This is a brief autobiography of the most famous physicist of the late 20th Century (1942 - 2018). He was highly visible mainly due to his ALS disease. I wanted to see the humanity behind the man.
He was married and divorced twice and living with another woman when he died. He contracted ALS in his 20's He was well educated in British graduate school.s He claimed to not be so good in mathematics. He held the academic chair once held by Isaac Newton.
He is most famous for his book A Brief History of Time, which he wanted to be sold in airport bookstores. His editor wisely said no. I have never totally understood scientists like this who desire to educate the general public. If I were at this level I would not care about the general populace.
He mentions not winning the Nobel. It must have rankled him.
Is time travel possible? Can we travel back in time? No one knows for sure. I am simply shocked that this is a serious question in theoretical physics.
He liked to play with and was fascinated with toy trains. Somehow that makes the great physicist seem so human.
Hawking did not learn to read until he was 8. I find that comforting.
He was born on January 8, 1942, exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo, a spooky coincidence, except that approximately 200,000 other children were also born on that date.
If you understand how the universe operates, you can control it in a way.
Like most boys, he was embarrassed by his parents, but it did not worry his parents.
He learned the beauty of the English language by reading the King James Bible.
His theoretical inquires trumped his practical abilities.
He says that the brightest science students do math and physics and maybe chemistry; the less bright do biology.
Hawking luckily avoided becoming a civil servant.
Missed a chance to work with Fred Hoyle, the most famous astronomy of the time.
Whe began his research the two hottest areas were cosmology and elementary particles, but particle physics was too much like botany. :) Had he gone into particles none of his work from that time would have held up. Luck counts in physics research.
Hawking was highly affected by dreams. We have that in common. :)
The big question in cosmology in the 60's was whether the universe had a beginning. Along came the Big Bang.
Hawking is highly known for his work on Black Holes, which I cannot wrap my head around.
His time at legendary CalTech was seminal.
Hawking ways he thinks in pictorial terms. Was he a visual learner? I ask this both seriously and tongue in cheek. If I were to talk to Hawking, this is something I should ask him to explain further.
Hawking seems to give some probability to the possibility of worm holes. I am astounded. I assumed this was the stuff of science fiction.
"Worm holes, if they exist, would be ideal for space travel," No joke, Stephen!
The original scenario was singularity, Big Bang, and inflation (thanks Alan Guth). The problem is that everything breaks down at a singularity so this is not good enough for Hawking, which leads to a universe with no beginning an no end, a universe, which leads to a foolish question like what happened before the Big Gan, which leads to Hawking's No Boundary scenario. At this point my history major mind cooks out. Sorry. If everything breaks down at singularities, then we must dispense with singularities.
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