Stephen Hawking Remembered

1942–2018 The world suffered REMEMBERING an immeasurable loss when Stephen Hawking died March 14, 2018. ANDRÉ PATTENDEN/COURTESY STEPHEN HAWKING Stephen Hawking Science received a heavy blow this year with the loss of its leading luminary. by David J. Eicher f you felt the world of science collec- Robert Wilson discovered the so-called cos- first confirmed stellar black hole. Hawking tively shudder this spring, it was mic microwave background radiation, the had requested a subscription to Popular because the field lost its most brilliant faint, omnipresent echo of the Big Bang. Mechanics; Thorne had wagered a subscrip- mind. Stephen William Hawking — Hawking’s determination for the Big Bang tion to Penthouse. Stephen anted up and sent theoretical physicist, mathematician, was turning out to be correct. the magazines to Pasadena. philosopher, author, and genius — died in Hawking, of course, became immensely Hawking’s research rocketed onward in Ihis home in Cambridge, England, at age 76. famous in the years to come through his many areas, focusing on cosmology and the- In this terrible event, humanity lost perhaps brilliant studies of astrophysics and cosmol- oretical astrophysics. He established his rep- its most brilliant and original thinker. The ogy. He finished his Ph.D. in 1966 on the utation of being the smartest guy around by world is certainly now a darker place. topic of “Properties of Expanding Universes,” extending and confirming many of Einstein’s Born in Oxford in 1942, Hawking was the and it shared top physics honors that year ideas. And all of this was accentuated by his son of parents who worked in medical with a paper written by one of his distin- terrible disease, which progressively pushed research. Schooled in London, he showed guished professors, Roger Penrose. him into being aided ever more by sophisti- interest and aptitude in science and leaned Along with Penrose and others, Hawking cated wheelchairs, supplemented by speech toward a scientific career when he began picked up the mantle of Einstein, investigat- therapy computers that would allow him to studying at the University of Oxford. He ing many cosmological ideas during the early produce sentences with eye and mouth emerged socially, and developed interests in years of his professorship at Cambridge. He movements, and to program and deliver classical music and science fiction. eventually took on the title spectacular talks that Hawking took up graduate studies at the of Lucasian Professor of would amaze his colleagues University of Cambridge in 1962. Interested Mathematics at the vener- and fascinate the public. in relativity theory and cosmology, he was able institution, occupying The world will never I was fortunate enough initially disappointed that he drew Dennis the same chair once held be the same. But now to meet Stephen as a fellow Sciama as a supervisor rather than the more by Isaac Newton centuries Stephen is with the member of the Starmus famous Fred Hoyle. At this time, suddenly, earlier. Festival Board of Directors. he began to feel alarming symptoms and was Most of Hawking’s work stars he loved. A good friend of the festi- diagnosed with motor neuron disease, an during the late 1960s and val’s founder and director, increasing paralysis and loss of muscular 1970s focused on black Garik Israelian, Stephen control similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease (or holes, and this led to his great friendship and was a profound supporter of this celebration ALS). This put Hawking into a depression; he collaboration with Caltech’s Kip Thorne. of science and music. He really loved music had to fight through the debilitating symp- Aside from deciphering the physics of black and was extremely funny, as anyone who saw toms to carry on with any hope of his career. holes, Hawking postulated what came to be one of his talks knows. Initially, doctors proclaimed he had perhaps known as Hawking radiation — that black Stephen taught me to never be afraid two years left to live. holes, in some cases, could leak radiation over again. After I delivered an hourlong talk on In June 1964, Hawking began to stand out long time intervals, and possibly evaporate. astrophysics with Stephen and his nurses in from his young colleagues, not because of his His immense grasp of mathematics, despite the front row, I thought, my goodness, that’s disease but because of his unusual brilliance. increasing illness and inability to easily com- it. The fact that he liked it and was such a He publicly called out the great Hoyle at a municate, stunned the science world. kind person, so concerned about Earth and lecture, questioning his ideas. Hoyle was a The theoretical physics of black holes all its creatures, made the recent news harder proponent of the so-called steady state model, was one thing; finding them was another. to hear. which suggested that the cosmos could col- Postulated in the 18th century, these regions I was in Costa Rica staring at the sky lapse on itself eventually and then rebound in of intense gravity were very hard to identify. when someone ran by and shouted out the a series of expansions and contractions. The In the early 1970s, the best candidate was terrible news. The world will never be the other leading cosmological idea, the Big Cygnus X-1. Hawking made a bet with same. But now Stephen is with the stars he Bang, was gaining traction during this time, Thorne. If Cyg X-1 turned out to be a black loved. and Hawking supported it. In this model, the hole, Stephen would owe Kip a magazine cosmos would expand forever, without a subscription. If the opposite were true, Kip David J. Eicher is Editor of Astronomy and cyclic contraction. Shortly thereafter, in fact, would owe Stephen. By 1990, the verdict was a member of the Starmus Festival Board of Bell Labs astronomers Arno Penzias and in, and Cygnus X-1 was determined to be the Directors, which also included Stephen Hawking. WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 13.

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