The Impact of ICT on a Person with Special Needs

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8th 1942. His parents’ house was

situated in North London, but during the Second World War, which

commenced in 1939, his parents re-located to the city of Oxford due to

safety fears in London. At this time, Oxford was considered to be one

of, if not the safest place in England to have babies. Stephen was

born in Oxford, and he lived there with his parents for the first

eight years of his life. It was at this point that he moved back down

to London to an area about 20 miles away from where he first lived. It

was at eleven years of age that Stephen went to St Albans School, and

then on to University College in Oxford. This college in Oxford was

the college where his father used to go in his schooling days. Stephen

initially went there to study mathematics, a subject he thoroughly

enjoyed but his father wanted otherwise. He then ended up studying

physics, as mathematics was not available at the University College.

Stephen then went on to Cambridge University to study Cosmology, the

metaphysical study of the origin and nature of the universe. After

gaining a PhD in this subject, he became a Research Fellow, and a

Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. After deciding to

opt out of a career in Astronomy, he came to the Department of Applied

Mathematics and Physics, and since 1979, he has held the position of

Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.

Since this day in 1979, Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws

that control the universe that we live in. With help from fellow

colleagues, he showed that the General Theory of Relativity implied

space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in

black holes. These results showed that it was necessary to combine

General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great scientific

development of the 20th Century. He also realised that combining these

theories had its consequences. One consequence of such a unification

that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely

black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and

disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or

boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe

began was completely determined by the laws of science.

He has included many theories in his several publications, and as a

result, he has twelve honorary degrees. These include a CBE in 1982,

and he was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He is the recipient of

many awards, medals and prizes and is a Fellow of The Royal Society