. His father was Frank Hawking, who worked as a researcher at the Hampstead Medical Center. His mother, Isabel Hawking, worked there as a secretary. Stephen had two younger sisters, Philip and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. In 1962, he graduated from Oxford University and began studying theoretical physics. At the same time, Hawking began to show signs of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which led to paralysis. In 1965 he married Jane Wilde, and they later had a daughter and two sons. In 1974, Hawking became a fellow of the Royal Society of London. After throat surgery in 1985, he lost the ability to speak. Friends gave him a speech synthesizer, which was installed on his wheelchair. Only the index finger on Hawking’s right hand retained some mobility. Subsequently, mobility remained only in the facial muscle of the cheek, opposite which the sensor was attached. With its help, the physicist controls a computer that allows him to communicate with others.
Stephen's relationship with Jane gradually deteriorated and they became separated in 1991 and later divorced. In 1995 Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason, with whom he lived for 11 years. In October 2006, they filed for divorce.
Despite his serious illness, he leads an active life. On April 26, 2007, he flew in zero gravity (on a special plane), and a flight into space was planned for 2009. To myself Hawking said that, as a mathematics professor, he had never received any mathematics education since high school. In his first year teaching at Oxford, Hawking read a textbook two weeks ahead of his own students.
Hawking believes that man is not the crown of evolution and must be improved with the help of scientific and technical means (cyborgization, gene therapy, etc.)
Professor Hawking never directly spoke about his religious views; in his books he often uses the word “God” for greater clarity of the material presented. Hawking's ex-wife Jane claimed during the divorce proceedings that Hawking was a convinced atheist. In 2010, Hawking, comparing religion and science, stated: “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on dogma, and science, which is based on observation and logic. Science will win because it works." In his book The Grand Design, Hawking argues that the creation of the universe did not require a “creator”: “Because there is such a force as gravity, the universe could and did create itself out of nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason why the universe exists, why we exist. There is no need for God to "light" the fire and make the universe work." In the Discovery Channel's popular science film Curiosity? Stephen Hawking tries to scientifically prove the impossibility of God's existence
Hawking's main area of research is cosmology and quantum gravity. His main achievements:
application of thermodynamics to the description of black holes;
development in 1975 of the theory that black holes “evaporate” due to a phenomenon called Hawking radiation;
On July 21, 2004, Hawking presented a report in which he outlined his point of view on resolving the paradox of the disappearance of information in a black hole.
In 1974 between Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne made a playful bet (a one-year subscription to Penthouse magazine if Thorne won versus a four-year subscription to Private Eye magazine if Hawking won) regarding the nature of the Cygnus X-1 object and the nature of its radiation. Hawking, in opposition to his theory based precisely on the existence of black holes, bet that Cygnus X-1 is not a black hole (as he said: “even if I turn out to be wrong, at least I will win a subscription to the magazine”). He admitted defeat in 1990, when observational data strengthened his belief that there was a gravitational singularity in the system. However, in 2011, Kip Thorne recognized the existence of a black hole after three articles were published that completed the description of Cygnus X-1.
In 1997, Hawking, together with Kip Thorne, made a bet (for a complete edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica) with John Preskill, a professor at the California Institute of Technology and director of the Institute for Quantum Information, on the issue of preserving information about matter previously captured by a black hole and subsequently emitted by it. Professor Preskill believed that the radiation from a black hole carries information, but we cannot decipher it. Professor Hawking believed, according to his own theory from 1975, that this information is, in principle, impossible to detect, because it buds into a parallel Universe, absolutely inaccessible to us and absolutely unknowable.
In August 2004, at the International Conference on General Relativity and Cosmology in Dublin, Professor Hawking presented the revolutionary theory of black holes and simultaneously stated that Professor Preskill was right and he and Thorne were wrong. From the report it follows that the black hole distorts the swallowed information, but still does not destroy it without a trace. In the end, in the process of evaporation of a black hole, information still escapes from its embrace. As usual, trying to intrigue listeners who are not ready to perceive quantum wisdom, Hawking advised science fiction fans to give up the dream that plunging into a black hole could be a leap to another Universe. However, Professor Preskill noted that he still did not fully understand Hawking’s arguments, although, of course, he was glad of his win and would accept the encyclopedia. The third participant in the dispute, Professor Thorne, said that he did not agree with Hawking.
Hawking is actively involved in popularizing science. In April 1988, the book “A Brief History of Time” was published, which became a bestseller. Thanks to this book, Hawking became famous throughout the world. In the preface he wrote:
I was told that every formula included in the book would halve the number of buyers. Then I decided to do without formulas altogether. True, in the end I still wrote one equation - the famous Einstein equation E=mc².
Then the books “Black Holes and Young Universes” (1993) and “The World in a Nutshell” (2001) appeared. In 2005, a new edition of “A Brief History...” was published - “The Shortest History of Time,” written in collaboration with Leonard Mlodinow. In 2006, together with his daughter Lucy Hawking, he wrote a book for children, George and the Secrets of the Universe.
The lecture caused a real sensation Stephen Hawking in March 1998 at the White House, when, at the invitation of President Clinton, he gave a scientific forecast for the next millennium (the forecast was generally optimistic). In a 2003 interview, Hawking sounded more pessimistic. According to the scientist, people should move to other planets as soon as possible, otherwise on Earth they will die from viruses.
Hawking was one of the signatories of the Project Steves declaration in support of the theory of evolution and to prevent the teaching of creationism in US public schools.
Popular science films featuring Hawking were released on television: the six-part “Stephen Hawking’s Universe” (1997) and the three-part “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking” (2010).
The television program “Stephen Hawking's Universe” is airing on the Discovery channel.