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Title
Stephan Hawking
Description
Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. His parents' house was in north London. When Stephan was eight his family moved to St Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At eleven he went to St Albans School, and then to University College, Oxford, which was his father's old college. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics, and his father preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at this university, so he did Physics. After three years, and not much of a challenge, Stephen was awarded a first class honours degree in Natural Science.
Afterward, Stephen went on to Cambridge. There he wanted to do research in Cosmology, but there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time. After gaining his Ph.D. he became a Research Fellow, and later a Professorial Fellow at a school named Gonville and Caius College. He then left the Institute of Astronomy in 1973. Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 he's held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663, it was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then by Isaac Newton.
Stephen Hawking has worked on basic laws which govern our universe. While working with Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have had a beginning in the Big Bang and end in black holes. These results made it necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, which was the other great scientific development of the beginning of the 20th Century. While doing research he discovered that black holes should not be completely black, instead, if they had masses equivalent to a mountain's, they would radiate particles of all kinds. Smaller holes would disappear in a fizz of radiation, at the moment these theories have not been proven. Another conjecture is the universe having no edge or boundaries in imaginary time. This implies that the way the universe began is completely determined by laws of science.
Languages
English
Contact
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