PlanetPhysics/Stephen William Hawking
Stephen William Hawking
editEminent, British mathematical physicist specialized in cosmological and big-bang theories-- was born on January 8th, 1942 (exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England.
The following is his biographical, verbatim statement at his official website: "Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated that it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but rather should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science."
His many publications include: The Large Scale Structure of spacetime with G. F. R. Ellis, ""General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey , with. W Israel, and ""300 Years of Gravity , with W. Israel. Stephen Hawking has three popular books published; his best seller "A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes", and other essays.
Professor Stephen William Hawking has twelve honorary degrees. He was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honor in 1989. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society, a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of numerous international awards, medals and prizes.