A visionary minded physicist, a scientific promoter, a guru of modern cosmology: Stephen Hawking – who passed away at the age of 76 on March 14, 2018 – has not only been a brilliant scientist, but also a contemporary pop icon, very familiar to the fans of the TV series The Simpsons and to the ones of Star Trek, and during the last period of his life also to the young followers of the boy band One Direction or to the fans of The Big Bang Theory.
In the movie “The Theory of Everything” we have learned the most intimate and dramatic aspects of his exceptional story, but the life of Stephen Hawking is filled with many stories and curiosities, some of which are probably less known to the general public. For instance, did you know about the bet he made forty years ago on black holes? What about his contribution to rock music? Below are 10 facts you should know about the British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.
Athletic, but Without Much Effort
Before being diagnosed with the disease that has immobilized him in a wheelchair, Stephen Hawking had never been in possession of a properly athletic physique. However, during his stay at Oxford he gained a certain reputation through sport: in order to escape the sense of loneliness that plagued him in his first year as a student, he entered the rowing team, serving successfully as a coxswain (the crew member who gives time to the rowers).
Wanna Bet…?
Back in 1975 Stephen Hawking stated that black holes were objects able to “devour” everything, also destroying the information of what they swallowed to, perhaps, make it appear again in another universe. His revolutionary theory conflicted with quantum mechanics, which states that the information contained in matter can not be lost entirely.
This is why the physicist John Preskill of the Californian Institute of Technology bet with Hawking that this was a blunder. The prize was a baseball encyclopedia, that almost 30 years later Hawking gave in the hands of his colleague: in 2004, in a conference in Dublin, he sportingly admitted that “I was wrong about black holes”.
Nerd, but Not Too Much
Between Stephen Hawking and school books it wasn’t love at first sight. When he was 9 years old, his grades were among the worst in the class; nevertheless it is said that little Stevie had a special interest in radios, clocks and anything that could be disassembled to study how they work. That is why, despite the fact that his report cards were not very good, teachers and classmates gave him the nickname of “Einstein”.
Award-Winning, but No Nobel
Throughout his extraordinary career, the British scientist has gathered an endless number of awards and honors. Besides being a member of the Royal Society (from which he was awarded the prestigious Hughes and Cople medals) and the Royal Society of Arts, in 1986 he was accepted into the very restricted circle of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Meanwhile, in 2009, Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor of the United States of America. A little surprisingly, his trophy cabinet is missing perhaps the most coveted award, the Nobel Prize.
Stephen, Tell Us a Story
In between the many academic publications and popular works written by Hawking there are also books for children. These include a trilogy (George’s Secret Key to the Universe, George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt, George and the Big Bang) written with his daughter Lucy between 2007 and 2011. Throughout the pages of the novels, the exceptional adventures of young George provide the cue to explain in extremely elementary words mysterious and fascinating concepts, such as the black holes or the origin of life.
Zero Gravity
Back in 2007, when he was 65 years old, Stephen Hawking was able to experience several seconds of weightlessness in parabolic flight thanks to the Zero Gravity Corporation. Obviously, his greatest dream was to travel into space; in this regard, the magnate Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, has long offered him a free trip aboard one of his spaceships, something that never happened.
Physicist by Accident
While Stephen Hawking had already developed a genuine passion for mathematics in his youth, it was his father Frank’s hope that his son would eventually become a doctor. Eventually, a third option emerged: at Oxford University there was no mathematics department, so Hawking was “forced” to switch to physics, and after three years he graduated with honors with a thesis in Natural Sciences.
But among all the sciences, biology was the one least appreciated by the young Hawking: “too inexact, too descriptive”. Shortly after graduation he went to Cambridge where he studied cosmology, preferring the great laws of the universe (which were “still in the ’30s”, he will say) and the behavior of subatomic particles (a very dynamic area of research, but defined by him “similar to botany”).
Aliens Exist, but We Better Stay Away From Them
Speaking at the 50th anniversary of NASA in 2008, the cosmologist said that, because of the immense size of the universe, it is quite certain that in other planets primordial life forms have developed, but we can not rule out that somewhere there are also intelligent beings.
In a documentary series aired in 2010 on the British Discovery Channel, titled” Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking”, he said that contact with extraterrestrial life could have catastrophic results: if the aliens managed to get to us, it would mean that they have a technology so advanced as to permit the colonization of Earth and the domination of mankind. Not so different from how the European conquerors did after the discovery of America in 1492.
Rock-Scientist
The legendary prog-rock group Pink Floyd released the album The Division Bell in 1994. In the ninth track, Keep Talking, the metallic voice of Stephen Hawking appears, speaking through his synthesizer: “For millions of years men lived like animals. Then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to speak.”
The “collaboration” was followed up in the more recent The Endless River (2014), where the astrophysicist makes a peep in the track Talkin’ Hawkin’.
Stronger Than the ALS
During his time at Cambridge, Hawking experienced a progressive deterioration of his motor skills. Before undergoing a specialist examination, he took part in a New Year’s Eve party (it was 1962), and there he met his future first wife, Jane Wilde. Not long after (he had just turned 21) the doctors’ diagnosis arrived: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative disease.
Although the shock, he pursued his studies in cosmology and subsequently married Jane Wilde (by whom he will have three children). After more than fifty years from the inauspicious sentence it is still being discussed if his disease is an atypical form of ALS (thesis supported by Hawking himself) or if it is instead a progressive muscular atrophy. This is because the average lifespan of a person who is diagnosed with this disease is between two and five years (Hawking, at 21, was given two years).
More than 50 percent manage to survive beyond three years. About 20 percent make it beyond five years. From then on, the number drops. Less than 5 percent live beyond 20 years. Hawkings lived 55 years!
