Born on January 8, 1942, three hundred years after the birth of Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking is continuously attempting to synthesize physics as effectively as Newton explained mechanics.

Hawking attended Oxford University, where he became very interested in thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and relativity. He went on to Cambridge University where he received his Ph.D. At about this time, he was diagnosed as having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), which causes the central nervous system to degenerate. It has trapped his brilliant mind in an unresponsive body, but he has continued with his work.

His research has concentrated on the concept of singularity, in which an object has extremely high density in a very small volume. Such an object is called a black hole, one way a massive star can end its life-cycle.

Considering quantum mechanics, which deals with matter at the subatomic level, Hawking has suggested that black...