"Professor Stephen Hawking's spectacular success was against all odds," Rees added
Martin Rees is a British cosmologist, a professor at the University of Cambridge where Prof. Stephen Hawking also worked, the chairman of the Royal Society, the most important scientific body in Britain and one of the most important in the world, and also serves as the British Astronomer Royal since 1995.
"Shortly after I enrolled for a master's degree at Cambridge University in 1964, I encountered another student who had started the degree two years before, who was unsteady on his feet and spoke with great difficulty. It was Stephen Hawking. He had been diagnosed shortly before with a degenerative disease, and he thought he might not survive long enough to even finish his Ph.D. But he lived to be 76 and died on March 14, 2018.” His ashes were laid to rest in Westminster Abbey alongside Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin on Saturday, March 31.
"It was really amazing." Rees writes in an article on The Conversation website. "Astronomers are used to big numbers. But this is a very small number - the chance I would give for him to live a whole life. Even just surviving was a medical miracle, but of course he didn't just survive. He became one of the most famous scientists in the world - who was praised as the world's leading researcher in mathematical physics, for his best-selling books and for his amazing victory over his physical disability."
"It may sound surprising, but Hawking was quite lazy as an undergraduate at Oxford University. However, his genius allowed him to obtain a bachelor's degree in physics with honors and he chose to pursue a research career at the University of Cambridge. Within a few years after the onset of his illness, he was confined to a wheelchair, and his speech was an indistinct croak that only those who knew him could interpret. In other ways, luck favored him. He married a family friend, Jane Wilde, who provided him and their three children with a supportive home life."
Early work
"The sixties were an exciting time in astronomy and cosmology. This was the decade when evidence for black holes and the big bang began to emerge. At Cambridge, Hawking focused on the new mathematical concepts developed by the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, who was then studying at University College London, where it was the heyday of Einstein's general relativity research.”
"Using Penrose's method, Hawking understood that the universe must emerge from a "singular point" - a point where all the laws of physics break. He also realized that the region of the black hole's event horizon—a point from which light cannot escape—can never shrink. In the decades that followed, observational support for these ideas grew stronger – most spectacularly with the 2016 announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves generated by the collision of two black holes.”
"Hawking was elected to the Royal Society, the main British scientific academy, at an extremely young age - 32. He was then so weak that most of us suspected that he would no longer be able to reach great heights in science, but for Hawking this was still only the beginning."
"He worked in the same building with me. I often pushed his wheelchair into his office, and he would ask me to open a sophisticated book on quantum theory - the science of atoms, not a subject that had interested him until now. He would sit for long hours without moving - he could not even turn the pages without help. I remember wondering what was going through his mind, and if his powers had failed. But within a year, he came up with his best idea ever folded into an equation he said he wanted to engrave on his tombstone. "
Scientific planet
"Scientific breakthroughs involve discovering a connection between phenomena that until then seemed unrelated. Hawking's "eureka moment" revealed a deep and unexpected connection between gravity and quantum theory. He predicted that black people would not be completely black, but would radiate a characteristic energy.”
"This radiation is only significant for black holes that are much less massive than stars - and none of them have been found so far. However, "Hawking radiation" had very deep implications for mathematical physics - laying the mathematical foundation for string theory was to confirm his idea."
Indeed, string theorist Andrew Strominger of Harvard University (who recently collaborated with Hawking) said that this paper caused "more sleepless nights among theoretical physicists than any scientific paper in history." The key issue is whether information that seems to be lost when objects fall into a black hole can in principle return in the form of radiation when the black hole evaporates. If not, then it violates a deep principle of general physics. Hawking initially thought that such information was lost, but later changed his mind. "
"Hawking continued to search for new connections between the very large (the universe) and the very small (atoms and quantum theory) as well as to gain deeper insights into the beginning of our universe, and to answer questions such as was our big bang the only one? He had an extraordinary ability to figure things out in his head. But he also worked with students and colleagues who wrote formulas on a blackboard. He would consult a bulletin board, and say if he agreed with what was written and if he had any suggestion."
"He was particularly influential for his contribution to 'cosmic inflation' - a theory that many believe describes the earliest stages of our expanding universe. A key issue is to understand the primordial seeds that eventually evolved into galaxies. Hawking proposed (as did the Russian theorist Vyacheslav Mokanov independently) that these were "quantum fluctuations" (temporary changes in the amount of energy at a point in space) - somewhat analogous to those involved in "Hawking radiation" from black holes. He also took further steps towards linking the two great theories of 20th century physics: quantum theory and Einstein's theory of gravity dealing with space-time.”
A decline in his health and the worship around him
"In 1985, Hawking fell ill with pneumonia. He had to undergo tracheostomy surgery, which eliminated even the limited powers of speech he had. It had been over ten years since he could write, or even use a keyboard. Without speech, the only way he could communicate was by directing his eye to one of the letters of the alphabet on a large board in front of him.”
"But he was saved by technology. He still used one hand, and a computer controlled by a single lever allowed him to form sentences. These would be translated into speech by an American-accented Android synthesizer that later became his trademark.”
"His lectures were, of course, prepared in advance, but every conversation turned into a struggle. Each word involved several presses of the lever, so that even writing a sentence required several minutes. "
"He learned to spare words. His comments were aphoristic or oracular (concise sayings), but they were often sharp. In his later years he became too weak to control this machine effectively, even with facial muscles or eye movements, and to his great frustration, the way he communicated with the world became even slower.”
"At the time of his tracheostomy surgery, he had a rough draft of a book, which he hoped would describe his ideas to a wide readership and enable him to earn money for his two older children, who were then of college age. After recovering from the pneumonia, he returned to work and helped the editor to write the book. When the American edition of "A Brief History of Time" appeared, the printers made some mistakes (for example, an image was turned upside down). The publishers tried to return the printed books to the publisher. To their astonishment, all the copies have already been sold. This was the first evidence that the book was destined for success and would be read by millions of people around the world."
"He quickly became a cult figure, appearing in popular television programs, from symposia to the series The Big Bang Theory. This was probably because the concept of an imprisoned mind wandering the universe clearly captured people's imaginations. If he had won equal distinctions in terms of their scientific importance, for example, in genetics and not in cosmology, he probably would not have achieved the same resonance in the world public."
"As shown in the movie The Theory of Everything, which tells the human story behind his struggle, Hawking was far from the archetype of a 'geek' scientist. His personality remains unquestioned despite his frustrations and shortcomings. He had common sense, and was ready to express strong political opinions."
"However, the downside of his iconic status was that his comments attracted excessive attention even on subjects in which he had no special expertise - for example, philosophy, or the dangers lurking in aliens or intelligent machines. Sometimes he was involved in events in the media, where his speeches were written by promoters of interests that might have been ambivalent in his eyes."
"Ultimately, Hawking's life was shaped by the tragedy that struck him when he was only 22 years old. He himself said that everything that happened since then was a bonus. And what a triumph his life was. His name will live on in the history of science, and he will live on in the hearts of the millions of people whose cosmic horizons were expanded by his best-selling books. He also inspired millions through a unique example of achievement against all odds – an expression of incredible will and determination.”
Photo: Hawking at the University of Cambridge. Lwp Kommunikáció / Flickr, CC BY-SA
to the article on The Conversation website
- Prof. Stephen Hawking died in his sleep * He studied black holes and was a social activist
- Artificial intelligence - the most terrible event in human history?
- Translation of the transcript of Hawking's lecture on the beginning of the universe at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 2006
- Hawking, intelligent aliens may exist. You should be careful of them
