Stephen Hawking: A Life From Beginning to End by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hourly History
Published: 2018-12-31T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Information Loss

“I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe but in a mangled form.”

—Stephen Hawking

In 1975, the Hawkings returned to the UK and moved into a house on West Road. The house belonged to Caius College who recognized Stephen’s need for a ground-floor living quarters close to his place of work. He left his electric wheelchair behind when he moved from California and put in a request to the British National Health Service for a similar model. The NHS denied the request, but it was impossible for Stephen to go back to a manual chair now. The Hawkings drained their savings and bought the chair themselves.

Hawking’s seven years Caius Fellowship for Distinction in Science was almost up by this point. Amid rumors Stephen had loved California so much he intended to move there, the University of Cambridge offered him a readership. The readership came with a secretary, who took on the administrative work previously done by Jane. Within two years, this readership became a professorship with a chair in gravitational physics. This was a rare distinction and came with a significant salary rise. Still, it was no lie that Hawking enjoyed spending time in California, so much so that he started a habit of returning to Caltech for weeks at a time each year.

In 1977, Stephen was able to travel without Jane for the first time. His graduate students, secretary, and wheelchair gave him more independence from his wife. This gave Jane some much-needed time off. She joined a church choir and began working on her dissertation again. It was at the church choir that Jane met organist Jonathan Hellyer Jones. The Hawking house was always full of friends and colleagues, and Jonathan’s addition to the clan was not remarkable. Over time, Jane and Jonathan’s relationship became romantic. Jane revealed her feelings to Stephen who understood the situation and gave his blessing. All Stephen asked was that Jane continued to love him as her husband. Jane agreed, and she and Jonathan determined that maintaining the Hawking family unit was more important than their love for each other. In the fall of 1978, Jane became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy, Timothy, on April 15, 1979. She graduated from her doctoral degree in April 1981 and became a teacher at sixth-form level.

During these years, Stephen’s star continued to rise. In 1978, He received many international awards and honorary doctorates, including the Albert Einstein Award and an honorary doctorate from Oxford. Soon after, the University of Cambridge made Hawking Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The first lecture he gave as Lucasian Professor was titled “Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?” In it, Hawking pledged his allegiance to the proposed N=8 supergravity theory, as the best candidate for a theory of everything that explains all physical aspects of the universe.

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