Customer Reviews (1)

stephen haking
I think this book was not really focusing on Stephen Hawking .It focuses more on other people throughout time.It doesn't give much information about him. Pretty much the only information it gives is what schools he went to, what he was working on when he was there not his more resent work. ... Read more

Product Description
SynopsisThe Great Scientists is a lavishly-illustrated collection of essays, each devoted to one of history's greatest scientists.From the Greek mathematicians Euclid and Archimedes, whose work is even now required reading, to the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, the greatest practitioners from a wide range of scientific disciplines are represented here. Each essay gives a biographical background for its subject and a description of the main themes of their work, together with concise expositions of some of their key ideas.The thirty-four chronologically-organized essays in this book add up to a biography of science itself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Excellent... at deceiving

I felt that Ferguson achieved a nice balance by intermingling Hawking's biography with introduction to his theories. It allows your brain to alternate between working on science and returning "back to earth" to meet an interesting human being with all his problems and victories. The science part is very layman-friendly, and at the same time is not too slow for the scientifically-minded (just a bit too politically correct, but it's understandable). The biography part is tactful, and with just the right amount of detail. The book is clear and inspiring, and she convinced me to read Hawking's "A brief history of time".

Strangely enough, Hawking's book turned out to be not as clear and inspiring as Ferguson's book. She painted him as the king of clarity, conciseness, and humor, but I don't get such an impression at all from reading his book. So now I have mixed feelings: I respect Ferguson for being good at writing and teaching (better than Hawking at both), but I'm annoyed with her for the false advertisement.

Interesting if you understand it already
After reading A Brief History of Time I decided that I wanted to learn more about Stephen Hawkings himself and how he became who he is today. I picked up this book written by Kitty Ferguson, which is claimed to be a biography and started reading it. After about twenty pages she was done talking about his life and started talking about his theories. This was disappointing to me because I thought the book was a biography.

As I continued reading I became somewhat confused while she told about Hawkings discoveries. The explanations were little or none in trying to get the reader to understand the ideas. It did not help that there were very few small illustrations that were in the book to go along with her explanations. If there were highly detailed color illustrations such as those in A Brief History In Time, it might have been much easier to understand.

I did enjoy the beginning of the book where Kitty goes into detail about the beginning of Hawkings life but I feel like it was just an overview of how he became who he is today. I would not recommend this book, instead I would recommend A Brief History In Time because it is much easier to understand because it has great illustrations and is not so mathematical.

Interesting book, but also very tedious at times!
I really liked this book at times, but found Kitty tries to hard to explain Hawking's theories. If you are not one of the Mensa crowd then it gets a little meaningless like similar to reading Greek, can you speak or read Greek? not me! Some of Hawking's theories are explained well and are pretty straight forward, such as the singularity theory and how many believe the universe has expanded and then retracted back to a singularity and then expanded and retracted over and over. Also it goes into detail about his belief that particles can escape black holes, once it reaches the event horizon it splits the negative may fall directly into the black hole past the even horizon and the positive falls away from the event horizon freeing it.This aside what I really wanted to read more about was the man Hawking himself. I mean come on, I've already read "A brief history of time". In short this book is short on explaining much about Stephen and tries to hard to explain some of his many theories.

Interesting Book
Kitty Ferguson gives a lot of info on Stephen Hawking's life and works, being a small book in size it is full of interesting theories on Universe and Black Holes. It is purely scientific book thus it tries to explain everything scientifically, eventhough Stephen Hawking sometimes accepts that science cannot prove some things that are beyond our reach, nevertheless he does not accept that the whole universe is a God's creation.

"The Creation of the Universe" by Hârun Yahya is an excellent book which explains scientifically how God has created the Universe.

One star for the book + the star that is Hawking
After reading "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking, I was absolutely taken with astrophysics. Now, I'm no professional, but I could understand Hawking's book even if I had to learn to concentrate on what I was reading completely and reread some places. Hawking attempted to explain even the most complicated things - and succeeded. I thought I could pick up Kitty Ferguson's book for some easy reading on Hawking's discoveries - boy, was I wrong!

Kitty Ferguson makes absolutely no attempt to explain the things she's talking about. None! She simply gives you facts that are impossible to accept without explanations. For the most part, I did know what she was talking about - and even then I was astounded by how confusing she had managed to make it all seem, and how imprecise a few of her facts and analogies were.

If you understand the things she's talking about (and you probably do understand most of the things if you know at least something about Hawking's discoveries), you have no need to read this book. It's not even that good of a biography. If you don't know a thing about astrophysics, but would like to learn and, what's much more important, understand these things, pick up another book - and I myself would suggest the aforementioned "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent collection of Hawking's papers on the subject
This collection of the original papers of one of the pioneers of black hole and big bang theory is an excellent compendium of work on the subject.It shows the development of the theory, along with various co-authors,such as Penrose, Hartle, Gibbons, etc., from 1970 to 1992, during whichmost of this theory was developed.He discusses various possible quantumstates as well as topologies of the universe and their possible outcomes interms of its evolution in time.Highly technical, for the specialist only,not the general public, as were some of his other books.

Excellent collection of Hawking's papers on the subject
This collection of the original papers of one of the pioneers of black hole and big bang theory is an excellent compendium of work on the subject.It shows the development of the theory, along with various co-authors,such as Penrose, Hartle, Gibbons, etc., from 1970 to 1992, during whichmost of this theory was developed.He discusses various possible quantumstates as well as topologies of the universe and their possible outcomes interms of its evolution in time.Highly technical, for the specialist only,not the general public, as were some of his other books. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An excellent introductory text
I enyoyed this book greatly.It provides an excellent introduction to the sometimes overwealming amount of material available on big bang cosmology and its philosophical implications.It also strikes a nice balance between the science and the religious aspects of thinking about the big bang.Wilkinson never over-states his case, taking pains to point out where uncertainties lie in both the science and the natural theology.His conclusions are therefore realistic and draw the reader to the understanding that God's revelation is primarily not found in nature (although strongly suggested by both Cosmological and Design arguments) but in the written revelation of Scripture.I would recommend this book to anyone interested in obtaining a fast and very readable understanding of how the Big Bang origin of the Universe ties in with faith.

Excellent and Well-ordered presentation of the key issue
Before I've read the book "A brief history of time" and found it is very intestesting. Then this book reinforce me about what is the key points stated by Hawking and, most importantly, what is the problem stillremained unsolved. This is a very good book to those outsiders of astronomylike me. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

It is as a story for children
It is as a story for children with the necessary amount of physical principles for beginners, very good ... Read more

Product Description
One of the most influential thinkers of our time, Stephen Hawking is an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but for the clarity and wit with which he expresses them. In this new book Hawking takes us to the cutting edge of theoretical physics, where truth is often stranger than fiction, to explain in laymens terms the principles that control our universe.Like many in the community of theoretical physicists, Professor Hawking is seeking to uncover the grail of sciencethe elusive Theory of Everything that lies at the heart of the cosmos. In his accessible and often playful style, he guides us on his search to uncover the secrets of the universefrom supergravity to supersymmetry, from quantum theory to M-theory, from holography to duality. He takes us to the wild frontiers of science, where superstring theory and p-branes may hold the final clue to the puzzle. And he lets us behind the scenes of one of his most exciting intellectual adventures as he seeks to combine Einsteins General Theory of Relativity and Richard Feynmans idea of multiple histories into one complete unified theory that will describe everything that happens in the universe.With characteristic exuberance, Professor Hawking invites us to be fellow travelers on this extraordinary voyage through space-time. Copious four-color illustrations help clarify this journey into a surreal wonderland where particles, sheets, and strings move in eleven dimensions; where black holes evaporate and disappear, taking their secret with them; and where the original cosmic seed from which our own universe sprang was a tiny nut.The Universe in a Nutshell is essential reading for all of us who want to understand the universe in which we live. Like its companion volume, A Brief History of Time, it conveys the excitement felt within the scientific community as the secrets of the cosmos reveal themselves. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Amazing - Easy to read
The illustration are amazing !!!!. It really help you to understand better the concepts, I have read very few books with such ilustrations.

At the same time, Stephen Hawking explains the concept in a very simple way that any non-scientific person can understand.

I fully recommend this book.

Regards ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Illusion of the Horizon
How does one become an elder of the tribe?
A first at Cambridge is a long way toward making one an elder.
Being abused for discovering a fact like evaporating black holes also seems to help. Where there is a limit to eldering Hawking reached it in 1980 when he said the end of science was in sight. In my own cosmology research I have found indications of seven layers of self-similar quantum uncertainty based on odd powers of the velocity of light. Hawking's limited physics is based on only two of these layers. In terms of observation we have only Levy jump
structure in distributions of galaxy clusters , dark matter and the observation by Dr. Parker of a very small particle in supernova spectra to indicate that these unknown theoretical layers actually exist.
Like terrorism which kills it's own best and brightest, a doctrine of limits on science is self defeating and probably wrong philosophically as well. An elder of the tribe can be mistaken and so mislead others.
We appear as a tribe to be at a plateau of learning, but not at an end to it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Gos Speaks Through His Weakest Vessels
To come to this review, you are obviously interested in either the work that Stephen Hawking does or are interested in Stephen Hawking the man. As such you are already somewhat familiar with the theories of GeneralRelativity and Quantum Mechanics and understand the physical handicapthat afflicts the body of this great mind.The "Complete WorksOf Stephen Hawking", The CambridgeUnabridged Edition, consists ofseven lectures on four audio tapes read by the author himself using a voicesynthesizer machine which must be used to overcome the limitations that ALShas put upon his speech.It is ironic that this great mind issinking within the event horizon of a communication black hole due to thedisease.Despite this fact, Stephen is able to deliver a masterfulpresentation of his life's work in astrophysics, cosmology, and astronomy.His presentation is personal as well as informative and is pepperedthroughout with philosophy, academic humor, and personal insights. It does take some time to get used to the sound of his synthesized voice. Often it sounds robotic, alien, staccato, and certainphrases have a haunting Gregorian chant rhythm to them. I noticed that in a"Brief History Of Time", the words of the text are read by thefamous British radio talk personality Michael Jackson. This isdefinitely a work that needs to be played over and over again stopping tostudy it along the way. I first listened to it on my 1 hour 1 way car tripsto work but plan to listen to it again this summer under the stars at thecampgrounds near the glow of an open fire. The tape consists of thefollowing seven lectures (1) Ideas About the History of the Universe, (2)The Big Bang, (3) Black Holes , (4) Quantum Mechanics, (5) Origin of theUniverse, (6) The Past and the Future, and (7) The Unified Theory .Nowtechies that should really wet your whistle!The tapes are a greatvalue at the price. If you are a student of the subjects covered, have aphilosophical interest in finding where science and God meet face to face,or just want to enjoy the triumph of human spirit over adversity, thenthese tapes are a must hear for you. In summary, Ibelieve that after experiencing these tapes you'll come to the sameconclusion that I made that Stephen Hawking is an example of how the gloryof God and His majestic works can be made manifest in the form of one ofHis weakest vessels.

Great!
This is quite a phenominal book.Prof.Hawking really translates all that mathematical stuff to something even the layman can understand.Its was hard to put down.However some of the lectors have are the same things as a few of the chapters in his other book A brief history of time. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Skeptic (Altadena, CA), published by Skeptics Society & Skeptic Magazine on March 22, 1999. The length of the article is 742 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: THE MAGIC OF STEPHEN HAWKING.(Brief Article)
Publication: Skeptic (Altadena, CA) (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1999
Publisher: Skeptics Society & Skeptic Magazine
Volume: 7Issue: 2Page: 104

Article Type: Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more