Title : Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind
Authors : Kitty Ferguson
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Pages : 320
ISBN : 13: 978-0230340602:
Price : $17.46
Stephen Hawking turns 70 this year. In celebration of this noteworthy event, science writer Kitty Ferguson has brought out a new biography him titled "Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind".Stephen Hawking has been an iconic figure in physics for the last half a century,making many groundbreaking discoveries on the nature of the universe. But his body has become increasingly trapped by the advanceof Lou Gehrig’s disease, which has bound himto a wheelchair, without speech or movement except for a few facial muscles. But still he continues to inspire millions, drawing crowds wherever he lectures.
Born during World War II, Hawking grew up in an Addams-family-style house with his two sisters and an adopted brother in the town of St. Albans, just north of London.Outgoing and playful, Hawking as a child didn't make the best marks in grade school, for he stubbornly absorbed only those subjects he believed worth knowing. In college at Oxford, Hawking was recognized as brilliant but underchallenged. Hawking himself admits that it was his ensuing illness that put an end to his academic laziness. And after he moved to Cambridge University for his doctoral studies, it was his marriage to Jane Wilde, that gave him the will to live.
Hawking chose to specialize in cosmology at a time when it was more speculation than science, a risky choice.Yet, upon obtaining his Ph.D. in 1966, he found almost immediate success. First, he proved that the Big Bang not only appeared to emerge from an infinitely dense point of mass-energy, but that it must have. Then he discovered a vital link between gravity and quantum mechanics, two fields completely incompatible before then.Here Ferguson provides engaging and helpful explanations of the physics behind these triumphs.
In the 1970s, Hawking discovered what is now called "Hawking radiation." At the time, his discovery was controversial because many scientists. But Hawking postulated that if two individual particles were right at the edge of a black hole, and one of them happened to fall into the black hole, then the other particle could escape out into space, and appear as radiation being emitted from the black hole.Hawking has also pursued what is called "theory of everything," which is conceptually an idea that there should be one theory from which everything else in the universe can be explained or derived.
The author also reveals what she could not report the first time around: Behind the curtain during the 1980s was a marriage in distress. As Hawking's condition worsened - he was no longer able to write, walk or speak well enough to be understood - and Jane was pushed into the shadows amid his growing fame, strains grew between them, particularly regarding their views on religion (she for, he against).Hawking himself found solace with one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, whom he eventually wed in 1995 (and divorced 11 years later in the wake of allegations that Mason was abusive).
Hawking's life at this stage stands in sharp contrast to his earlier years. With the 1988 publication of his phenomenal best-seller "A Brief History of Time," Hawking became an international celebrity - more than that, a pop icon. He now inspired operas, film documentaries and plays. Ferguson's book almost becomes a travelogue as Hawking jets around the world to attend conferences, collect myriad awards, guest star on "Star Trek" or lecture on space travel and extraterrestrial intelligence.Along the way, Hawking's science became less rigorous and more exploratory.
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