Monday, April 14, 2008

Stephen Hawking

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
Stephen William Hawking 1942-, British theoretical physicist, b. Oxford, England, grad. University College, Oxford, 1962, Ph.D. Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 1966. In 1962 Hawking was diagnosed as having an incurable muscular disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Although the disease eventually confined him to a wheelchair and forced him to use a computer-generated voice synthesizer to communicate, he continued to teach and to lecture and began his research in cosmology . In 1971 Hawking provided mathematical support for the big-bang theory of the origin of the universe; he showed that if the general theory of relativity was correct the universe must have a singularity, or starting point, in space-time. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Stephen_William_Hawking.aspx

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9039612/Stephen-W-Hawking
An interesting quote -" Although there have been suggestions that spacetime may have discrete structure, I see no reason to abandon t continuim theories that have been so successfull. General Relativity is a beautiful theory that agrees with every observation that has been made." Chapter 1 of "The Nature of Space and Time"

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