STEPHEN HAWKING
Born in Oxford on January 8 1942 - 300 years
after the death of astronomer Galileo Galilei - Professor Hawking grew up
in St Albans, Hertfordshire. After being diagnosed with a rare form of motor
neurone disease - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - at the age of 22,
Hawking was given just a few years to live.
He had a difficult time at the local public
school and was persecuted as a "swot" who was more interested in
jazz, classical music and debating than sport and pop. Although not top of the
class, he was good at maths and "chaotically enthusiastic in
chemistry". Hawking has said of his workload as an undergraduate at Oxford
"amounted to an average of just an hour a day". He also said:
"I'm not proud of this lack of work, I'm just describing my attitude at
the time, which I shared with most of my fellow students. You were supposed to
be brilliant without effort, or to accept your limitations and get a fourth
class degree."Despite his workload confession, Hawking got a first and
went to Cambridge to begin work on his PhD - but he was already beginning to
experience the first symptoms of his illness, having fallen over twice for no
reason during the last year of his undergraduate degree.
Hawking has credited his marriage in 1965 to
Jane Wilde, a language student, as a turning point in his life at a time when
he was unsure as to what the point of a degree was if he was to die soon. They
went on to have three children - Robert, Lucy, and Timothy.
At a meeting of the Royal Society meeting,
Hawking interrupted a lecture by renowned astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle to let
him know that he had made a mistake. When asked how he knew there had been an
error, Hawking replied: "Because I've worked them out in my head."
During the 1970s Hawking produced a stream of
first class research, including probably his most important contribution to
cosmology: the discovery of Hawking radiation, which allows a black hole to
leak energy and gradually fade away to nothing.
In the 1980s, Professor Hawking and Professor
Jim Hartle proposed a model of the universe which had no boundaries in space or
time. The concept was described in A Brief History Of Time, which sold 25
million copies worldwide.
In February 1990 he left his wife of twenty
five years to set up home with one of his nurses, Elaine Mason. The couple
married in September 1995 but divorced in 2006. Among some of his more unconventional
theories, Professor Hawking has predicted the end of humanity - due to global
warming, a new killer virus, or the impact of a large comet.
Hawking has examined
the relationship between science and religion, writing a 2010 book Grand
Design, which argues that evoking God is not necessary to explain the origins
of the universe.
T E
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I O N
01-Choose
the item according to the text:
a)Stephen Hawking grew up in Oxford
b)Stephen Hawking likes sport and pop
c)Stephen Hawking was born in St Albans
d)Stephen Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1964
e)Stephen Hawking predicts three possible causes
for the end of the universe
02-Stephen Hawking lived _________________years
with Elaine Mason.
a)eleven
b)sixteen c)three d)two e)twenty five
03-Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with ALS in
nineteen sixty _______________.
a)two
b)three c)four d)five e)six
04-Stephen Hawking
a)married just once b)divorced once c)had no children
d)lived 25 years with Elaine Mason e)divorced twice
05-“Hawking has examined the relationship between
science and religion.”
The sentence is in the
________________________tense.
a)simple present b)simple past c)present perfect d)past perfect
e)present continuous
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