How to Think Like Stephen Hawking

Daniel Smith

• Publisher: Michael O'Mara
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781782435600
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782435617
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Science & Technology Biographies

A unique insight into the mind of one of the world's most extraordinary thinkers. Undoubtedly the most famous scientist on the planet and the very face of physics over the last half-century, Stephen Hawking is remarkable for many reasons. Not least because he has continued to strive to achieve so much while being hamstrung by debilitating illness. He has demonstrated categorically that if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything, no matter your physical state.Of course, it helps if you happen to possess a mind such as his. His work on black holes put him on the map, and he became globally famous for his A Brief History of Time, communicating the most difficult scientific ideas at a period when he'd lost the ability to speak.How to Think Like Stephen Hawking reveals the key motivations, desires and philosophies that make Hawking one of the world's most enduring talents. Studying how he overcame great adversity, fought his demons as well as his detractors and looked back to the origins of the universe, with quotes and passages by and about him, you too can learn to think like the man who claims he can think in eleven dimensions.

Landmarks in a Remarkable Life

1942	Stephen William Hawking is born on 8 January in Oxford, England, to Frank and Isobel Hawking. The family return to their home in North London at the end of the Second World War.
1950	The Hawkings relocate to St Albans, about twenty miles north of London.
1953	Hawking wins a place at St Albans School. In his last year there he is accepted to study at the University of Oxford.
1959	He begins his undergraduate degree in natural sciences at Oxford’s University College, his father’s alma mater.
1962	He completes his degree, receiving a First. Hawking then moves to the University of Cambridge to commence postgraduate studies in cosmology. He also meets his future wife, Jane Wilde.
1963	He is diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
1964	He attends a lecture by Birbeck mathematician Roger Penrose in London. Penrose’s theories on singularities prove highly influential on Hawking.
1965	Hawking marries Jane Wilde.
1966	On finishing his doctorate, he is awarded a fellowship at Cambridge’s Gonville and Caius College. Hawking undertakes research into singularities and black holes, working with Roger Penrose.
1967	Jane Hawking gives birth to a son, Robert.
1969	As his ALS worsens, Hawking begins to use a wheelchair.
1970	He reports that, in accordance with the rules of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the universe may have emerged from a singularity. Jane Hawking gives birth to a daughter, Lucy.
1971	Hawking shows how a black hole’s event horizon expands with time. In the same year, he co-publishes the ‘no-hair’ theorem with Brandon Carter.
1973	He joins the staff at Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). Hawking and George Ellis publish The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time. He is also co-author of four laws of black hole mechanics.
1974	He publishes a paper in the journal Nature entitled ‘Black Hole Explosion’. It introduces to the wider world the theory that makes his name – Hawking radiation. He is also appointed Professor of Gravitational Physics at Cambridge.
1975	Hawking relocates his family to the USA so that he can work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). While there, he meets Kip Thorne, who becomes a long-time collaborator and friend. Meanwhile, Hawking is awarded the Pius XI Gold Medal for Science by the Vatican.
1977	Hawking and Gary Gibbons develop a revolutionary system of Euclidean quantum gravity.
1978	Hawking receives the Albert Einstein Medal.
1979	He is appointed to the prestigious chair of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a post previously held by Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Paul Dirac. He is also made a fellow of the Royal Society. Jane Hawking gives birth to a second son, Timothy.
1982	He is made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
1983	Hawking publishes the ‘no-boundary’ theory in partnership with James Hartle, which describes how the universe could have emerged from nothing.
1985	A bout of pneumonia almost kills him while he is visiting the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. A resulting tracheostomy leaves him unable to speak naturally.
1987	He is awarded the Paul Dirac Medal.
1988	His popular science book, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, is published and becomes an instant classic while breaking sales records.
1989	He is made a Companion of Honour.
1990	Hawking splits from his wife, Jane, and moves in with his former nurse, Elaine Mason.
1993	Publication of Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. Hawking also releases details of his research with John Stewart into ‘thunderbolt singularities’. In addition, he becomes the first person t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• By the same author
• Title page
• Dedication and Copyright page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Landmarks in a Remarkable Life
• Follow Your Own Path
• Natural Talent Helps …
• … But It’s Nothing Without Hard Work and Perseverance
• Grasp the Big Picture
• Stare into the Abyss
• Rewriting the Book
• Tackle the Really Big Questions
• Stand Upon the Shoulders of Giants
• Hawking and Einstein
• Be an Iconoclast
• Have No Limit to Your Ambition
• Imagine the Universe in Your Head
• The Many-Worlds Interpretation
• Don’t Let Misfortune Define You
• What is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis?
• Overturn the Odds
• Keeping a Sense of Humour
• Listen Like Hawking
• Two Heads Are Better Than One
• Joining Forces
• Even a Brilliant Intellect Needs Emotional Succour
• A Brief History of Marriage and Divorce
• Careers Are Made, Not Born
• The Nobel Snub?
• Getting It Wrong is Not a Sin
• Read Like Hawking
• Stand Up for What You Believe in
• Work With Your Intuition
• Write Like Hawking
• How A Brief History of Time Became a Phenomenon
• Enjoy Your Celebrity
• Hawking the TV Guest Star
• Looking to the Future: Is Time Travel Possible?
• The Chronology Protection Conjecture
• Beware, the End is Nigh (But Probably Not That Nigh)
• Are Advanced Civilizations Fated to a Short Existence?
• Is There Anybody Out There?
• Never Stop Challenging Yourself
• Hawking and God
• Hawking’s Legacy
• Selected Bibliography