史蒂芬·霍金Stephen Hawking

史蒂芬·霍金的父母住在伦敦，他的父亲在那里从事医学研究。然而，二战期间伦敦是个危险的地方，霍金的母亲被送到较安全的牛津镇，霍金在那里出生。一家人很快团聚，住在伦敦北部的海格特，霍金在那里开始上学。

1950年，霍金的父亲搬到了Mill Hill的医学研究所。全家搬到St Albans，以便去Mill Hill的路程更容易。霍金上了St Albans女子高中（该校招收10岁以下的男孩）。他长大后上了St Albans学校，但他父亲希望他参加奖学金考试去上Westminster公学。然而，霍金在考试期间生病了，留在了他从11岁起就就读的St Albans学校。霍金在[2]中写道：-

我在那里接受的教育，即使不比我在Westminster所能接受的更好，也与之相当。我从未发现我缺乏社交风度是一种障碍。

霍金在中学最后两年想专攻数学，他的数学老师激励他学习这门学科。然而霍金的父亲强烈反对这个想法，霍金被说服把化学作为学校的主要科目。他父亲的部分理由是，他希望霍金去牛津大学学院，那是他自己上过的学院，而那个学院没有数学会士。

1959年3月，霍金参加了奖学金考试，目标是去牛津学习自然科学。尽管觉得自己考得很差，他还是获得了一项展览奖学金，在牛津大学学院，他在自然科学学位中专攻物理。1962年他勉强获得一等学位，在[1]中他解释了当时的态度如何对他不利：-

当时牛津盛行的态度非常反工作。你应该不费力气就很出色，或者接受自己的局限，拿个四等学位。为了获得更高等级的学位而努力学习，被视为平庸之人的标志——这是牛津词汇中最糟糕的绰号。

霍金搬到剑桥，开始研究广义相对论和宇宙论，这对一个只有很少数学背景的人来说是个困难的领域。霍金注意到他在牛津的最后一年变得相当笨拙，当他在剑桥第一学期结束后的1962年圣诞节回家时，他的母亲说服他去看医生。

1963年初，他在医院花了两周做检查，被诊断出运动神经元病（卢·格里克病）。他的病情迅速恶化，医生预测他活不到完成博士学位。然而霍金写道：-

……尽管我的未来笼罩着一片乌云，我惊讶地发现，我比以往更享受当下的生活。我开始在研究上取得进展……

他的研究之所以取得进展，是因为他遇到了一个想与之结婚的女孩，并意识到自己必须完成博士学位才能找到工作，所以：-

……因此，我一生中第一次开始工作。令我惊讶的是，我发现我喜欢工作。

1966年完成博士学位后，霍金获得了剑桥大学冈维尔与凯斯学院的奖学金。起初他的职位是研究员，但后来他成为冈维尔与凯斯学院的教授研究员。1973年，他离开天文研究所，加入剑桥大学应用数学与理论物理系。1977年，他成为剑桥大学引力物理学教授。1979年，霍金被任命为剑桥大学卢卡斯数学教授。那个在伽利略去世整整300年后出生的人，现在在剑桥大学担任艾萨克·牛顿的讲席。

1965年至1970年间，霍金研究广义相对论中的奇点，设计新的数学技术来研究宇宙学的这一领域。他在这一领域的大部分工作是与罗杰·彭罗斯合作完成的，当时罗杰·彭罗斯在伦敦Birkbeck College。从1970年起，霍金开始将他以前的想法应用于黑洞的研究。

继续这项关于黑洞的工作，霍金在1970年发现了一个显著的性质。利用quantum theory和广义相对论，他能够证明黑洞可以发射辐射。他成功证明这一点使他从那时起致力于将广义相对论与量子理论结合起来。1971年，霍金研究了宇宙的创生，并预测在大爆炸之后，会创造出许多像$10^{9}$吨那么重但只有质子大小的物体。这些迷你黑洞具有由广义相对论支配的强大引力，而量子力学定律将适用于那么小的物体。

霍金使用这些技术的另一项显著成就是他在1983年与圣巴巴拉的吉姆·哈特尔共同提出的“无边界设想”。霍金解释说，这意味着：-

……时间和空间在范围上都是有限的，但它们没有任何边界或边缘。……不会有奇点，科学定律将在各处成立，包括宇宙的开端。

1982年，霍金决定写一本关于宇宙学的通俗读物。到1984年，他已经完成了A Brief History of Time的初稿。然而，霍金又要遭受进一步的疾病：-

1985年夏天，我在日内瓦的CERN，那个大型粒子加速器那里。……我得了肺炎，被紧急送往医院。日内瓦的医院向我的妻子建议，不值得继续维持生命支持机器。但她完全不同意。我被空运回剑桥的阿登布鲁克医院，一位名叫Roger Grey的外科医生在那里进行了气管切开术。那次手术救了我的命，但夺走了我的声音。

霍金获得了一套计算机系统，使他能够拥有电子声音。正是在这些困难中，他修订了A Brief History of Time的草稿，该书于1988年出版。这本书以难以预测的方式打破了销售记录。到1995年5月，它已在The Sunday Times畅销书榜单上停留了237周，打破了此前184周的记录。这一壮举记录在1998 Guinness Book of Records中。那里还记录了平装版于1995年4月6日出版，并在3天内达到畅销书第一名。到1993年4月，A Brief History of Time在美国已有40个精装版，在英国有39个精装版。

2002年，霍金出版了On the shoulders of giants. The great works of physics and astronomy。这本由他编辑的书包含了以下几乎完整版本的再版：尼古拉·哥白尼，On the revolution of the heavenly spheres（1543年）；伽利略，Dialogues concerning two new sciences（1638年）；约翰内斯·开普勒，Harmony of the world（Book Five）（1618年）；艾萨克·牛顿，Principia（1687年）；以及阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的七篇关于相对论的论文。每部作品前都有霍金的评论。此外，从2002年1月7日到10日，在剑桥举办了一个工作坊和研讨会，以庆祝霍金的60岁生日。会议论文集于2003年出版，James T Liu在一篇评论中写道：-

虽然许多杰出的物理学家、宇宙学家和天文学家对量子引力和宇宙学的研究做出了重要贡献，但霍金在该领域的贡献的影响确实突出。尽管他在黑洞热力学方面的工作也许是最著名的，霍金还在广义相对论中的奇点定理、黑洞唯一性、弯曲时空中的量子场、欧几里得量子引力、宇宙波函数以及许多其他领域的研究中做出了重大贡献。除了自己的工作，霍金还担任了一批杰出学生的顾问和导师。此外，很难想象在编制任何量子宇宙学研究者的名单时，不包括大量霍金的学生和亲密同事。因此，为庆祝他的60岁生日而在剑桥CMS聚集的团体包括了该领域的一些领先理论家。

2005年，霍金出版了Information loss in black holes，其中他提出了信息丢失悖论的解决方案。同年，Black holes and the information paradox 出版，这是霍金于2004年在都柏林举行的第17届国际广义相对论和引力会议上所作著名演讲的文字记录。2007年，他出版了God created the integers. The mathematical breakthroughs that changed history。这是霍金编辑的另一本选集，包含二十一位数学家作品的选段。对于每位数学家，他提供了简短的传记，并将选段置于其数学背景中。

当然，霍金因其卓越成就已经获得并将继续获得大量荣誉。他于1974年当选为皇家学会会士，是其最年轻的会士之一。1975年，他被授予亚瑟·爱丁顿奖章，1976年获得皇家学会颁发的休斯奖章，1979年被授予阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦奖章，1982年被女王授予大英帝国司令勋章，1985年获得皇家天文学会金质奖章，1986年当选为宗座科学院成员。他继续获得重大荣誉，如1988年著名的沃尔夫物理学奖。次年，他获得了阿斯图里亚斯亲王奖和谐奖，并被授予荣誉同伴勋章。1999年，他获得了美国物理学会的朱利叶斯·埃德加·利林菲尔德奖：-

……因其在引力物理学中的大胆与创造力，最突出地体现在预言黑洞应当发出黑体辐射并蒸发，以及其将抽象思想变得对专家、通才和公众同样易于理解且令人兴奋的独特天赋。

2003年，霍金被授予凯斯西储大学的迈克尔逊法兰克·莫雷奖，2006年又被授予皇家学会的科普利奖章。后一项奖项于2006年8月24日宣布，并于2006年11月30日在学会的年度周年纪念日上颁发给霍金，以纪念该学会于1660年成立。这是科普利奖章设立275周年，授予霍金的方式也别具一格。他获得的奖章曾由英国宇航员皮尔斯·塞勒斯在一次前往国际空间站的航天飞机任务中携带。皇家学会主席马丁·里斯说：-

自阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦以来，霍金对我们对引力的理解做出了与任何人相当的贡献。这枚奖章是对其跨越40多年的惊人研究生涯的恰当认可。

皮尔斯·塞勒斯说：-

对于所有参与探索宇宙的人来说，霍金是一位无可争议的英雄。他对科学的贡献是独一无二的，他不断激励着每一个思考的人。STS-121任务机组能将他的奖章带入太空是一种荣誉。我们认为这尤其合适，因为霍金毕生都在思考更宏大的宇宙。

霍金回答说：-

这是一枚非常杰出的奖章。它曾授予达尔文、阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦和克里克。能与他们为伍，我深感荣幸。

Stephen Hawking's parents lived in London where his father was undertaking research into medicine. However, London was a dangerous place during World War II and Stephen's mother was sent to the safer town of Oxford where Stephen was born. The family were soon back together living in Highgate, north London, where Stephen began his schooling.

In 1950 Stephen's father moved to the Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill. The family moved to St Albans so that the journey to Mill Hill was easier. Stephen attended St Albans High School for Girls (which took boys up to the age of 10). When he was older he attended St Albans school but his father wanted him to take the scholarship examination to go to Westminster public school. However Stephen was ill at the time of the examinations and remained at St Albans school which he had attended from the age of 11. Stephen writes in [2]:-

I got an education there that was as good as, if not better than, that I would have had at Westminster. I have never found that my lack of social graces has been a hindrance.

Hawking wanted to specialise in mathematics in his last couple of years at school where his mathematics teacher had inspired him to study the subject. However Hawking's father was strongly against the idea and Hawking was persuaded to make chemistry his main school subject. Part of his father's reasoning was that he wanted Hawking to go to University College, Oxford, the College he himself had attended, and that College had no mathematics fellow.

In March 1959 Hawking took the scholarship examinations with the aim of studying natural sciences at Oxford. He was awarded an exhibition, despite feeling that he had performed badly, and at University College he specialised in physics in his natural sciences degree. He only just made a First Class degree in 1962 and in [1] he explains how the attitude of the time worked against him:-

The prevailing attitude at Oxford at that time was very anti-work. You were supposed to be brilliant without effort, or accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. To work hard to get a better class of degree was regarded as the mark of a grey man - the worst epithet in the Oxford vocabulary.

From Oxford, Hawking moved to Cambridge to take up research in general relativity and cosmology, a difficult area for someone with only a little mathematical background. Hawking had noticed that he was becoming rather clumsy during his last year at Oxford and, when he returned home for Christmas 1962 at the end of his first term at Cambridge, his mother persuaded him to see a doctor.

In early 1963 he spent two weeks having tests in hospital and motor neurone disease (Lou Gehrig's disease) was diagnosed. His condition deteriorated quickly and the doctors predicted that he would not live long enough to complete his doctorate. However Hawking writes:-

... although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found to my surprise that I was enjoying life in the present more than I had before. I began to make progress with my research...

The reason that his research progressed was that he met a girl he wanted to marry and realised he had to complete his doctorate to get a job so:-

... I therefore started working for the first time in my life. To my surprise I found I liked it.

After completing his doctorate in 1966 Hawking was awarded a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At first his position was that of Research Fellow, but later he became a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. In 1973 he left the Institute of Astronomy and joined to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. He became Professor of Gravitational Physics at Cambridge in 1977. In 1979 Hawking was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. The man born 300 years to the day after Galileo died now held Newton's chair at Cambridge.

Between 1965 and 1970 Hawking worked on singularities in the theory of general relativity devising new mathematical techniques to study this area of cosmology. Much of his work in this area was done in collaboration with Roger Penrose who, at that time, was at Birkbeck College, London. From 1970 Hawking began to apply his previous ideas to the study of black holes.

Continuing this work on black holes, Hawking discovered in 1970 a remarkable property. Using quantum theory and general relativity he was able to show that black holes can emit radiation. His success with proving this made him work from that time on combining the theory of general relativity with quantum theory. In 1971 Hawking investigated the creation of the Universe and predicted that, following the big bang, many objects as heavy as $10^{9}$ tons but only the size of a proton would be created. These mini black holes have large gravitational attraction governed by general relativity, while the laws of quantum mechanics would apply to objects that small.

Another remarkable achievement of Hawking's using these techniques was his "no boundary proposal" made in 1983 with Jim Hartle of Santa Barbara. Hawking explains that this would mean:-

... that both time and space are finite in extent, but they don't have any boundary or edge. ... there would be no singularities, and the laws of science would hold everywhere, including at the beginning of the universe.

In 1982 Hawking decided to write a popular book on cosmology. By 1984 he had produced a first draft of A Brief History of Time. However Hawking was to suffer a further illness:-

I was in Geneva, at CERN, the big particle accelerator, in the summer of 1985. ... I caught pneumonia and was rushed to hospital. The hospital in Geneva suggested to my wife that it was not worth keeping the life support machine on. But she was having none of that. I was flown back to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where a surgeon called Roger Grey carried out a tracheotomy. That operation saved my life but took away my voice.

Hawking was given a computer system to enable him to have an electronic voice. It was with these difficulties that he revised the draft of A Brief History of Time which was published in 1988. The book broke sales records in a way that it would have been hard to predict. By May 1995 it had been in The Sunday Times best-sellers list for 237 weeks breaking the previous record of 184 weeks. This feat is recorded in the 1998 Guinness Book of Records. Also recorded there is the fact that the paperback edition was published on 6 April 1995 and reached number one in the best sellers in 3 days. By April 1993 there had been 40 hardback editions of A Brief History of Time in the United States and 39 hardback editions in the UK.

In 2002 Hawking published On the shoulders of giants. The great works of physics and astronomy. This book, which he edited, contains reprints of nearly complete editions of: Copernicus, On the revolution of the heavenly spheres (1543); Galileo, Dialogues concerning two new sciences (1638); Kepler, Harmony of the world (Book Five) (1618); Newton, Principia (1687); and seven papers on relativity by Einstein. Each work is prefaced with a commentary by Hawking. Also from 7 to 10 January 2002 a workshop and symposium was held in Cambridge to celebrate Hawking's 60th birthday. The Proceeding was published in 2003 and James T Liu writes in a review:-

While many prominent physicists, cosmologists and astronomers have made important contributions to the study of quantum gravity and cosmology, the impact of Stephen Hawking's contributions to the field truly stand out. Although his work on black hole thermodynamics is perhaps the most well known, Hawking has also made major contributions to the study of singularity theorems in general relativity, black hole uniqueness, quantum fields in curved spacetimes, Euclidean quantum gravity, the wave function of the universe and many other areas as well. In addition to his own work, Hawking has served as advisor and mentor to a remarkable set of students. Furthermore, it would be hard to imagine assembling any list of researchers working in quantum cosmology without including a large number of Hawking's students and close colleagues. Thus the group that gathered at the CMS in Cambridge in honour of his 60th birthday includes some of the leading theorists in the field.

In 2005 Hawking published Information loss in black holes in which he proposed a solution to the information loss paradox. In the same year Black holes and the information paradox was published, being the transcript of the famous talk Hawking gave at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin in 2004. In 2007 he published God created the integers. The mathematical breakthroughs that changed history. This is another anthology edited by Hawking containing selections from the writings of twenty-one mathematicians. For each mathematician he gives a brief biography and puts the selection into its mathematical context.

Of course Hawking has received, and continues to receive, a large number of honours for his remarkable achievements. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, being one of its youngest fellows. In 1975 he was awarded the Eddington Medal, in 1976 received the Hughes Medal from the Royal Society, in 1979 he was awarded the Albert Einstein Medal, in 1982 be was made a Commander of the British Empire by the Queen, in 1985 he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1986 he was elected a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He continued to receive major honours such as the prestigious Wolf Prize in Physics in 1988. In the following year he received the Prince of Asturias Awards in Concord and also was made a Companion of Honour. In 1999 he received the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society:-

... for boldness and creativity in gravitational physics, best illustrated by the prediction that black holes should emit black body radiation and evaporate, and for the special gift of making abstract ideas accessible and exciting to experts, generalists, and the public alike.

In 2003 Hawking was awarded the Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University and in 2006 the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. This last award, announced on 24 August 2006, was presented to Hawking on the 30 November 2006 at the Society's annual Anniversary Day, commemorating the foundation of the Society in 1660. This was the 275th anniversary of the Copley Medal and the award to Hawking was marked in a unique way. The medal he received had been carried by the British astronaut Piers Sellers on a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station. Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, said:-

Stephen Hawking has contributed as much as anyone since Einstein to our understanding of gravity. This medal is a fitting recognition of an astonishing research career spanning more than 40 years.

Piers Sellers said:-

Stephen Hawking is a definitive hero to all of us involved in exploring the Cosmos. His contribution to science is unique and he serves as a continuous inspiration to every thinking person. It was an honour for the crew of the STS-121 mission to fly his medal into space. We think that this is particularly appropriate as Stephen has dedicated his life to thinking about the larger Universe.

In reply Hawking said:-

This is a very distinguished medal. It was awarded to Darwin, Einstein and Crick. I am honoured to be in their company.