Biography of Stephen Hawking

(1942/01/08 - Unknown)

Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking
British theoretical physicist

He was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford (Great Britain).
He was the eldest of four brothers in a family of intellectuals; his father, Frank Hawking, was a physician expert in the research of tropical diseases, Professor of University College, Oxford, and his mother, Isobel, studied philosophy, politics and economics. The marriage met shortly after the start of the second world war in an Institute of medical research, where she worked as a Secretary and he as a medical researcher. They lived in Highgate, but as London was under air attack, Isobel was moved to Oxford to give birth. Hawking has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward.
In 1950, when his father became head of the division of Parasitology at the National Institute of medical research, his family moved to St. Albans, Hertfordshire. The family often ate in silence while the Diners engaged in reading. He lived frugally in a big house, messy and poorly maintained. During one of the frequent absences of his father to Africa, for business reasons, the family spent four months in Mallorca by visiting a friend of his mother and her husband, the poet Robert Graves.
He was a mediocre student in high school, in 1959 he came to the University and graduated with a little bright record. A scholarship enabled him to carry out post-graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, where he specialized in Theoretical physics and Cosmology. He made a trip to the Middle East and was diagnosed with a neuron disease relating to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The disease causes a progressive destruction of the central nervous system cells responsible for regulating voluntary muscle activity, which makes the patient lose their locomotives functions. However, the brain remains lucid. Doctors diagnosed two years of life and collapsed; He left his job and suffered a severe depressive crisis.
As time went on and saw the disease stabilized, recovered morale and in a wheelchair, began his thesis under the direction of Professor Sciama. After his PhD, he worked with the theoretical physicist Roger Penrose the mathematical check of home time. At the same time he was appointed Assistant Professor of Applied mathematics and Theoretical physics at Cambridge.
His theories on the singularity of the universe, the big bang , or original explosion of the Cosmos, and the black holes, revolutionized physics in the 20th century, opening new horizons to the research. He argues that the general relativity, supports the theory that the creation of the universe originated from an Big bang or Big Bang, emerged from a singularity or point of infinite distortion of space and time. He was later purged this concept considering all these theories as side attempts to describe a reality, in which concepts like uniqueness do not make sense, and where space and time form a closed without borders.
It was Lucasiana Chair of mathematics (Lucasian Chair of Mathematics) from the University of Cambridge until his retirement in 2009.
He wrote history of time: from the Big Bang to black holes (1988). In 1989 he was awarded in Spain the Prize Prince of Asturias for Concord. He was awarded the Copley Medal in 2006 and with the Medal of freedom in 2009.
When Hawking was a student in Cambridge, he maintained relations with Jane Wilde, a friend of her sister, whom she had met shortly before being diagnosed with the disease. They were married on 14 July 1965. During their first years of marriage, they lived in London because of the studies of his wife, who traveled to the United States on several occasions to attend conferences. Jane gave he began a doctoral program, and had her son, Robert, in 1967. His daughter, Lucy, was born in 1970, and Timothy, in April 1979. After twenty-five years of marriage, they separated. In 1990, Hawking went to live with her nurse. Since the end of 1980 related, Elaine Mason, to the consternation of colleagues and family members because of their strong character and protective attitude. After her divorce in the spring of 1995, Hawking married Mason in September of the same year. In 2006 Hawking and Elaine divorced, after which it resumed relations with Jane, her children and grandchildren.
In September 2014, Hawking was declared atheist.