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physicist who came to symbolize the power of the human mind

Theoretical physicist Stephen W. Hawking died on March 13 at age 76. uk moncler sale Hawking was considered to have one of the greatest minds of this generation. Hawking, the British theoretical physicist who overcame a devastating neurological disease to probe the greatest moncler outlet mysteries of the cosmos and become a globally celebrated symbol of the power of the human mind, died March 14 at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76.

His family announced the death but did not provide any further details.

Unable to move nearly any of his muscles, speechless but for a computer synthesized voice, Dr. Hawking had suffered since the age of 21 from a degenerative motor neuron disease similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Initially given two years to live, a diagnosis that threw him into a profound depression, he found the cheap moncler sale strength to complete his doctorate and rise to the position of Lucasian professor of mathematics monclerdownjacket at the University of Cambridge, the same post held by Isaac Newton 300 years earlier.

Dr. Hawking eventually became one of the planet’s most renowned science popularizers, and he embraced the attention, traveling the world, meeting with presidents, visiting Antarctica and Easter Island, and flying on a special “zero gravity” jet whose parabolic flight let Dr. Hawking float through the cabin as if he were in space.

“My goal is simple,” he once said. “It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.” He spent much of his career searching for a way to reconcile Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum physics and produce a “theory of everything.”

He wrote an international bestseller, “A Brief History of Time” (1988), that delved into the origin and ultimate fate of the universe. He deliberately set out to write a mass market primer on an often incomprehensible subject.

Although the book was sometimes derided as being dense and had a reputation for being owned more than read, it sold millions of copies, was translated into more than 20 languages and inspired a mini empire of similar books from Dr. Hawking, including “The Universe in a Nutshell” and “A Briefer History of Time.”

With his daughter, Lucy, he wrote a series of children’s books about a young intergalactic traveler named George. His blunt 2013 memoir, “My Brief best moncler jackets History,” explored his development in science as well as his turbulent marriages. In addition, Dr. Hawking was the subject of a 1991 documentary, “A Brief History of Time,” directed by Errol Morris, and countless newspaper and magazine articles.

With the aid of a voice synthesizer, controlled by his fingers on a moncler outlet store keyboard, he gave speeches around the world, from Chile to China. He played himself on TV programs such as “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “The Simpsons,” the latter featuring Dr. Hawking telling the show’s lazy animated patriarch: “Your theory of a doughnut shaped universe is interesting, Homer. cheap moncler moncler down jacket jackets mens I may have to steal it.”

He insisted that his reputation as the second coming moncler womens jackets of Einstein had gotten out of control through “media hype.”

“I fit the part of a disabled genius,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “At least, I’m disabled even though I’m not a genius like Einstein… The public wants heroes. They made Einstein a hero, and now they’re making me a hero, though with much less justification.”

His scientific achievements included breakthroughs in understanding the extreme conditions of black holes, objects so dense that not cheap moncler jackets even light can escape their gravity.

His most famous theoretical breakthrough was to find an exception to this seemingly cheap moncler jackets womens unforgiving law of physics: Black holes are not really black, he realized, but rather can emanate thermal radiation from subatomic processes at their boundary and can potentially evaporate. Scientists refer to such theoretical emanations as “Hawking radiation.”

This revelation impressed other scientists with the way it took Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which is essential for understanding the gravity of black holes, and connected it to newer theories of quantum mechanics, which cover subatomic processes.

Plus, he threw in a dash of old fashioned thermodynamics achieving a kind of physics trifecta.

“Black holes ain’t as black as they are painted,” Dr. Hawking once said in a lecture, characteristically describing complicated physics in moncler sale ordinary language. “They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things moncler outlet woodbury can get out of a black hole, both to the outside and, possibly, to another universe. So, if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out.”

He also hypothesized that miniature black holes, remnants of the big bang, may be strewn through space, though moncler outlet online he noted that they haven’t been discovered. “This is a pity, because if moncler outlet prices they had, moncler usa I would have got a Nobel Prize,” he joked.

Early uk moncler outlet life

Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England, cheap moncler coats mens on Jan.8, 1942 the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death, he liked to point out. His father was a physician and specialist moncler sale outlet in tropical diseases; his mother was active in the Liberal Party.

Both parents were Oxford educated, and Stephen the eldest of four siblings grew up surrounded by books. But he did not show particular academic promise, despite an obvious streak of brilliance that prompted his friends to nickname him “Einstein.”

“I always wanted to know how everything worked,” he told Omni magazine. “I would take things apart to see how they worked, but they didn’t often go back together.”

He was a bit lazy and a bon vivant, as he later would acknowledge. After being admitted to the University of Oxford, he skimped on his studies and enjoyed carousing with fellow members of the Oxford Boat Club, for which he was a tactically savvy coxswain. He graduated in 1962 and did just moncler sale online well enough on discount moncler jackets his final exam to earn admission to the University of Cambridge to pursue a doctorate.

“Physics was always the most boring subject moncler uk outlet at school because it was so easy and obvious. Chemistry was much more fun because unexpected things, such as explosions, kept happening,” Dr. Hawking wrote in his memoir. “But physics and astronomy offered the hope of understanding where we came from and why we are here. I wanted to fathom the depths of the Universe.”

Then came what he later referred to as “that terrible thing.” He had noticed at Oxford that he’d become increasingly clumsy and would sometimes stumble and fall for no obvious reason. Tests revealed motor moncler online store neuron disease; he could not expect to live more than a couple moncler outlet sale of years.

After a period of despondency in which he holed up in his room and listened to Wagner, he attended a New Year’s Eve party at which he met a young student named Jane Wilde. Their courtship spurred his will to live. They married in 1965.

“We had this very strong sense at the time that our generation lived anyway under this most awful nuclear cloud that with a four minute warning the world itself could likely end,” Jane Hawking later told the British newspaper the Observer. “That made us feel above all that we had to do our bit, that we had to follow an idealistic course in life. That may seem naive now, but that was exactly the spirit in which Stephen and I set out in the Sixties to make the most of whatever gifts were given us.”.