Stephen Hawking

Kitty Ferguson was born in San Antonio Texas. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and was for many years a successful professional musician conducting and performing oratorio early music and chamber music. In 1986 she moved to England where her husband was a Visiting Fellow and later Life Member of Clare Hall Cambridge University. During this and many subsequent periods of residence at Cambridge Kitty Ferguson audited graduated lectures and seminars in the Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics and got to know some of the legendary figures in those fields including Stephen Hawking. In 1987 she retired from music to devote herself full time to writing about science. <p>In 1963 Stephen Hawking was given two years to live. Defying all the odds he died in March 2018 at age seventy-six as the most celebrated scientist in the world. This carefully researched and updated biography and tribute gives a rich picture of Hawking's remarkable life - his childhood the heart-rending beginning of his struggle with motor neurone disease his ever-increasing international fame and his long personal battle for survival in pursuit of a scientific understanding of the universe. <br> From more recent years Kitty Ferguson describes his inspiring leadership at the London Paralympic Games the release of the film <i>The Theory of Everything</i> his continuing work on black holes and the origin of the universe the discovery of 'supertranslations' and the astounding 'Starshot' program. Here also are his intense concern for the future of the Earth and his use of his celebrity to fight for environmental and humanitarian causes and finally a ground-breaking paper he was working on at the time of his death in which he took issue with some of his own earlier theories. Throughout Ferguson summarizes and explains the cutting-edge science in which Hawking was engaged and offers vivid first-hand descriptions of his funeral in Cambridge and the interment of his ashes in Westminster Abbey. <br>This is an amazing and revealing tribute assessing Hawking's legacy in and out of science.</p> <p>In 1963 Stephen Hawking was given two years to live. Defying all the odds he died in March 2018 at age seventy-six as the most celebrated scientist in the world. This carefully researched and updated biography and tribute gives a rich picture of Hawking's remarkable life - his childhood the heart-rending beginning of his struggle with motor neurone disease his ever-increasing international fame and his long personal battle for survival in pursuit of a scientific understanding of the universe. <br> From more recent years Kitty Ferguson describes his inspiring leadership at the London Paralympic Games the release of the film <i>The Theory of Everything</i> his continuing work on black holes and the origin of the universe the discovery of 'supertranslations' and the astounding 'Starshot' program. Here also are his intense concern for the future of the Earth and his use of his celebrity to fight for environmental and humanitarian causes and finally a ground-breaking paper he was working on at the time of his death in which he took issue with some of his own earlier theories. Throughout Ferguson summarizes and explains the cutting-edge science in which Hawking was engaged and offers vivid first-hand descriptions of his funeral in Cambridge and the interment of his ashes in Westminster Abbey. <br>This is an amazing and revealing tribute assessing Hawking's legacy in and out of science.</p>