American Philosophical Society
Member History

Results:  1 ItemModify Search | New Search
Page: 1Reset Page
Residency
Subdivision
1Name:  Dr. Stephen William Hawking
 Institution:  University of Cambridge
 Year Elected:  1984
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  104. Mathematics
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1942
 Death Date:  March 13, 2018
   
 
Stephen William Hawking was born in 1942 in Oxford, England. He attended St. Albans School at age eleven and went on to University College, Oxford, where he studied physics, and Cambridge, where he conducted research in cosmology. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Dr. Hawking came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and from 1979 held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position previously held by, among others, Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. Stephen Hawking had long studied the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied that 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. Dr. Hawking's many publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime (with G. F. R. Ellis); General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey ; and 300 Years of Gravity (both with W. Israel). Dr. Hawking also published several popular books: his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, and The Grand Design (2010). Professor Hawking held twelve honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He was the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and the Fundamental Physics Prize (2012), and was a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. He became the first distinguished research chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada's leading scientifc trust, in 2008. Stephen Hawking died March 13, 2018, at age 76, in Cambridge, England.
 
Election Year
1984 (1)