Stephen Hawking's work in quantum physics has earned him great notariety. Understanding of Hawking's Radiation came about from his study of black holes.
Stephen Hawking is recognized as the wheelchair bound physicist who popularized information about such esoteric subjects as black holes and the beginnings of time. Although there are those who criticize him as a celebrity whose work is no greater than that of many other scientists, his accomplishments and his influence in creating awareness of scientific thought in the world of physics has been very profound.
Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford England in 1942. On his web page he adds, 300 years after the death of Galileo. His parents owned a home in north London, but because World War II was in progress, Oxford was considered a safer place to raise a family. Stephen was the oldest of four children. When he was eight, his family moved to St. Albans. As a young school child he enjoyed taking radios and other devices apart and reassembling them.
Hawking's parents enrolled young Stephen in St. Alban's private school when he was eleven to prepare him for college at Oxford. By his teen years he knew he wanted to be a mathematician, although his father wanted him to study medicine. Both of his parents attended Oxford University, and in 1959 Hawking followed in their footsteps after making near perfect marks on the entrance exam. Because mathematics wasn't offered as a course of study at Oxford, he studied physics instead. He easily graduated with first class honors, making him eligible to attend Cambridge University. There he majored in theoretical physics. He specialized in cosmology.
He was never physically adept as a child, but during his third year at college he began to have difficulties beyond the norm. At Oxford, he began to have trouble with weakness, and on a couple of occasions fell over for no apparent reason. His father noticed a problem and Stephen was taken to a family doctor.
In 1962, while undertaking graduate studies at Cambridge, he was admitted to the hospital for extensive and invasive tests. Hawking was ultimately diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ALS is a progressive disease that causes deterioration of the brain, nerve cells and spinal cord, eventually causing the victim to lose muscle control. Symptoms include weakness, slurred speech and muscle twitches, and an increasing lack of control of the body. Although the victim can no longer use his body, his brain remains alert and he does not feel ill.
The doctors didn't know how to treat this disease and just prescribed vitamins. They expected Hawking to live only a few years beyond the diagnosis. Death usually occurs as a result of pneumonia or suffocation due to muscle failure. Hawking's doctors told him there was no cure nor treatment. Not knowing what to expect of his disease, he had trouble deciding whether or how to proceed with his work toward his PhD. Although he admits it was a troubling time, he denies popular reports of excessive drinking at that time.
Hawking was a popular student. In 1963 he met a woman named Jane Wilde at a party. She was a student at Westfield College in London. After earning his PhD, Hawking became a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge and he and Jane married in 1965. While she finished her studies she lived in London during the week while Stephen lived in Cambridge. The couple eventually had three children. Robert was born in 1967, Lucy in 1970, and Timothy in 1979.
Hawking continued his studies in cosmology and determined not to let his medical condition stop him from learning and doing all he could. As time progressed, so did Hawking's disease, and indeed he eventually became wheelchair bound and dependent on family and attendants to tend his physical needs, but this did not stop his mind from functioning at a high level.
His subsequent work made it possible for him to do research without lecturing as his ability to speak declined. He became a Professional Fellow. He left the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 and joined the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. He took the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1979.
In 1974, although Hawking could still feed himself and get in and out of bed, things were growing more difficult for his growing family, so they began having research students live in and assist with Hawking's needs. Beginning in 1980 they had nurses attend him, but in 1985 he contracted pneumonia and had a tracheotomy. As a result he needed full time care that was paid for by several foundation grants.
The tracheotomy completely removed his already diminished ability to speak, and communication was difficult and time consuming. A computer designer from California, Walt Woltosz, heard of his condition and sent him a copy of a computer program he'd invented which allowed him to select words from a menu using a hand held switch. Hawking could compose his thoughts this way, and send them to a synthesizer which would say them for him. David Mason of Cambridge Adaptive Communication adapted the system to his wheelchair. He can either save his words or have the synthesizer speak for him. This is how he now writes books, professional papers and gives lectures.
Hawking worked with a physicist named Roger Penrose to discover that Einstein's theory of relativity indicates that space and time began with the Big Bang and ended in black holes. Black holes are a component of quantum physics, or the study of the smallest known material units, atoms and their component particles. They are created when matter collapses inward due to its own gravitational pull.
Hawking first theorized that black holes can never decrease in size nor can they split in two to create two black holes. He also believed that the gravitational pull in a black hole was so great that nothing could ever escape from it. But after the 1967 discovery of pulsars, which are stars that have collapsed and are just about to become black holes, Hawking theorized that instead of being static entities, black holes emit radiation, and therefore are not really "black".
After discussions with Yakov Zeldovich, inventor of Soviet hydrogen bomb, he realized that particles, in fact, do leak from black holes. As matter compresses, it emits radiation into a surrounding curved sphere of space called an "event horizon". As the black hole shrinks into its own gravitational pull, the temperature rises and so does the rate at which particles are emitted into the event horizon. This process is now called Hawking's Radiation. Hawking's Radiation is the process through which a black hole turns in on itself, essentially turning itself inside out, and disintegrating.
In 1981 and 1983, in work with James Hartle, Hawking participated in creating the hypothesis that the universe is never ending in time or space. He hypothesizes that the universe has no physical or temporal boundaries. In other words, space and time have neither beginning nor end.
Professor Stephen W. Hawking has 12 honorary degrees and many other prestigious awards. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He spends his time with his family, which now includes a grandchild, and travels on extensive lecture tours.
