Word: stephen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Enthralled by physics, Stephen concentrated in the subject at Oxford's University College, but did not distinguish himself. He partied, served as coxswain for the second-string crew and studied only an hour or so a day. Moving on to Cambridge for graduate work in relativity, he found the going rough, partly because of some puzzling physical problems; he stumbled frequently and seemed to be getting clumsy...
Fetching coffee, the nurse placed a bib on Stephen, who has difficulty swallowing, gently held his head forward and poured the beverage, a sip at a time, into his mouth. Meanwhile, Hawking was responding to a question from a student who knelt to read the answer as it slowly took shape on the dim liquid-crystal screen. The conversation shifted to creativity and how mathematicians seem to reach a creative peak in their early 20s. Hawking's computer beeped. "I'm over the hill," he said, to a chorus of laughter...
Most of Hawking's working day is spent in his cluttered, book-lined office, amid photographs of his wife Jane and their three children, Robert, 20, Lucy, 17, and Timmy, 8. There Stephen painstakingly writes technical papers or speeches on a desktop computer, stopping frequently to consult with his assistant, Graduate Student Raymond Laflamme, 27, who sits at his side. Occasionally, the artificial voice says "Lift," and Laflamme hoists up Hawking, who has slumped down in his chair. The word "glasses" signals that his spectacles have slid too far down his nose and must be pushed back...
What particularly intrigued Stephen was singularities, strange beasts predicted by general relativity. Einstein's equations indicated that when a star several times larger than the sun exhausts its nuclear fuel and collapses, its matter crushes together at its center with such force that it forms a singularity, an infinitely dense point with no dimensions and irresistible gravity. A voluminous region surrounding the singularity becomes a "black hole," from which -- because of that immense gravity -- nothing, not even light, can escape...
...Stephen later discerned several new characteristics of black holes and demonstrated that the stupendous forces of the Big Bang would have created mini-black holes, each with a mass about that of a terrestrial mountain, but no larger than the subatomic proton. Then, applying the quantum theory (which accurately describes the random, uncertain subatomic world) instead of general relativity (which, it turns out, falters in that tiny realm), Hawking was startled to find that the mini-black holes must emit particles and radiation. Even more remarkable, the little holes would gradually evaporate and, 10 billion years or so after their...