Published 1/11/2012
http://dailyevergreen.com/read/opinion-hawking-turns-70
Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “Great men are meteors that burn themselves so that the earth may be lighted”. I find these words very befitting for Stephen William Hawking, the well-known British theoretical physicist and cosmologist.
Hawking has been the trendsetter in cosmology and theoretical physics for decades. Many people call him the greatest physicist after Einstein and I somewhat concur to this opinion. It is a pity that the Nobel Prize still eludes him, even though he has won several prestigious awards such as, Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) — the highest civilian honor in the U.S — Copley Medal of the Royal Society (2006), Wolf Prize in Physics (1988) and Order of the British Empire – Commander (1982).
He turned 70 years of age on Jan. 8, and this is a tribute of admiration for the genius who valiantly battled a crippling disease ever since his 21st birthday, but still managed to make a huge contribution towards advancing human knowledge of the outer space.
Born on Jan. 8, 1942 to Dr. Frank Hawking, a renowned biologist of his time, and his wife Isobel Hawking, he followed in his father's footsteps and went on to attend Oxford University and major in physics, but the journey was not easy. Hawking received his B.A. degree in 1962 then attended Cambridge for his graduate studies. While attending Cambridge, he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) — commonly known in the United States as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is a motor neuron disease that causes the victim to slowly lose control over their entire body and usually causes death in a matter of a couple years.
A fatal disease like ALS would have left an ordinary man devastated, but it lent a purpose to Hawking's life. His firm resolve to make every day of his remaining life count led him to accomplish so much.
In Hawking's words, “before my condition had been diagnosed I had been very bored with life, there had not seemed to be anything worth doing. But shortly after I came out of hospital, I dreamt I was going to be executed. I suddenly thought there were a lot of worthwhile things I could do.”
Hawking has worked on many topics directed toward understanding the origins of the universe. His most critical contributions to cosmology during the earlier part of his career were mathematical theories on the birth, existence, structure and self-destruction of a black hole. He extended Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity mathematically to prove that something called “gravitational singularity” exists in time space.
Eventually, this gravitational singularity came to be known as the bottom of the black hole. Scientists across the globe have agreed on the assumption that the structure of the black hole roughly resembles an inverted cone.
Initially, Hawking was of the opinion that due to the intense gravitational force at the singularity mentioned above, nothing could come out once it goes inside the black hole. But, after a series of discussion with Princeton scientist Dr. Jacob Bekenstein, Hawking, in 1974, concluded that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles until they exhaust their energy and evaporate — this is known today as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation.
Thereafter, he also proposed that after the black hole evaporates, all the information inside it in the form of light from other stellar systems would also disappear, but he was proven wrong 28 years later by Stanford physicist Dr. Leonard Susskind.
These debates were not just about the proof of a scientific principle but also a proof of Hawking's rare quality of accepting criticism constructively in the best interest of science.
Talking about his work on the origin of the universe, Hawking developed a model in which the universe had no boundary in space, as well as time. The importance of this theory lies in the fact that it managed to replace the classical Big Bang models, which assumed some single point as the initial condition of the beginning of the universe.
He has further theorized our universe as one without a boundary — hence an open universe. This is now well accepted in the scientific community.
All in all, Hawking's work has made him an undisputed pioneer in his field. His colossal contribution to science is proof enough of his steely grit and is a lesson for us to be dedicated to our work in the face of an adversity of the highest order. I believe that is what sets professor Hawking apart from his contemporaries.
Besides his scientific theories, I also find his views on God and religion equally revolutionary. In his words, "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we cannot understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second."
He has also popularized physics and cosmology by writing a lot of books for laymen, “A Brief History of Time” and “ The Universe in a Nutshell” being the most popular ones. He is one of the few scientists who possess the quality of simplifying the most complex laws of physics to make them comprehensible for people with little background in science.
Today, at 70, Hawking sits in his characteristic wheelchair, communicating just with the twitching of his right cheek that helps him input words in the predictive text format into a computer attached to his wheelchair. A voice synthesizer reads these words out aloud and that is what constitutes his characteristic robotic voice.
Although his works have made him immortal, when asked about how would he like to go down in history, he says, “I hope I will be remembered for my work on black holes and the origin of the Universe and not for things like appearing on the Simpsons.”
http://dailyevergreen.com/read/opinion-hawking-turns-70
Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “Great men are meteors that burn themselves so that the earth may be lighted”. I find these words very befitting for Stephen William Hawking, the well-known British theoretical physicist and cosmologist.
Hawking has been the trendsetter in cosmology and theoretical physics for decades. Many people call him the greatest physicist after Einstein and I somewhat concur to this opinion. It is a pity that the Nobel Prize still eludes him, even though he has won several prestigious awards such as, Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) — the highest civilian honor in the U.S — Copley Medal of the Royal Society (2006), Wolf Prize in Physics (1988) and Order of the British Empire – Commander (1982).
He turned 70 years of age on Jan. 8, and this is a tribute of admiration for the genius who valiantly battled a crippling disease ever since his 21st birthday, but still managed to make a huge contribution towards advancing human knowledge of the outer space.
Born on Jan. 8, 1942 to Dr. Frank Hawking, a renowned biologist of his time, and his wife Isobel Hawking, he followed in his father's footsteps and went on to attend Oxford University and major in physics, but the journey was not easy. Hawking received his B.A. degree in 1962 then attended Cambridge for his graduate studies. While attending Cambridge, he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) — commonly known in the United States as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is a motor neuron disease that causes the victim to slowly lose control over their entire body and usually causes death in a matter of a couple years.
A fatal disease like ALS would have left an ordinary man devastated, but it lent a purpose to Hawking's life. His firm resolve to make every day of his remaining life count led him to accomplish so much.
In Hawking's words, “before my condition had been diagnosed I had been very bored with life, there had not seemed to be anything worth doing. But shortly after I came out of hospital, I dreamt I was going to be executed. I suddenly thought there were a lot of worthwhile things I could do.”
Hawking has worked on many topics directed toward understanding the origins of the universe. His most critical contributions to cosmology during the earlier part of his career were mathematical theories on the birth, existence, structure and self-destruction of a black hole. He extended Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity mathematically to prove that something called “gravitational singularity” exists in time space.
Eventually, this gravitational singularity came to be known as the bottom of the black hole. Scientists across the globe have agreed on the assumption that the structure of the black hole roughly resembles an inverted cone.
Initially, Hawking was of the opinion that due to the intense gravitational force at the singularity mentioned above, nothing could come out once it goes inside the black hole. But, after a series of discussion with Princeton scientist Dr. Jacob Bekenstein, Hawking, in 1974, concluded that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles until they exhaust their energy and evaporate — this is known today as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation.
Thereafter, he also proposed that after the black hole evaporates, all the information inside it in the form of light from other stellar systems would also disappear, but he was proven wrong 28 years later by Stanford physicist Dr. Leonard Susskind.
These debates were not just about the proof of a scientific principle but also a proof of Hawking's rare quality of accepting criticism constructively in the best interest of science.
Talking about his work on the origin of the universe, Hawking developed a model in which the universe had no boundary in space, as well as time. The importance of this theory lies in the fact that it managed to replace the classical Big Bang models, which assumed some single point as the initial condition of the beginning of the universe.
He has further theorized our universe as one without a boundary — hence an open universe. This is now well accepted in the scientific community.
All in all, Hawking's work has made him an undisputed pioneer in his field. His colossal contribution to science is proof enough of his steely grit and is a lesson for us to be dedicated to our work in the face of an adversity of the highest order. I believe that is what sets professor Hawking apart from his contemporaries.
Besides his scientific theories, I also find his views on God and religion equally revolutionary. In his words, "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we cannot understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second."
He has also popularized physics and cosmology by writing a lot of books for laymen, “A Brief History of Time” and “ The Universe in a Nutshell” being the most popular ones. He is one of the few scientists who possess the quality of simplifying the most complex laws of physics to make them comprehensible for people with little background in science.
Today, at 70, Hawking sits in his characteristic wheelchair, communicating just with the twitching of his right cheek that helps him input words in the predictive text format into a computer attached to his wheelchair. A voice synthesizer reads these words out aloud and that is what constitutes his characteristic robotic voice.
Although his works have made him immortal, when asked about how would he like to go down in history, he says, “I hope I will be remembered for my work on black holes and the origin of the Universe and not for things like appearing on the Simpsons.”
No comments:
Post a Comment