Stephen Hawking is concidered by many a scientific genius of living and still working today. Most legends are made when people die and when Stephen does die he will become a legend. Until then he is a leaving breathing genius. He hasn’t had it as easy as most but has done well combating his many struggles through life. Desoite all of these troubles Stephen Hawking has been able to rise above and has been a valuable part of the physics and cosmotology studies we have had on this planet. With all of his struggles and triumphs, Stephen Hawking has had along history and a lot of time has been dedicated to finding answers to some of the questions we ask but would take a genius to answer and research. Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, at the end of World War II. He was born in Oxford, England but his family didn’t live there originally. They moved there due to the war because it was supposedly a safer place to have a child. His father was a researcher of tropical medicine so research and studies were in his genes. His father was hoping he would follow in his footsteps but all Stephen wanted to do was be a mathmetician. Needless to say, Stephen and his family stayed in Oxford and that’s where he grew up. Stephen entered Oxford University in 1959 to study mathematics primarily. He was a very bright student in which case e didn’t have to work very hard in school. He was very social and Oxford proved to be little challenge for him. He even took up sports by joining the rowing team. Oxford didn’t have a very advanced mathematics department so he ended up majoring in physics. He ended up graduating with honors from Oxford and moved on to Cambridge for his postgraduate studies. During his tenuer at Oxford he started developing some issues. He would just fall over for no apparent reaon. He seemed far more clumsy than the ordinary 17 year old kid. His fater also noticed and decided to take Stephen to the doctor. Once there the doctor didn’t know what could be causing his problems so he sent them to the hospital and that’s where Stephen stayed for almost a month. The hospital did all sorts of tests on him. They even cut out some muscle from one of his arms. They didn’t have an answer for him and couldn’t tell him what was wrong. The only thing they told him was to expect things to continue getting worse. Well, worse was right. Stephen started losing all functioning muscles and was struggling to walk. He was walking with a cane when he was eventually, years later, finally diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ALS would be a huge set back for most but Stephen was able to take the challenge and not slow down on his studies and research. Now at Cambridge, Stephen has moved further into physics and applied that knowledge to studying cosmology, which is the study of origins, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe. This is is also where Stephen was first diagnosed with Lou Gherig’s disease. This was what initially put Stephen in his wheel chair. While all of this was happenign to Stephen, he was also fortunate enough to meet a young woman by the name of Jane Wilde. They were married in 1965. He finished Cambridge in 1966 with a doctorite. He then was employed by Cambridge and started his teaching career. While working at Cambridge, his research was first noted with his theory of singularity. The theory of singularity is when a place in space or time at one point becomes infinite. The best example of this is a black hole. He worked with Roger Penrose during his work and Roger finally was able to prive the singularity theory. Using what he had found in Penrose’s work along with the famed earlier work of Albert Einstein, Stephen was able to find that all of the origins of the universe were in singularity. This means that the universe started in one concentrated place and eventually grew and is still growing to infinity. This is just further proof of the big bang theory, Hawking was just able to help solidify the previous thoughts regarding how the unverse was conceived. The theory of singularity didn’t stop there, it was taken to another level with black holes. We all know they exist but until Stephen was able to apply his theory and do research, nobody knew exactly what it was or did. He was able to prove that the edges of a black hole (called the event horizon) was growing over time instead of shrinking or gettign sucked into itself. He was also able to prove that when two black holes colided and merged to one black hole, the event horizon, or edge, of the new black hole was larger than the total between the two that combined. Making the new black hole bigger than both of the two combined. His two biggest discoveries of black holes was that black holes give off heat, prior to this it was thought that nothing could escape from a black hole. The second thing Hawking was able to prove is that not all black holes are immense in size. They are very small and colide to become bigger and bigger. This is believed to be the result of the original big bang billions of years ago. In the 1980’s, Hawking was able to help Einstein out a little by answering one of his theories that he never was able to prove. The unified theory has to do with the four interactions in physics and the conditions that were present when the beginning of the universe was conceived. In the 90’s Hawkings wrote a couple of books. His first was called A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. This book sold well over a million copies and was the number one nonfiction book for over a year. A few years later he wrote another book called Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, he also coauthored a book with his early research pal Roger Penrose called The Nature of Space and Time. The interesting part of the coauthored book is the two authors disagree on a topic in the book, it is published as a disagreement and probably made for more interesting reading. He went on to write a couple more books and coauthored another with Penrose. His researched had led him to plenty of material and a wealth of opprtunity to publish his thoughts and theories. Stephen Hawking over all has led a wonderful life despite his set backs with ALS. He was able to get married and he had three children as well. His research in cosmology hasn’t been as well definied since Einstein and even then he might have more theories proven than Einstein on the topic. He has indeed struggled but has been able to be an inspration to everyone who thinks things are tough. There probably isn’t another human who has outlived their supposed exit date than Mr. Hawkings has but we should be thankfull we have someone so smart to try and find answers to those questions only people like him could answer. References

General post (no author listed. http://www.notablebiographies.com/Gi-He/Hawking-Stephen.html retrieved on 9/22/09

Stephen Hawking http://www.hawking.org.uk/ retrieved 9/22/09