British physicist Stephen Hawking pursued what physicists call a Grand
Unified Theory, or a "Theory of Everything." As Hawking put it, "My goal
is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe."
His most important work in
physics explored the nature of "singularities," anomalies in the space-time
continuum commonly known as "black holes." In 1988 he published
A Brief
History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, a book that brought his work to a
general audience.
Since publication of his memoir My Brief History and release of the movie "The Theory of Everything," those new to Hawking's story have celebrated the simple fact that he lived so long after being diagnosed with
motor neuron disease in his early twenties and given two years to live. Instead, he lived to be 76 years old.
When asked many years later about living with the disease, he told an interviewer he
was "happier now . . . Before, I was very bored with
life. I drank a fair bit, I guess; I didn't do any work . . . When one's expectations are
reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have."
My favorite of Hawking's quotes is this one: ". . . the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls . . . saying it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?"
