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At the celebration of his 65th birthday on January 8, 2007, Hawking announced his plans for a zero-gravity flight in 2007 to prepare for a suborbital spaceflight in 2009 on Virgin Galactic's space service. Billionaire Richard Branson pledged to pay all expenses for the flight, costing an estimated [100,000. Stephen Hawking's zero-gravity flight of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times, took place on April 26, 2007. Thus he became the first quadriplegic to float free in zero-gravity. This was the first time in 40 years that he moved freely beyond his wheelchair. The fee is normally $3,750 for 10-15 plunges, but Hawking was not required to pay the fee. Before the flight he was quoted as saying "Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered viruses, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."
Stephen Hawking
```````````(1942-
~~~~~~~Cosmologist and the "Brief Historian of Time"
- Born: January 8, 1942, Oxford, England
- Residence: United Kingdom
- Nationality: United Kingdom
- Field: Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
- Institutions: University of Cambridge
- Alma mater: University of Oxford University of Cambridge
- Academic advisor: Dennis Sciama
- Notable students: Bruce Allen, Fay Dowker, Malcolm Perry, Bernard 3. Carr, Gary Gibbons
- Known for: Black holes and Hawking Radiation, Theoreti-cal cosmology and no-boundary proposal Quantum gravity and unification of physics Notable prizes: Prince of Asturias Award (1989) Copley Medal (2006)
If we want to find a famous scientist in the World most probably you have to go to a cemetery, because most famous scientists were from the past. In the present scientific community there is a physicist that have acquired a legendary status through his research and popular science writing. He is none other than the British physicist Stephan Hawking.
He is now completely paralysed and because of his medical condition as well as the idea that he is the most brilliant physicist since Albert Einstein, media has propelled Hawking into international stardom. Hawking's father was a doctor who lived at St. Albans . Hawking started school at St. Albans Girl School which took boys up to age of 10. After graduating from high School he entered Oxford University and specialized in chemistry. He afterwards entered the University of Cambridge to Study under Dennis Sciama leading to a Ph.D.
By this time Hawking was finding it difficult to do some physical tasks like climbing a staircase and tying his shoe laces, which his father assumed to be due to a tropical infection Hawking had contracted during his travels. Later Hawking was diagnosed suffering with a form of motor neurone disease and gave him a little chance of living (not more than 3 years). Despite this Hawking beat his depressive period and started to work on his doctorate. He later married his sweetheart lane Wilde. During the mid sixties Hawking received his Ph.D. and later joined Gonville and Caius College, university of Cambridge, and did research with another great scientist Roger Penrose. Around this time Hawking proved the expanding Universe must have originated from a mathematical point of zero volume.
By the early 1970's Hawking did research on black holes , which are extremely dense regions of spacetime , where even light cannot escape, hence the name .Hawking later proved that Black holes are not entirely black as previously believed but has a characteristic temperature and can radiate energy when you apply Quantum mechanics to black hole theory. This radiation is now called Hawking Radiation in his honour.
During the 1980's Hawking turned his attention to cosmology and put forward his "No boundary proposal". In this theory he postulated that Space Time is fully selfcontained without any edges or boundaries in imaginary time.
The success of his book "A Brief History of Time" prompted him to write other popular science books including "Black Holes and Baby Universes" and the sequel to "A Brief History of Time", titled "Universe in a Nut Shell".
Hawking was elected a fellow of The Royal Society in 1974 and received its Copley Medal in 2006. He is currently working on a theory to reconcile Einstein's General theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, termed in physics as TOE theory. (Theory of Everything).
Many thanks to: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
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