Names and faces
Cambridge University has put Stephen Hawking’s doctoral thesis online, triggering such interest that it crashed the university’s website. Completed in
1966 when Hawking was 24, Properties of Expanding Universes explores ideas about the origins of the universe that have resonated through the scientist’s career. The university says the thesis was already the most-requested item in its online repository. It was made free to download Monday to mark Open Access Week. The website was intermittently inaccessible during the day as it struggled to handle the interest. Hawking said he hoped making his thesis available to all would “inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos.”
Country music icon Loretta Lynn returned to the Country Music Hall of Fame for the first time since she suffered a stroke in May to formally induct singer Alan Jackson. Lynn, who cancelled her tour dates this year to recover, said Jackson was the only person that could make her leave her house. Jackson, the late guitarist and singer Jerry Reed and songwriter Don Schlitz were inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday. Lynn recalled meeting Jackson when he was a nervous young artist decades ago and knowing then that he would “be one of the greatest singers in country music. He hadn’t let me down,” said Lynn, who is also a member of the Hall of Fame. Jackson, 59, is still one of country music’s most successful solo artists, having sold nearly 45 million albums in the United States and had 26 singles reach the top of the Billboard country charts. With his baritone voice and knack for telling stories about small-town Southern life, the Newnan, Ga.-born singer was among a wave of neo-traditionalists who broke through in the 1990s. He joked that when he was signed to Arista Nashville, a label started by Clive Davis, they had no idea how popular he would become. “I was just a token country singer they signed for that label and bam, I took off,” Jackson said. Many of his hits became instant classics, from the barroom staple “Chattahoochee” to the somber “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” written after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.