Stephen Hawking

Dr. Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, (born January 8, 1942) is a British theoretical physicist who has devoted much of his life to probing the spacetime described by general relativity and the singularities where it breaks down. And he’s done most of this work while confined to a wheelchair, brought on by the progressive neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Now Director of Research at the Institute for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge, Hawking is the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post once held by Isaac Newton. He also wrote the international bestseller A Brief History of Time. The book spent more than four years on the London Sunday Times bestseller list—the longest run for any book in history.

While many prominent physicists, cosmologists and astronomers have made important contributions to the study of quantum gravity and cosmology, the impact of Stephen Hawking's contributions to the field truly stand out. Although his work on black hole thermodynamics is perhaps the most well known, Hawking has also made major contributions to the study of singularity theorems in general relativity, black hole uniqueness, quantum fields in curved spacetimes, Euclidean quantum gravity, the wave function of the universe and many other areas as well.

In the late 1960s, Hawking proved that a singularity must have occurred at the birth of the universe. Between 1965 and 1970 Hawking worked on singularities in the theory of general relativity devising new mathematical techniques to study this area of cosmology. Much of his work in this area was done in collaboration with Roger Penrose. From 1970 Hawking began to apply his previous ideas to the study of black holes. In 1974 he first recognized a truly remarkable property of black holes, objects from which nothing was supposed to be able to escape. By taking into account quantum mechanics, he was able to show that black holes can radiate energy as particles are created in their vicinity. His success with proving this made him work from that time on combining the theory of general relativity with quantum theory. Another remarkable achievement of Hawking's using these techniques was his "no boundary proposal" made in 1983 with Jim Hartle of Santa Barbara. Hawking explains that this would mean:- ''... that both time and space are finite in extent, but they don't have any boundary or edge. ... there would be no singularities, and the laws of science would hold everywhere, including at the beginning of the universe.''

In Geneva, at CERN (the big particle accelerator), in the summer of 1985, Hawking caught pneumonia and was rushed to hospital. He was flown back to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where a surgeon carried out a tracheotomy. That operation saved his life but took away his voice. Hawking was given a computer system to enable him to have an electronic voice.

Hawking has played himself on episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "The Simpsons" and "Futurama."

Character Information
Stephen Hawking is a hero of Sheldon, Leonard, Rajesh, and Howard. Howard and Raj were overjoyed to show Sheldon and Leonard a Stephen Hawking lecture from MIT in 1974, before "he became a creepy computer voice," according to Howard, who reveals as much with his characteristic hand-to-mouth impression. (Pilot) Meanwhile, Leonard thought David Underhill did this hysterical impersonation of Stephen Hawking having phone sex with a robotic monotone: "What are you wearing?" (The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis) Raj stated the guys left that fake message from Stephen Hawking on Sheldon's voice mail, with Howard's impression: "I wish to discuss your theories of black holes. Meet me at the Randy’s Donut by the airport at 2:00 a.m." (The Agreement Dissection) He appearred in The Hawking Excitation, following the guest appearance of Leonard Nimoy. During The Hawking Excitation episode, Howard is hired as a technician to maintain his wheelchair and Professor Hawking reads a paper written by Sheldon finding a mistake in it. Sheldon then faints in front of him probably due to embarrassment.

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Stephen Hawking