A scientist known for a defiant strength and remarkable brilliance
No scientist since Albert Einstein has achieved such celebrity as Prof Stephen Hawking. Renowned for tackling the deepest of cosmic mysteries despite profound physical challenges, he was the apotheosis of the ability of the human mind to transcend all bounds.
While in reality his scientific status falls well below his media image as the heir to Einstein, Hawking’s achievements remain mind-boggling.
As a graduate student in the 1960s, he showed that Einstein’s theory of gravity broke down completely at the birth of the Universe. He then went on to discover hidden links between gravity, quantum theory – the rules of the sub-atomic world – and thermodynamics.
In the process, Hawking showed that black holes – whose intense gravity was supposed to trap everything within them – can actually emit heat.
He went on to work on a challenge that had defeated even Einstein: the search for a Theory of Everything, describing all the particles and forces that make up the Universe. In this, he was unsuccessful. Yet Hawking’s ability to make world-class contributions to this challenge highlights the quality in which he rivalled Einstein himself: defiance.
He was born in Oxford, England, on January 8, 1942, and went up to the University of Oxford in 1959 to read physics – his father had wanted him to study medicine.
Finding the curriculum easy, he did so little work he faced a special oral examination to decide the class of his degree. He told his examiners that if they awarded him a first, he would go to the University of Cambridge, otherwise he would stay at Oxford. They duly gave him a first.
At Cambridge, Hawking began a PhD on cosmology – only to have motor neurone disease diagnosed. He was told he had two years to live. After only a brief bout of depression, Hawking set to work on a brilliant PhD exposing the limits of Einstein’s theory of gravity. He also married his first wife, Jane.
By that time he had acquired a reputation for challenging authority. Attending a lecture by the great Cambridge astrophysicist Fred Hoyle on a new theory of the Universe, Hawking interrupted by declaring: “You’re wrong.” Demanding to know why, the irascible Hoyle found himself being told by the 22-year-old postgraduate student: “I’ve worked it out.”
Hawking’s most famous demonstration of scientific iconoclasm began one evening in November 1970.
By that time, MND was affecting his movement and his voice was slurred. “I started to think about black holes as I was getting into bed,” he later recalled. “My disability makes this rather a slow process, so I had plenty of time.”
Hawking connected black holes with another property that never decreases: entropy – a concept at the heart of thermodynamics, the science of heat.
By 1974, he arrived at an astonishing conclusion: that black holes emit radiation, and eventually explode. His arguments were attacked by fellow theorists. But Hawking held his ground and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, at the age of just 32.
By the late 1970s, Hawking had been elected to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, the professorship once held by Sir Isaac Newton.
It marked a turning point in Hawking’s career, in which he focused on ever more speculative ideas.
At the time, theorists were excited by apparent clues that they were closing in on the elusive Theory of Everything.
Hawking described these developments in his inaugural lecture as Lucasian professor, under the characteristically provocative title: “Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?” He argued that the Theory of Everything might be pinned down by the year 2000.
Hawking then worked on increasingly recondite ideas about black holes and the origin of the Universe.
But not one of his theories has been confirmed by observation; and several have been debunked.
This disconnect between Hawking’s image and his reputation among fellow scientists was highlighted by Britain’s Institute of Physics in 1999. Asked to vote for the greatest physicist of all time, 250 of the world’s leading physicists put Einstein first with 119 votes, followed by Newton with 96. Hawking garnered just two votes.
By then, however, Hawking was unquestionably the world’s most famous living physicist, after the spectacular success of his book A Brief
History of Time. Published in 1988, this tour d’horizon of fundamental physics became an instant best-seller and has sold 25 million copies.
Despite famously containing just one equation – Einstein’s famous E = mc² – it also has a reputation for being the most unread best-seller of all time.
The passing of Stephen Hawking may well lead to a spike in its sales. Today, it offers an outdated vision of how the Universe works.
But it still gives a sense of the puckish wit and unquestionable brilliance of a truly remarkable human being.