Stephen Hawking hospitalized, reported very ill

[SlowwHand]

Don't take anyone's words for gold by default, not even KH's.


***********************************

Distinctions

Hawking's belief that the lay person should have access to his work led him to write a series of popular science books in addition to his academic work. The first of these, A Brief History of Time, was published on 1 April 1988 by Hawking, his family and friends, and some leading physicists. It surprisingly became a best-seller and was followed by The Universe in a Nutshell (2001). Both books have remained highly popular all over the world. A collection of essays titled Black Holes and Baby Universes (1993) was also popular. His most recent book, A Briefer History of Time (2005), co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, aims to update his earlier works and make them accessible to an even wider audience. He and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, have recently published a children's book focusing on science that has been described to be "like Harry Potter, but without the magic." This book is called George's Secret Key to the Universe and includes information on Hawking radiation.

Hawking is also known for his wit; he is famous for his oft-made statement, "When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol." This was a deliberately ironic paraphrase of "Whenever I hear the word culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning", from the play Schlageter (Act 1, Scene 1) by German playwright and Nazi Poet Laureate Hanns Johst. His wit has both entertained the non-specialist public and helped them to understand complex questions. Asked in October 2005 on the British daytime chat show Richard & Judy, to explain his assertion that the question "What came before the Big Bang?" was meaningless, he compared it to asking "What lies north of the North Pole?"

Hawking has generally avoided talking about politics at length, but he has appeared on a political broadcast for the United Kingdom's Labour Party. He supports the children's charity SOS Children's Villages UK.[33]

Awards and honours
1975 Eddington Medal
1976 Hughes Medal of the Royal Society
1979 Albert Einstein Medal
1982 Order of the British Empire (Commander)
1985 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
1986 Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
1988 Wolf Prize in Physics
1989 Prince of Asturias Awards in Concord
1989 Companion of Honour
1999 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society[34]
2003 Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University
2006 Copley Medal of the Royal Society[35]

Selected publications

Technical
Singularities in Collapsing Stars and Expanding Universes with Dennis William Sciama, 1969 Comments on Astrophysics and Space Physics Vol 1 #1
The Nature of Space and Time with Roger Penrose, foreword by Michael Atiyah, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-691-05084-8
The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with George Ellis, 1973 ISBN 0521099064
The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind, (with Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and Roger Penrose), Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-56330-5 (hardback), ISBN 0-521-65538-2 (paperback), Canto edition: ISBN 0-521-78572-3
Information Loss in Black Holes, Cambridge University Press, 2005
God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History, Running Press, 2005 ISBN 0762419229

Popular
A Brief History of Time, (Bantam Press 1988) ISBN 055305340X
Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, (Bantam Books 1993) ISBN 0553374117
The Universe in a Nutshell, (Bantam Press 2001) ISBN 055380202X
On The Shoulders of Giants. The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy, (Running Press 2002) ISBN 076241698X
A Briefer History of Time, (Bantam Books 2005) ISBN 0553804367

Footnote: On Hawking's website, he denounces the unauthorised publication of The Theory of Everything and asks consumers to be aware that he was not involved in its creation.

[KrazyHorse]

at the list of "technical" publications

[Asher]

Confession: I was a ghostwriter for "The Nature of Space and Time with Roger Penrose".

[Guynemer]

I may finally score in the Poly Dead Pool!

[aneeshm]

I also think that as an educational effort such attempts are doomed to failure.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think so?

[KrazyHorse]

I can't remember what speaker I saw make this categorization, but he divided sciences into two broad types:

Type A sciences (for example physics) are fundamentally explanatory/predictive in nature. Knowledge of the subject is largely knowledge of methodologies. They are thus hierarchical; knowledge of certain branches requires knowledge of a large number of previous branches.

Type B sciences (for example archaeology) are fundamentally DESCRIPTIVE in nature. They tell you what DID/DOES happen without necessarily requiring an explanation from basic principles. They are thus not hierarchical.

Now, these descriptions are of course caricatures; not everything in physics is proven from first principles. And there are common techniques across branches of archaeology.

But they do explain why it might be easier to impart knowledge of modern archaeological results to the ordinary intelligent layman than it is to teach the same layman physics (EVEN if this person has the innate ability to understand physics at a high level, which is itself a huge hurdle to climb).

[SlowwHand]

This is the true reason Mr. Hawking is in dire circumstances. He bored himself to near death. He's still working on it. Someone needs to send him a hooker and a case of decent beer.

[FrostyBoy]

I wonder if Einstein experienced something similar towards the end.

[Asher]

What?