In theoretical physics, quantum cosmology is a field attempting to study the effect of quantum mechanics on the formation of the universe, or its early evolution, especially just after the Big Bang. Despite many attempts, such as the Wheeler-deWitt equation, the field remains a rather speculative branch of quantum gravity.

An important problem in this field is the origin of physical information in the universe.

See also [link]

Minisuperspace

References [link]

External links[link]

A Layman's Explanation of Quantum Cosmology

Lectures on Quantum Cosmology by J.J. Halliwell

Category:Quantum gravity Category:Physical cosmology

es:Cosmología cuántica eu:Kosmologia kuantikoa fa:کیهان‌شناسی کوانتومی fr:Cosmologie quantique it:Oltre il modello standard del Big Bang ja:量子宇宙論 ru:Квантовая космология fi:Kvanttikosmologia

name	Andrei Linde
birth date	March 02, 1948
birth place	Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Russia)
citizenship	American
nationality	Russian
field	Theoretical physics, cosmology
work institution	Stanford University
alma mater	Moscow State University
known for	Inflationary universe
prizes	Dirac Medal (2002)
footnotes	}}

Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde (; born March 2, 1948) is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and professor of Physics at Stanford University. Dr. Linde is best known for his work on the concept of the inflationary universe. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Moscow State University. In 1975, Linde was awarded a Ph.D. from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow. Among the various awards he's received for his work on inflation, in 2002 he was awarded the Dirac Medal, along with Alan Guth of MIT and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University.

Linde's key idea[link]

Linde is best known for proposing "eternal chaotic inflation" to explain a number of problems in cosmology. This variant of cosmic inflation proposes that the false vacuum is eternally inflating in exponential growth powered by repulsive constant random zero point dark energy of negative pressure. This false vacuum is like supersaturated steam in which liquid bubbles of more stable vacuum form with Higgs-Goldstone fields that describe the cohering of most of the pre-inflationary random dark energy into the smooth fabric of curved spacetime. Our universe is only a small causal part of a single bubble, and there are 10^10^10^7 bubbles. In fact, there are 10^10^10^7 of universes like ours on a single bubble which is more like an expanding infinite sheet than a finite spherical surface (suppressing 1 space dimension for ease of visualization).

Lee Smolin in his ''The Trouble With Physics'' and others have argued that Linde's theory is not falsifiable in the sense of Popper, if nonlocal signals outside of the local light cones are not possible. Nonlocal signals would be possible if there were stable traversable wormholes connecting the different "Hubble horizon limited" "pocket universes" (Leonard Susskind) on the same bubble, and on different bubbles making up a multiverse (see also floating branes). Antony Valentini has proposed a generalization of quantum theory that allows a kind of nonlocal signaling that orthodox quantum theory forbids.

External links[link]

Andrei Linde's webpage at Stanford University.

Linde, Andrei (2004) "Inflation, Quantum Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle" in John Barrow, Paul C W Davies, and C L Harper, eds., ''Science and Ultimate Reality: From Quantum to Cosmos'', a volume honoring John A. Wheeler's 90th birthday. Cambridge University Press.

Slack, Gordy (1998) "Faith in the Universe: Conversations with cosmologists," ''California Wild'' 51(3). Mentions Linde's views on religious belief.

Andre Linde Radio Interview on Entitled Opinions

Category:Russian physicists Category:Soviet physicists Category:American physicists Category:Cosmologists Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:Moscow State University alumni Category:American people of Russian descent

de:Andrei Dmitrijewitsch Linde el:Αντρέι Λίντε es:Andrei Linde fr:Andreï Linde it:Andrej Dmitrievič Linde nl:Andrei Linde ja:アンドレイ・リンデ pt:Andrei Linde ro:Andrei Linde ru:Линде, Андрей Дмитриевич sl:Andrej Dimitrijevič Linde fi:Andrei Linde sv:Andrei Linde zh:安德烈·林德

Region	Western philosophy
Era	21st-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	William Lane Craig
Birth date	August 23, 1949
Birth place	East Peoria, Illinois
School tradition	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of religion, natural theology, philosophy of time, Christian apologetics
Influences	Alvin Plantinga, Francis Schaeffer, Edward John Carnell, Stuart Hackett, John Hick, Wolfhart Pannenberg
Influenced	J. P. Moreland, Francis Beckwith
Website	reasonablefaith.org }}

William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, philosophical theologian, and Christian apologist. He is known for his work in the philosophy of religion, philosophy of time, and the defense of Christian theism. One of his most notable contributions to the philosophy of religion is his defense of the Kalām cosmological argument, which is the most widely discussed argument for the existence of God in contemporary Western philosophy. In theology, he has also defended Molinism and the belief that God is, since Creation, subject to time.

Craig has authored or edited over 30 books, including ''The Kalām Cosmological Argument'' (1979), ''The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz'' (1980), ''Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology'' (with Quentin Smith, 1993), ''Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview'' (with J.P. Moreland, 2003) and ''Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics'' (3d edition, 2008).

Academic background[link]

Craig received a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1971 and two ''summa cum laude'' master's degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, in 1975, in philosophy of religion and ecclesiastical history. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy under John Hick at the University of Birmingham, England in 1977 and a Th.D. under Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich in 1984.

From 1980 to 1986 he was an assistant professor of philosophy at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He briefly held the position of associate professor of religious studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, from 1986 to 1987. From 1987 to 1994 Craig pursued further research at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Since 1996 he has held the position of research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University in La Mirada, California.

Work[link]

Philosophy of religion[link]

Craig's primary contribution to philosophy of religion is his revival of the Kalām cosmological argument. In ''The Kalam Cosmological Argument'', he formulates the argument in the following manner: # Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. # The universe began to exist. # Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

He defends the second premise by arguing that actual infinities and the formation of an actual infinite through continual addition are metaphysically impossible. Although he recognizes that axiomatized infinite set theory is logically consistent he maintains that the existence of actual infinities in the real world would lead to absurdities. For example, David Hilbert's famous "Hilbert's Hotel" thought experiment demonstrates how a fully occupied hotel would still be able to accommodate an infinite number of guests. Craig modifies the thought experiment by introducing operations such as subtraction and shows that subtracting identical quantities from identical quantities would have non-identical remainders. Since we have no evidence of such things in the actual world, Craig maintains that actual infinities are, for all intents and purposes, metaphysically impossible. Craig also argues that the thermodynamic properties of the universe and its expansion provide more evidence in support of premise two.

Craig also develops an ''a posteriori'' argument against actual infinities which rests on the A-theory of time. He gives Bertrand Russell's example of Tristam Shandy, who writes his autobiography so slowly that it takes him one year to write down the events of one day. A similar temporal sequence would have occurred in an eternal universe. No matter how long it takes, an eternal universe would still not be 'actually infinite' and must have begun to exist.

Craig has also contributed to the problem of divine foreknowledge (the compatibility of God's omniscience with human freedom). He analyzes current discussions of time travel, retrocausality, special relativity, and Newcomb's Paradox and brings them to bear on theological fatalism (most often supported by strongly Augustinian theologies, particularly Calvinism). Rejecting fatalism he defends the middle knowledge view (also known as Molinism). According to this solution, prior to actualizing a possible world, God knows everything that does or will happen as well as how free creatures would act if placed in any particular circumstance. Craig considers that this also provides the answer to the question of how God foreknows future contingents.

Philosophy of time[link]

Craig is a presentist and defends the A-series of time. He rejects J. M. E. McTaggart's famous argument against it, describing it as "an engaging and recalcitrant brain teaser that no one takes seriously," but also argues against hybrid A-B theorists because they are all refuted by McTaggart's paradox. He argues that McTaggart's objection does not succeed as it employs an incoherent combination of a B-theoretical ontology with A-theoretical temporal becoming. According to Craig, if one adopts a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of special relativity, the A-theory can be reconciled with the theory of relativity.

In terms of God's relationship to time, Craig argues that God must exist in time if he is to be regarded as a causal agent. He rejects the view that God could exist timelessly with creation as he did sans creation on the grounds that nothing outside time could have temporal interactions with the world. Critics such as Paul Helm maintain that Craig’s objections against divine timelessness is itself incoherent because "There can be no temporal 'and then' for a timelessly eternal God." Craig responds to this charge by arguing that God's timeless and temporal phases are not related to each other as "earlier" and "later."

Apologetics[link]

Craig has written a number of works of Christian apologetics. Fellow Evangelical apologist Robert M. Bowman, Jr. (writing with Kenneth D. Boa) described his ''Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics'' as "one of the best recent textbook introductions to the subject of apologetics." Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles has described ''Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview'' (with J.P. Moreland, 2003) as "monumental," but pointed out that Catholics will not necessarily agree with it.

Craig's work as a New Testament historian focuses on a defense of central Christian doctrines, specifically Jesus' resurrection from the dead. In books such as ''The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus'', he reviews the historical debate and provides a critical analysis of David Hume's arguments against testimony of miracles, examines New Testament material dealing with the resurrection, and concludes that the resurrection is the most plausible explanation of the historical data. Craig uses the Shroud of Turin as part of his case.

Other views[link]

Craig is a critic of metaphysical naturalism and New Atheism as well as a defender of Reformed epistemology. He believes that scripture does not condemn homosexuals per se but does prohibit all homosexual acts, which he considers as “sacrilegious” as well as “self-destructive” to the same degree as heroin addiction or chain smoking whether engaged in by a homosexual or a heterosexual person. Craig maintains that the theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity. Although he does not fully endorse intelligent design, he thinks it may be a viable alternative to evolution. He is a fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture and a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID).

Debates[link]

Craig has publicly debated atheists Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price, Sam Harris, Antony Flew, A. C. Grayling, Lawrence Krauss, Victor Stenger, Peter Atkins, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Christopher Hitchens, as well as liberal theologian Gerd Lüdemann, and prominent Muslims such as Shabir Ally and Jawal Badawi. Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has refused a rigorous debate with Craig (accusing him of self-promotion and of being an “apologist for genocide"), although Dawkins participated in a six-person discussion which included Craig.

The debates with Antony Flew, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Gerd Lüdemann have been published in book form.

Bibliography[link]

''The Kalām Cosmological Argument''. London: MacMillan. 1979. ISBN 1-57910-438-X / ISBN 978-1-57910-438-2

''The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz''. London: MacMillan. 1980. ISBN 1-57910-787-7 / ISBN 978-1-57910-787-1

''The Son Rises: Historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus''. Chicago: Moody Press. 1981. ISBN 978-1-57910-464-1 / ISBN 978-1-57910-464-1

''Apologetics: An Introduction''. Chicago: Moody Press. 1984. ISBN 0-8024-0405-7

''The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus during the Deist Controversy''. Toronto: Edwin Mellen. 1985. ISBN 0-88946-811-7

''The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom''. Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse. 1987. ISBN 1-57910-316-2 / ISBN 978-1-57910-316-3

''The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez''. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1988. ISBN 90-04-08516-5 / ISBN 978-90-04-08516-9

''Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection''. Ann Arbor: Servant. 1988. ISBN 0-89283-384-X / ISBN 978-0-89283-384-9

''Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus''. Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press. 1989. ISBN 0889466165/ ISBN 978-0-88946-616-6

''Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: The Coherence of Theism I: Omniscience''. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1990. ISBN 90-04-09250-1 / ISBN 978-90-04-09250-1

''No Easy Answers''. Chicago: Moody Press. 1990. ISBN 0-8024-2283-7 / ISBN 978-0-8024-2283-5

''Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology'' (with Quentin Smith). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993. ISBN 978-0-19-826383-8

''The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination''. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 0-7923-6634-4 / ISBN 978-0-7923-6634-8

''Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan''. Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse. 1998.

''God, Are You There?''. Atlanta: RZIM. 1999. ISBN 1-930107-00-5 / ISBN 978-1-930107-00-7

''The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination''. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2000. ISBN 978-0-7923-6635-5 / ISBN 978-0-7923-6635-5

''God, Time and Eternity''. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2001. ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3 / ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3

''Time and The Metaphysics of Relativity''. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2001. ISBN 0-7923-6668-9

''Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time''. Wheaton: Crossway. 2001. ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3 / ISBN 978-1-58134-241-3

''What Does God Know?'' Atlanta: RZIM. 2002. ISBN 978-1-930107-05-2

''Hard Questions, Real Answers''. Wheaton: Crossway Books. 2003. ISBN 978-1-58134-487-5 / ISBN 978-1-58134-487-5

''God?: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist''(with Walter Sinnot-Armstrong). New York: Oxford University Press. 2003.

''Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview'' (with J.P. Moreland). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press. 2003.

''Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration'' (with Paul Copan). Grand Rapids: Baker Bookhouse. 2004. ISBN 0-8010-2733-0

''Reasonable Faith''. Wheaton: Crossway. 1994. rev. 3rd ed. 2008. ISBN 0-89107-764-2 / ISBN 978-0-89107-764-0

''On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision''. Colorado Springs: David C. Cook. 2010. ISBN 1-4347-6488-5 / ISBN 978-1-4347-6488-1

See also[link]

List of American philosophers

References[link]

External links[link]

Reasonable Faith William Lane Craig's personal website

Faculty webpage

Comprehensive Debate list

Interviews from the program Closer to Truth

Audio files at bethinking.org

Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the University of Birmingham Category:Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Category:American philosophers Category:American religion academics Category:American theologians Category:Analytic philosophers Category:Biblical scholars Category:Biola University faculty Category:Intelligent design advocates Category:Christian philosophers Category:Christian apologists Category:Christian writers Category:Christian scholars Category:Discovery Institute fellows and advisors Category:Fellows of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design Category:Philosophers of religion Category:People from Keokuk, Iowa Category:American Christians Category:Trinity Evangelical Divinity School alumni Category:Wheaton College (Illinois) alumni Category:20th-century philosophers Category:21st-century philosophers

de:William Lane Craig es:William Lane Craig fr:William Lane Craig no:William Lane Craig pl:William Lane Craig pt:William Lane Craig fi:William Lane Craig sv:William Lane Craig

William Lane (6 September 1861 – 26 August 1917) was a journalist, advocate of Australian labour politics and a utopian.

Early life[link]

Lane was born in Bristol, England, eldest son of James Lane, from Ireland a Protestant Master Gardener, and his English wife Caroline, ''née'' Hall. When Lane was born his father was earning a miserable wage, but later his circumstances improved and he became an employer. The boy was educated at Bristol Grammar School and showed ability, but he was sent early to work as an office boy. Lane's mother died when he was 14 years of age, and at age 16 he migrated to Canada, then to the United States, where he worked first as a printer, then as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press (1881), there meeting his future wife Ann MacGuire. In 1885 they migrated to Brisbane, Australia, where Lane immediately got work as a feature writer for the weekly newspaper ''Queensland Figaro'', then as a columnist for the newspapers Brisbane Courier and Evening Telegraph, using a number of pseudonyms ("Lucinda Sharpe", which some consider to be the work of Annie Lane, William Wilcher and "Sketcher").

A life-long abstainer from alcohol, in 1886 he created an Australia-wide sensation by spending a night in the Brisbane lock-up disguised as a drunk, and subsequently reporting the conditions of the cells as "Henry Harris". Lane's father was a drunk who impoverished the family.

With the growth of the 7-2 labour movement, "Sketcher"'s columns, especially his "Labour Notes" in the ''Evening Telegraph'', increasingly promoted labourist philosophy, and Lane himself attended meetings supporting all manner of popular causes, speaking with his "American twang" against repressive laws and practices and Chinese immigrants.

After becoming the de facto editor of the Courier, Lane departed during November 1887 to found the weekly ''The Boomerang'', "a live newspaper, racy, of the soil", in which pro-worker themes and lurid racism were brought to a fever-pitch by both "Sketcher" and "Lucinda Sharpe". He became a powerful supporter of Emma Miller and Women's suffrage. A strong proponent of Henry George's Single Tax Movement, Lane became increasingly committed to a radically alternative society, and ended his relationship with the ''Boomerang'' due to its private ownership.

In May 1890 he began the community-funded Brisbane weekly ''The Worker'', the rhetoric of which became increasingly threatening towards the employers, the government, and the British Empire itself. The defeat of the 1891 Australian shearers' strike convinced Lane that there would be no real social change without a completely new society, and ''The Worker'' became increasingly devoted to his New Australia utopian idea.

''The Workingman's Paradise'', an allegorical novel written in sympathy with the shearers involved in the 1891 Shearer's Strike, was published under his pseudonym ''John Miller'' in early 1892. In the novel Lane articulated the belief that anarchism is the noblest social philosophy of all. Through the novel's philosopher and main protagonist he relates his belief that society may have to experience a period of State socialism to achieve the ideal of Communist anarchism. Mary Gilmore, later a celebrated Australian writer, said in one of her letters ''"the whole book is true and of historical value as Lane transcribed our conversations as well as those of others"''.

New Australia Colony[link]

Contriving a division among Australian labour activists between the permanently disaffected and those who later formed the Australian Labor Party, Lane refused the Queensland Government's offer of a grant of land on which to create a utopian settlement, and began an Australia-wide campaign for the creation of a new society elsewhere on the globe, peopled by rugged and sober Australian bushmen and their proud wives.

Eventually Paraguay was decided upon, and Lane and his family and several hundred acolytes from New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia departed Mort Bay in Sydney in the ship ''Royal Tar'' on 1 July 1893.

New Australia soon had its crisis, brought on by the issues of inter-racial relationships (Lane singled out the Guarani as racially taboo) and alcohol. Lane's dictatorial manner soon alienated many in the community, and by the time the second boat-load of utopians arrived from Adelaide a year later, Lane had left with a core of devotees to form a new colony nearby named 7-2.

Eventually Lane became disillusioned with the process, and returned to Australia in 1899.

Later life[link]

Lane then went with his family to New Zealand. After initial melancholia, he soon refound his old verve as a pseudonymous feature-writer from 1900 for the newspaper ''New Zealand Herald'' ("Tohunga"), only this time as ultra-conservative and pro-Empire. He had strong racial antipathy toward East Asians, and during World War I he developed extreme anti-German sentiments. He died on 26 August 1917 in Auckland, New Zealand, having been editor of the ''Herald'' from 1913 to 1917, much admired, having lost one son Charles at a cricket match in Cosme in Paraguay, and another Donald on the first day of the ANZAC landings (25 April 1915) on the beaches of Gallipoli.

References[link]

Gavin Souter's account of Lane and New Australia in his ''A Peculiar People''

Peter Bruce's thesis (Univ Sydney) ''The Journalistic Career of William Lane''.

''Larry Petrie (1859-1901) - Australian Revolutionist?'' by Bob James

Whitehead, Anne (1997) ''Paradise Mislaid — in Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay'' University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia

External links[link]

''Workingman's Paradise'', Pdf at University of Sydney

Category:1861 births Category:1917 deaths Category:Australian anarchists Category:Australian trade unionists Category:Australian journalists Category:New Zealand journalists Category:People educated at Bristol Grammar School Category:People from Bristol Category:Georgists

de:William Lane (Utopist) it:William Lane pl:William Lane

name	Stephen Hawking
birth name	Stephen William Hawking
birth date	January 08, 1942
birth place	Oxford, England, United Kingdom
residence	United Kingdom
nationality	British
fields
workplaces
alma mater
doctoral advisor	Dennis Sciama
academic advisors	Robert Berman
known for
influences
awards
spouse
footnotes	}}

Stephen William Hawking, (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. His key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein–Hawking radiation).

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009. Subsequently, he became research director at the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

Hawking has a motor neurone disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition that has progressed over the years. He is now almost completely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. He has been married twice and has three children. Hawking has achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include ''A Brief History of Time'', which stayed on the British ''Sunday Times'' best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Early life and education [link]

Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 to Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking. He has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. Although Hawking's parents were living in North London, he was born in Oxford as his parents felt it was safer to stay in Oxford for the later stages of the pregnancy. (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe).

When his father became head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research in 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. Hawking attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to 1953 (At that time, boys could attend the girls' school until the age of 10). and then from the age of 11, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not exceptional, student.

Inspired by his mathematics teacher, Hawking originally wanted to study the subject at university. However, Hawking's father wanted him to apply to University College, Oxford, where his father had attended. As University College did not have a mathematics fellow at that time, applications were not accepted from students who wished to study that discipline. Hawking therefore applied to read natural sciences with an emphasis in Physics. He was accepted and gained a scholarship. While at Oxford, he coxed a rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at the university. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it. ... his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries".

Hawking's unimpressive study habits resulted in a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination: "And of course the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves". After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford in 1962, he left for graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Career [link]

1962-1975[link]

Although Hawking started developing symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as soon as he arrived at Cambridge and did not distinguish himself in his first two years at Cambridge, he returned to working on his PhD after the disease had stabilised and with the help of his doctoral tutor, Dennis William Sciama.

When Hawking began his graduate studies In the 1960s, there was much debate in the physics community about the opposing theories of the creation of the universe: big bang, and steady state. Hawking and his Cambridge friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, showed in 1970 that if the universe obeys general relativity and if the universe fits any of the Friedmann models, then the universe must have begun as a singularity. This work showed that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a fairly generic feature of general relativity.

Hawking's work with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, strongly supported John Wheeler's no-hair theorem – that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. With Bardeen and Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. In 1974, he calculated that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known today as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, until they exhaust their energy and evaporate.

Hawking was elected one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, and in the same year he accepted the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to work with his friend, Kip Thorne, who was a faculty member there. He continues to have ties with Caltech, spending a month each year there since 1992.

1975-present[link]

The mid to late 1970s were a period of growing fame and success for Hawking, his work was now much talked about, he was appearing in popular television documentaries and in 1979 he was made the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post he held for 30 years until his retirement in 2009. Hawking's inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics had the title "Is the end in sight for Theoretical Physics" and promoted the idea that supergravity would help resolve many of the outstanding problems physicists were studying.

In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a model in which the universe had no boundary in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to the North Pole: one cannot travel north of the North Pole, as there is no boundary. While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a universe which is not closed.

Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN, in 2006 Hawking proposed a theory of "top-down cosmology", which says that the universe had no unique initial state, and therefore it is inappropriate for physicists to attempt to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state. Top-down cosmology posits that in some sense, the present "selects" the past from a superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the fine-tuning question.

Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet [link]

In 1997 Hawking made a public scientific wager with Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech concerning the black hole information paradox. Thorne and Hawking argued that since general relativity made it impossible for black holes to radiate, and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking Radiation must be "new", and must not originate from inside the black hole event horizon. Since this contradicted the idea under quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the view of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way. The winner of the bet was to receive an encyclopedia of the loser's choice, from which information may be accessed.

In 2004, Hawking announced that he was conceding the bet, and that he now believed that black hole horizons should fluctuate and leak information, in doing so providing Preskill with a copy of ''Total Baseball''. Comparing the useless information obtainable from a black hole to "burning an encyclopedia", Hawking commented, "I gave John an encyclopedia of baseball, but maybe I should just have given him the ashes".

Recognition [link]

Acclaim [link]

On 19 December 2007, a statue of Hawking by artist Ian Walters was unveiled at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge. The Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador, is named in honour of Stephen Hawking, citing his scientific distinction and perseverance in dealing with adversity. The Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge opened on 17 April 2007. The building belongs to Gonville and Caius College and is used as an undergraduate accommodation and conference facility.

Awards and honours [link]

1975 Eddington Medal 1976 Hughes Medal of the Royal Society 1979 Albert Einstein Medal 1981 Franklin Medal 1982 Commander of the Order of the British Empire 1985 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society 1986 Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 1988 Wolf Prize in Physics 1989 Companion of Honour 1999 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society 2003 Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University 2006 Copley Medal of the Royal Society 2008 Fonseca Prize of the University of Santiago de Compostela 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States

Personal life [link]

Hawking has stated that, having been diagnosed with ALS during an early stage of his graduate work, he did not see much point in obtaining a doctorate if he were to die soon after. Hawking later said that the real turning point was his 1965 marriage to Jane Wilde, a language student. Jane cared for him until 1990 when the couple separated. They had three children: Robert, Lucy, and Timothy. Hawking married his personal care assistant, Elaine Mason, in 1995; the couple divorced In October 2006 amid claims by former nurses that she had abused him. In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, ''Music to Move the Stars'', detailing the marriage and its breakdown; in 2010 she published a revised version, ''Travelling to Infinity, My Life with Stephen''.

Hawking supports the children's charity SOS Children's Villages UK and has stated that his view on how to live life is to "seek the greatest value of our action". He strongly opposed the Iraq War, calling it "a war crime" and "based on two lies" at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square, where he participated in a public reading of the names of Iraqi war victims.

Hawking has named his secondary school mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta as an inspiration. He maintains his connection with St Albans School, giving his name to one of the four houses and to an extracurricular science lecture series.

Illness [link]

Hawking has a motor neurone disease that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years. He is now almost completely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. Hawking's illness has progressed more slowly than typical cases of ALS: survival for more than 10 years after diagnosis is uncommon.

Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at University of Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years. By 1974, he was unable to feed himself or get out of bed. His speech became slurred so that he could be understood only by people who knew him well. During a visit to CERN in Geneva in 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening as it further restricted his already limited respiratory capacity. He had an emergency tracheotomy, and as a result lost what remained of his ability to speak. A speech generating device was built in Cambridge, using software from an American company, that enabled Hawking to write onto a computer with small movements of his body, and then have a voice synthesiser speak what he typed.

The particular voice synthesiser hardware he uses, which has an American English accent, is no longer being produced. Asked why he has still kept the same voice after so many years, Hawking stated that he has not heard a voice he likes better and that he identifies with it even though the synthesiser is both large and fragile by current standards. Although a mid-2009 corporate press release said that he had chosen NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesiser as his new voice, a 30 December 2011 interview with Hawking's technician indicates that Hawking is still using an older synthesiser containing a card "which dates back to the 1980s" and that any upgrade would have to be the same voice, otherwise "it wouldn't be Stephen's voice any more".

For lectures and media appearances, Hawking appears to speak fluently through his synthesiser; however when preparing answers his system produces words at a rate of about one per minute. Hawking's setup uses a predictive text entry system, which requires only the first few characters in order to auto-complete the word, but as he is only able to use his cheek for data entry, constructing complete sentences takes time. During a TED Conference talk, it took him seven minutes to provide a brief answer to a question.

He describes himself as lucky, despite his disease. Its slow progression has allowed him time to make influential discoveries and has not hindered him from having, in his own words, "a very attractive family".

In popular culture [link]

Hawking has played himself on numerous television shows and has been portrayed in many more. He has played himself on a ''Red Dwarf'' anniversary special, played a hologram of himself on the episode "Descent" of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'', and appeared on the Discovery Channel special ''Alien Planet''. He has also played himself in several episodes of ''The Simpsons'' and ''Futurama'', and has had an action figure made of his ''Simpsons'' likeness. The 2004 BBC4 TV film Hawking dealt with his early life and the onset of his illness. He was portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch. In 2008, Hawking was the subject of and featured in the documentary series ''Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe'' for Channel 4. In September 2008, Hawking presided over the unveiling of the 'Chronophage' (time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College Cambridge. His actual synthesiser voice was used on parts of the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking" from the 1994 album ''The Division Bell'', as well as on Turbonegro's "Intro: The Party Zone" on their 2005 album ''Party Animals'', Wolfsheim's "Kein Zurück (Oliver Pinelli Mix)". On 5 April 2012 he appeared as a guest star in an episode of ''The Big Bang Theory''.

Space and spaceflight [link]

At the celebration of his 65th birthday on 8 January 2007, Hawking announced his plan to take a zero-gravity flight that year, with an intention to later take a sub-orbital spaceflight. Billionaire Richard Branson pledged to pay all expenses for a future flight on Virgin Galactic's space service, costing an estimated £100,000. Stephen Hawking's zero-gravity flight in a "''Vomit Comet''" of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times, took place on 26 April 2007. He became the first quadriplegic to float in zero gravity. The fee is normally US$3,750 for 10 to 15 plunges, but Hawking was not required to pay. Hawking was quoted before the flight saying: }} In an interview with ''The Daily Telegraph'', he suggested that space was the Earth's long term hope. He continued this theme at a 2008 Charlie Rose interview.

Hawking has indicated that he is almost certain that alien life exists in other parts of the universe, "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like". He believes alien life not only certainly exists on planets but perhaps even in other places, like within stars or even floating in outer space. He has also warned that a few of these species might be intelligent and threaten Earth. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. He has advocated that, rather than try to establish contact, humans should try to avoid contact with alien life forms. At a George Washington University lecture in honour of NASA's fiftieth anniversary, Hawking discussed the existence of extraterrestrial life, believing that "primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare".

Religious views [link]

In his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense, such as in ''A Brief History of Time'': "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessary to explain the origin of the universe. In the Channel 4 documentary ''Genius of Britain'', in his 2010 book ''The Grand Design'', and in interviews with the ''Telegraph'', Hawking has clarified that he does not believe in a "personal" God. Hawking writes, "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second." He adds, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing."

His ex-wife, Jane, has described him as an atheist. Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws." In an interview published in ''The Guardian'' newspaper, Hawking regarded the concept of Heaven as a myth, believing that there is "no heaven or afterlife" and that such a notion was a "fairy story for people afraid of the dark." Hawking contrasted religion and science in 2010, saying: "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

Philosophical views [link]

At Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in 2011, Hawking said that "philosophy is dead." He believes philosophers "have not kept up with modern developments in science" and that scientists "have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” He said that philosophical problems can be answered by science, particularly new scientific theories which "lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it”.

Publications [link]

Hawking's first popular science book, ''A Brief History of Time'', was published on 1 April 1988. It stayed on the British ''Sunday Times'' best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. ''A Brief History of Time'' was followed by ''The Universe in a Nutshell'' (2001). A collection of essays titled ''Black Holes and Baby Universes'' (1993) was also popular. His book, ''A Briefer History of Time'' (2005), co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, updated his earlier works to make them accessible to a wider audience. In 2007 Hawking and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, published ''George's Secret Key to the Universe'', a children's book focusing on science that Lucy Hawking described as "a bit like Harry Potter but without the magic."

Popular [link]

''A Brief History of Time'', (1988)

''Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays'', (1994)

''The Universe in a Nutshell'', (2001)

''On The Shoulders of Giants. The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy'', (2002)

''A Briefer History of Time'', (2005)

''God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History'', (2005) ''The Grand Design'', (2010)

Children's fiction [link]

These are co-written with his daughter Lucy.

''George's Secret Key to the Universe'', (2007)

''George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt'', (2009)

''George and the Big Bang'', (2011)

Films and series [link]

''A Brief History of Time'' (1991)

''Stephen Hawking's Universe'' (1997)

''Horizon: The Hawking Paradox'' (2005)

''Masters of Science Fiction'' (2007)

''Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe'' (2008) ''Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking'' (2010)

''Brave New World with Stephen Hawking

See also [link]

Many-worlds interpretation, or flexiverse

Gibbons–Hawking ansatz

Gibbons–Hawking space

References [link]

Bibliography [link]

Further reading [link]

External links [link]

Stephen Hawking's web site

Category:1942 births Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge Category:Adams Prize recipients Category:Albert Einstein Medal recipients Category:Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge Category:Alumni of University College, Oxford Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Cosmologists Category:English astronomers Category:English atheists Category: English people with disabilities Category:English physicists Category:English science writers Category:Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:People educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire Category:Honorary Fellows of University College, Oxford Category:Living people Category:Lucasian Professors of Mathematics Category:Members of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Mental calculators Category:People educated at St Albans High School for Girls Category:People from Oxford Category:People from St Albans Category:People with motor neurone disease Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal Category:Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Category:Religious skeptics Category:Theoretical physicists Category:Wolf Prize in Physics laureates Category:20th-century philosophers Category:21st-century philosophers

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