第1个回答 2009-01-01
斯蒂芬·威廉·霍金，1942年1月8日出生，曾先后毕业于牛津大学和剑桥大学三一学院，并获剑桥大学哲学博士学位。在大学学习后期，开始患“肌肉萎缩性脊髓侧索硬化症”（运动神经元疾病），半身不遂。他克服身患残疾的种种困难，于1965年进入剑桥大学冈维尔和凯厄斯学院任研究员。这个时期，他在研究宇宙起源问题上，创立了宇宙之始是“无限密度的一点”的著名理论。1969年起任冈维尔和凯厄斯学院科学杰出成就研究员。1972－1975年先后在剑桥大学天文研究所、应用数学和理论物理学部进行研究工作，1975－1977年任重力物理学高级讲师，1977－1979年任教授，1979年起任卢卡斯讲座数学教授。其间，1974年当选为皇家学会最年轻的会员。1974－1975年为美国加利福尼亚理工学院费尔柴尔德讲座功勋学者。1978年获世界理论物理研究的最高奖爱因斯坦奖。霍金的成名始于对黑洞的研究成果。在爱因斯坦之后融合了20世纪另一个伟大理论——量子理论，他认为，宇宙是有限的，但无法找到边际，这如同地球表面有限但无法找到边际一样；时间也是有开始的，大约始于150亿到200亿年前。1988年获沃尔夫物理学奖。
1985年霍金丧失语言能力，表达思想唯一的工具是一台电脑声音合成器。他用仅能活动的几个手指操纵一个特制的鼠标器在电脑屏幕上选择字母、单词来造句，然后通过电脑播放声音，通常制造一个句子要5、6分钟，为了合成一个小时的录音演讲要准备10天。1988年写成科普著作《时间简史》，至1995年10月该书发行量已超过2500万册，译成几十种语言，中译本也已出版。
著有《空间－时间的大比例结构》（1973年与人合著）、《广义相对论：爱因斯坦百年评论》（1979年与人合编）、《超空间和超重力》（1981年与人合编）、《宇宙之始》（1983年与人合编）、《时间简史》（1988年）。
1990年与结婚25年之久的妻子简·怀尔德离婚。1995年9月16日，与他的护士伊莱恩·梅森结婚。
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes, and his popular works in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general. These include the runaway popular science bestseller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
斯蒂芬・威廉Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, (被负担1942 1月8 日) 是英国的理论物理学家。Hawking 是数学Lucasian 教授在剑桥大学, 和Gonville 和Caius 学院, 剑桥的家伙。他为人所知为他的对宇宙论和量子重力的领域的贡献, 特别是就黑洞状况, 和他谈论他自己的理论和宇宙论总之的他普遍的工作。这些包括逃亡大众科学畅销书时间的简要的历史, 停留在英国的星期天时间畅销书名单为record-breaking 237 个星期。
Hawking grew up outside London in an intellectual family. His father was a physician and specialist in tropical diseases; his mother was active in the Liberal Party. He was an awkward schoolboy, but knew from early on that he wanted to study science. He became increasingly skilled in mathematics and in 1958 he and some friends built a primitive computer that actually worked. In 1959 he won a scholarship to Oxford University, where his intellectual capabilities became more noticeable. In 1962 he got his degree with honors and went to Cambridge University to pursue a PhD in cosmology. There he became intrigued with black holes (first proposed by J. Robert Oppenheimer) and "space-time singularities," or events in which the laws of physics seem to break down. After receiving his PhD, he stayed at Cambridge, becoming known even in his 20s for his pioneering ideas and use of Einstein's formulas, as well as his questioning of older, established physicists.
In 1968 he joined the staff of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and began to apply the laws of thermodynamics to black holes by means of very complicated mathematics. He published the very technical book, Large Scale Structure of Space-Time but soon afterwards made a startling discovery. It had always been thought that nothing could escape a black hole; Hawking suggested that under certain conditions, a black hole could emit subatomic particles. That is now know as Hawking Radiation. He continued working on the theory of the origin of the universe, and in doing so found ways to link relativity (gravity) with quantum mechanics (the inner workings of atoms). This contributed enormously to what physicists call Grand Unified Theory, a way of explaining, in one equation, all physical matter in the universe.
At the remarkably young age of 32, he was named a fellow of the Royal Society. He received the Albert Einstein Award, the most prestigious in theoretical physics. And in 1979, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, the same post held by Sir Isaac Newton 300 years earlier. There he began to question the big bang theory, which by then most had accepted. Perhaps, he suggested, there was never a start and would be no end, but just change -- a constant transition of one "universe" giving way to another through glitches in space-time. All the while, he was digging into exploding black holes, string theory, and the birth of black holes in our own galaxy.
In 1988 Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes , explaining the evolution of his thinking about the cosmos for a general audience. It became a best-seller of long standing and established his reputation as an accessible genius. He wrote other popular articles and appeared in movies and television. He remains extremely busy, his work hardly slowed by Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that affects muscle control) for which he uses a wheelchair and speaks through a computer and voice synthesizer.
"My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."