One of the Greatest Minds of Our Time*

Dr. Stephen Hawking is an inspiration to all of us. He has overcome the adversity that life has dealt him to become one of the greatest physicists of this generation or any generation. My recent reading of Black Holes and Baby Universes has had me pondering on the accomplishments of this gifted man of late.

(from the Hawking website)

Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

His many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W Israel. Stephen Hawking has two popular books published; his best seller A Brief History of Time, and his later book, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays.

In tribute to Dr. Hawking, here is our impression of him being serviced by a professional (WAV File)



*With sincere apologies to Mr. David Cross.