A brifef history of Stephen Hawking

On the same day that Albert Einstein was born, his intellectual heir Stephen Hawking left us. He has a way of picking days. Even his birth date was a red-letter day; Hawking was born on 8th January, exactly 300 years after the death of another giant - Galileo.

Perhaps the world’s most well-known scientist, Hawking died peacefully in his sleep, according to his family’s statement.  Hawking’s life is a reminder for all of us mere mortals, particularly us millennials who seem to have evolved into a constantly whiny bunch of procrastinators, that there’s always a way to overcome adversity. Sure, we all don’t have the towering intellect to try and reconcile Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with Planck’s Quantum mechanics to create the Theory of Everything, but that doesn’t mean that we let our shortcomings define us.  In fact, even if we don’t understand how Hawking helped us comprehend the physical world, his life is a testament to the indomitable human spirit with the simple message - it’s never too late.

As a young man, Hawking was a non-directional youth and at his boys’ boarding school, his friends had bet that Stephen would ‘never amount to anything’. Despite being diagnosed with ALS in his early 20s – a disease that has existed long before people started pouring ice-cold water over their heads – Hawking led a full-life which included winning every major award other than the Nobel, writing one of the most sold science books of all time and becoming pop culture icon which included roles in popular shows like The Big Bang Theory and the Simpsons.  Hawking’s work showed that singularities – points where space-time was infinitely curved – were allowed by Einstein’s theory of gravity and that it showed a singularity in our distant past i.e. the Big Bang. He also worked on blackhole mechanics, showed how blackholes can vanish, how galaxies arose and postulated the ‘wave function of the universe’

Other than trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe, he was also one of the world’s most popular science authors, trying to make physics comprehensible to the layman. His works include A Brief History of Times Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, the Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design and My Brief History.

His awards include thirteen Honorary degrees, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and only two major gongs eluded him in his lifetime – the Nobel Prize in Physics and a knighthood. Despite the motor-neurone disease that was diagnosed after his 21st birthday, Hawking lived a life richer than most mortals. When he was diagnosed with the ailment, he was driven to despair and depression like any of us would, drinking a lot and playing Wanger and didn’t think anything was worth doing. However, he outlived the initial death sentence of two years by well-over half a century.  Famously described by Peter Guzzardi, editor of The Brief History of Time as ‘Darth Vader with a head cold’, the book would set up the Stephen Hawking Pop Culture Industry, netting over $ 6 million.    So, when you feel you’ve dealt a bad card. Remember there was a man trapped in his own body was trying to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. It didn’t stop him from having a full life, to having led for better and worse.

A LIFE IN 10 DATES

Here are 10 key dates in the life of renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, who died Wednesday at the age 76:

Jan 8, 1942
Born 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England to Frank Hawking, a biologist, and Isobel Hawking, a medical research secretary

1962
With a degree in physics from the University of Oxford, he undertakes research in cosmology at Cambridge, completing a doctorate thesis “Properties of the Expanding Universes”.

1963
He learns that he suffers from a form of the degenerative and paralysing motor-neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

1965
He marries Jane Wilde, with whom he has three children before they separate after 25 years. In 1995 he marries his former nurse, Elaine Mason

1974
He becomes at 32 one of the youngest members of the Royal Society, Britain’s most prestigious scientific body.

1979
He is appointed Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a post he occupies for 30 years.

1985
He loses the ability to speak after undergoing a tracheotomy to help him breathe after contracting pneumonia. This results eventually in his use of a computer and a voice synthesiser to communicate.

1988
Hawking publishes “A Brief History of Time”, which seeks to explain to non-scientists the fundamental theories of the universe.

2007
He goes on a weightless flight in the United States as a prelude to a hoped-for sub-orbital spaceflight.

2014
The Hawking biopic “The Theory of Everything”, by director James Marsh, is released. British actor Eddie Redmayne goes on to win an Oscar for his portrayal of the scientist.