Introducing Stephen Hawking: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides) by J.P. McEvoy (PDF)

Description

An ideal introduction [to Stephen Hawking]’ – Independent’Astonishingly comprehensive – clearer than Hawking himself’ – FocusStephen Hawking was a world-famous physicist with a cameo in The Simpsons on his CV, but outside of his academic field his work was little understood. To the public he was a tragic figure – a brilliant scientist and author of the 9 million-copy-selling A Brief History of Time, and yet spent the majority of his life confined to a wheelchair and almost completely paralysed.Hawking’s major contribution to science was to integrate the two great theories of 20th-century physics: Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.J.P. McEvoy and Oscar Zarate’s brilliant graphic guide explores Hawking’s life, the evolution of his work from his days as a student, and his breathtaking discoveries about where these fundamental laws break down or overlap, such as on the edge of a Black Hole or at the origin of the Universe itself.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Not only did I find this book very interesting but I learned more about black holes than I knew before. It is relatively easy to understand (the illustrations are helpful) and no mathematics. Good for anyone interested in cosmology and Hawking.

⭐I like this book because it remind me of a comic book. It was really interesting to read and I am not a science person at all.

⭐This book is the best book I read about the Stephen hawking contributions to cosmological, yes it is very simple and avoid the technical details and depend on the mental pictures just as hawking himself used to do after his ALS.

⭐I would recommend this book to those who know a little bit of physics and need a simple explanation. I liked the organization of the material.

⭐This is an interesting short read. Well blend of easy read and technical info.

⭐This book allowed me to appreciate a very “beautiful mind”. The best part is an easy explanation of black hole and singularity. A must read for an inquisitive mind.

⭐Far from an academic, I still keep trying to get my head a bit closer to grasping cosmology. The drawings and photos with the speech bubbles were, for me, mildly annoying. I read mostly from Kindle on my iPad Pro at night, and it was necessary to open, expand, and then close nearly all of them. Yes, it is a personal problem, and yes, it is good that I was able to enlarge them, but they seem more a detriment than an enhancement of the presentation. Topics felt well organized and appropriately detailed for those of us who will likely forever be beginners, but I will not be choosing this style again. Sorry, but it didn’t work for me.

⭐Easy to understand, quick introduction to Hawking and cosmology. I’ve never understood the discoveries of Einstein et al as clearly. Leaves the mind to wander, but also moves at a nice pace.

⭐Even better than I expected, easy and quick to read, but I suppose it helps to be interested in the subject. Plenty of background info and S Hawking was a very interesting and insightful physicist and cosmologist.Excellent author. Very memorable illustrations. have read it all, but will read again. Quite short, but very comprehensive.

⭐Love this book, describes Professor Hawking’s life and career in laymans terms, wish they could update it to include the last 15 years though!

⭐Introducing Stephen Hawking: A Graphic Guide is more than a book. It is a complete revelation to a man’s struggle to theeternal question “Quid est veritas?”, “What is truth?”. I have been following Stephen Hawking ever since mychildhood, when his first epoch making book “A Brief History of Time” was published. He is my source of inspiration(may be of millions), determinism and sheer talent. The Lucassian Professor of mathematics, his name ranks withSir Isaac Newton and he started cosmology where Einstein left.This book has lot of virtues: (a) It explains certain mathematical problems in layman’s language. (b) The book gives aoverview of cosmology in the 19th.century and (c) it summarises very effectively the major contribution ofDr.Hawking’s works.The book starts with Hawking’s early childhood, his ALS disease. It then explores Newtonian mechanics and thenEinstein takes over. The author J.P.Mc Evoy explains Einstein’s ‘annus mirabilis’ and the Principle of Equivalence,the basic tenet of General Relativity.The author then explains Einstein’s field equations (which is better explained in this series of book: IntroducingRelativity, although I believe that those set of 10 partial differential equations allude many mathematicians). McEvoyexplains that the field equations are ‘impossible to solve except where energy consideration reduce to simpler form’,mass tensor=0.The curvature of spacetime, explained in the familiar ‘rubber sheet model’ — matter tells space how to curve & curvesspace tells matter how to move, the bending of starlight, the first experimental proof performed by Eddington.Then comes the Schwarzschild radius, which is a precursor to black hole, R = 2GM/c^2. Next comes the Friedmannmodel of the universe, the 3 different models: if mass density>cr (critical radius), BIG CRUNCH, if mass density