Who is Hawking radiation named for?
British physicist and mathematician Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8,1942, three hundred years after the birth of Isaac Newton and three hundred years after the death of Galileo Galilei. He is similar to these two scientific geniuses in that he has a brilliant mind, and his theories have advanced our knowledge of the cosmos. His similarity to Newton even extends to academic appointments. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a position once held by Newton. By the age of fourteen, Hawking knew he wanted to study mathematics and physics. While earning his doctorate at Cambridge, Hawking realized that his motor skills had begun to deteriorate. For example, he had a tendency to slur his words and had trouble tying his shoes. He was taken to a specialist and diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). The disorder causes the muscles, but not the mind, to deteriorate. Hawking was told he had two years to live, which sent him into a terrible depression.
After two years, Hawking's condition stabilized. His body had become very frail and he moved about with the aid of a wheelchair, but he learned to write using a specialized computer attached to his wheelchair and to speak through a machine called a speech synthesizer. While in graduate school, Hawking met mathematician Roger Penrose, who introduced him to the concept of black holes. This subject quickly became, and remains to this day, the focus of Hawking's life work. Hawking has written several best-selling books that explain concepts of astronomy in a non-technical way. His most famous book, A Brief History of Time, has even been made into a movie.
