Stephen Hawking - Softcover

Gribbin, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1605989401 ISBN 13: 9781605989402

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2016

Synopsis

An updated edition of the definitive biography on Stephen Hawking that marries biography and science to tell the story of one of the most remarkable men in history

Stephen Hawking is no ordinary scientist. He has broadened our basic understanding of the universe and his theoretical work on black holes and the origins of the cosmos have been groundbreaking, if not downright revolutionary. He has also spent much of his adult life confined to a wheelchair, a victim of ALS. But his physical limitations have done nothing to confine him intellectually.

Hawking would already be remarkable for his cutting-edge work in theoretical physics alone. However, he has also managed to popularize science unlike anyone else.  He achieved almost cult-like fame with his A Brief History of Time and has since become a household name by making the complexities of cosmology accessible to millions of people.

In Stephen Hawking, science writers White and Gribbin have painted a compelling portrait of a scientific mind that seemingly knows no bounds. Weaving together clear explanations of Hawking’s science with a detailed, balanced, and sensitive personal history, readers will come to know and appreciate both sides of this incredible man.

Includes new updates in Hawking’s biography and the recent discovery of the Higgs-Boson (or “God”) particle.

About this title

About the Author:

John Gribbin, Ph.D., trained as an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of several books, including the highly acclaimed In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, and the co-author of Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science. He lives in East Sussex with his wife and two sons.  

Michael White is the author of more than twenty books, most recently Tolkien: A Biography, and C. S. Lewis. He is a former science writer for GQ and a consultant for the Discovery Channel. He lectured in science at Oxford before becoming a full time writer. He lives in Perth, Australia.

From Kirkus Reviews:

White (Director of Science Studies/d'Overbroeck's College, Oxford) and Gribbin (Cosmic Coincidences, 1989, etc.) have produced a definitive biography of arguably the best-known cosmologist in the world. Stephen Hawking's accomplishments as theoretician on the origin and destiny of the universe are forever linked in the public mind to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)--the degenerative neurological disease that is slowly destroying the nerve cells that control Hawking's movement. At age 50, the 90-pound scientist, long confined to a wheelchair, communicates through fingertip control of a computer program that allows him to compose sentences synthesized into speech (described as sounding like someone speaking Canadian English with a Hungarian accent). It was not always so. White and Gribbin describe the early, healthy years, with prep school selected by ambitious parents: physician father Frank, a tropical- medicine expert who was frequently absent in Africa, and Isobel, whose left-wing politics left their mark on her son. Hawking's school days were marked by friendship with a bright group who flirted with religion and ESP, and built a computer. He showed marked ineptitude in sports but marked aptitude in mathematics. The diagnosis of ALS and Hawking's first creative bursts in math and physics all but coincided in his early 20s, when he had already moved to Cambridge and gotten married. He has since moved from strength to strength in the formation of ``singularity'' theory, the wedding of quantum mechanics and general relativity, and the generation of black holes in myriad changing forms. There aren't many warts in this bio, save for some comments on a colleague whose career Hawking almost destroyed, and a marriage in ruin: Hawking now lives with a new nurse/caretaker--the wife of the expert who adapted Hawking's computer to his wheelchair. A fascinating story overall, with the added plus that White and Gribbin are able to translate Hawking's bestselling A Brief History of Time for those who bought the book but found it incomprehensible. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1605989401
• ISBN 13: 9781605989402
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300