Kitty Ferguson

Stephen Hawking (eBook, ePUB)

A Life Well Lived

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

In 1963 Stephen Hawking was given two years to live. Defying all the odds, he died in March 2018 at age seventy-six as the most celebrated scientist in the world. This carefully researched and updated biography and tribute gives a rich picture of Hawking's remarkable life - his childhood, the heart-rending beginning of his struggle with motor neurone disease, his ever-increasing international fame, and his long personal battle for survival in pursuit of a scientific understanding of the universe.
From more recent years, Kitty Ferguson describes his inspiring leadership at the London Paralympic Games, the release of the film The Theory of Everything, his continuing work on black holes and the origin of the universe, the discovery of 'supertranslations', and the astounding 'Starshot' program. Here also are his intense concern for the future of the Earth and his use of his celebrity to fight for environmental and humanitarian causes, and, finally, a ground-breaking paper he was working on at the time of his death, in which he took issue with some of his own earlier theories. Throughout, Ferguson summarizes and explains the cutting-edge science in which Hawking was engaged and offers vivid first-hand descriptions of his funeral in Cambridge and the interment of his ashes in Westminster Abbey.
This is an amazing and revealing tribute, assessing Hawking's legacy in and out of science.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Transworld
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. November 2011
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781448110476
• Artikelnr.: 37900852

Autorenporträt

Kitty Ferguson was born in San Antonio, Texas. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and was for many years a successful professional musician, conducting and performing oratorio, early music and chamber music. In 1986 she moved to England where her husband was a Visiting Fellow and later Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. During this and many subsequent periods of residence at Cambridge, Kitty Ferguson audited graduated lectures and seminars in the Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics and got to know some of the legendary figures in those fields, including Stephen Hawking. In 1987 she retired from music to devote herself full time to writing about science.

Inhaltsangabe

PART I: 1942-1975
1. "The quest for a theory of everything"
2. "Our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we
live in"
3. "Equal to anything!"
4. "The realization that I had an incurable disease, that was likely to
kill me in a few years, was a bit of a shock"
5. "The big question was, was there a beginning or not?"
6. "There is a singularity in our past"
PART II: 1970-1990
7. "These people must think we are used to an astronomical standard of
living"
8. "Scientists usually assume there is a unique link between the past and
the future, cause and effect. If information is lost, this link does not
exist"
9. "The odds against a universe that has produced life like ours are
immense"
10. "In all my travels, I have not managed to fall off the edge of the
world"
11. "It's turtles all the way down"
12. "The field of baby universes is in its infancy"
PART II: 1990-2000
13. "Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?"
14. "Between film roles, I enjoy solving physics problems"
15. "I think we have a good chance of avoiding both Armageddon and a new
Dark Age"
16. "It seems clear to me"
PART IV: 2000-2011
17. "An expanding horizon of possibilities"
18. "Grandad has wheels"
19. "I've always gone in a somewhat different direction"
20. "My name is Stephen Hawking: physicist, cosmologist and something of a
dreamer"
Glossary
Suggested Further Reading
Bibliography
Index