1.2 The Scientist

Hawking studied mathematics and physics at University College, Oxford (B.A., 1962), and Trinity Hall, Cambridge (Ph.D., 1966). He was elected a research fellow at Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge. Hawking worked primarily in the field of general relativity and particularly on the physics of black holes. In 1971 he suggested the formation, following the big bang, of numerous objects containing as much as 1,000,000,000 tons of mass but occupying only the space of a proton. These objects, called mini black holes, are unique in that their immense mass and gravity require that they be ruled by the laws of relativity, while their minute size requires that the laws of quantum mechanics apply to them also. His most remarkable result, published in 1974, was that black holes could in fact emit particles in the form of thermal radiation - the so-called Hawking radiation.

Still, in contrast to the theories spawned by his idols, Einstein, Galileo, and Newton, Hawking's ideas about black holes have not been substantiated. So to consider Hawking, their historical equal is premature. He is not likely to win a Nobel Prize (those are reserved for verified discoveries) , and a collective scientific assessment of him will not emerge for decades, until colleagues have attempted to prove his theories. However, there is no question that Hawking has shaped the nature of scientific debate in the post-Einstein era.

Hawking can also be wrong. In 1985, for example, he brashly proclaimed that when and if the universe stopped expanding and began to contract, time would reverse and everything that had ever happened would be rerun in reverse. Eighteen months later, he sheepishly admitted his mistake. Earlier, after trashing another scientist's notion that the 19th century theory of thermodynamics could be applied to black-hole theory, he recanted and began applying it himself.
Hawking's work greatly spurred efforts to theoretically delineate the properties of black holes, objects about which it was previously thought that nothing could be known. His work was also important because it showed these propertie's relationship to the laws of classical thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.

Hawking's contributions to physics earned him many exceptional honours. In 1974 the Royal Society elected him one of its youngest fellows. He became professor of gravitational physics at Cambridge in 1977, and in 1979 he was appointed to Cambridge's Lucasian professorship of mathematics, a post once held by Isaac Newton.
There is one indisputable fact about Stephen Hawking. The British theoretical physicist is a wizard of applied mathematics and a titan of astronomy. Hawking peers light-years away into space without a telescope and conquers uncharted mathematical terrain without a computer. It is admirable-amazing, even-that Lou Gehrig's disease has not impeded Hawking's brilliant career. As a theoretician, he is not expected to spend decades hunched over a radio telescope gathering data. Instead, he ponders complex ideas and deciphers brain-numbing equations in his head, searching for new explanations, new connections. Hawking's mind has grown mighty with time, tirelessly producing equations and theories that inspire and challenge researchers all over the world. Hawking himself has said that lacking a functional body has forced him to use his brain more and made his thinking more original.