2018-03-22

Continued

Four years later, Hawking married Elaine Mason, one of the nurses employed to give him round-the-clock care. The marriage lasted 11 years, during which Cambridgeshire police investigated a series of alleged assaults on Hawking. The physicist denied that Elaine was involved, and refused to cooperate with police, who dropped the investigation.

Hawking was not, perhaps, the greatest physicist of his time, but in cosmology he was a towering figure. There is no perfect proxy for scientific worth, but Hawking won the Albert Einstein award, the Wolf prize, the Copley medal, and the Fundamental Physics prize. The Nobel prize, however, eluded him.

He was fond of scientific wagers, despite a knack for losing them. In 1975, he bet the US physicist Kip Thorne a subscription to Penthouse that the cosmic x-ray source Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole. He lost in 1990. In 1997, Hawking and Thorne bet John Preskill an encyclopaedia that information must be lost in black holes. Hawking conceded in 2004. In 2012, Hawking lost $100 to Gordon Kane for betting that the Higgs boson would not be discovered.

▍生词好句

round-the-clock: 全天候的；不分昼夜的

a series of: 一系列的 a chain of

assault /əˈsɔːlt, əˈsɒlt/: n. 攻击；袭击

cooperate with: 与……合作

towering figure: 杰出的人物；塔尖式人物

proxy /ˈprɒksi/: n. 代表

elude /ɪˈl(j)uːd/: vt. 避开；逃避；躲避

be fond of: 喜欢；中意

wager /ˈweɪdʒə/: n. 赌注；打赌 bet

knack /nak/: n. 习惯

Penthouse: 某男性杂志的名称（原意：顶级套房）

concede /kənˈsiːd/: vi. 承认失败；让步

boson /ˈbəʊzɒn/: n. 玻色子

① He lectured at the White House during the Clinton administration — his oblique references to the Monica Lewinsky episode evidently lost on those who screened his speech — and returned in 2009 to receive the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama.

② His life was played out in biographies and documentaries, most recently The Theory of Everything, in which Eddie Redmayne played him.

③ He appeared on The Simpsons and played poker with Einstein and Newton on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

④ He delivered gorgeous put-downs on The Big Bang Theory.

⑤ "What do Sheldon Cooper and a black hole have in common?" Hawking asked the fictional Caltech physicist whose IQ comfortably outstrips his social skills.

⑥ After a pause, the answer came: "They both suck."

⑦ Hawking has argued that for humanity to survive it must spread out into space, and has warned against the worst applications of artificial intelligence, including autonomous weapons.

▍生词好句

oblique /əˈbliːk/: adj. 间接的；拐弯抹角的

screen /skriːn/: vt. 审查；审核

the presidential medal of freedom: 总统自由勋章

put-down: n. 贬低（或奚落）的话

outstrip /aʊtˈstrɪp/: vt.（在数量、程度或成就上）超过；胜过

suck /sʌk/: vi. 吸；[美俚] 糟糕

spread out: 散开；扩展

warn (sb.) against sth.: 告诫（某人）不要做某事

autonomous /ɔːˈtɒnəməs/: adj. 自主的；有自主权的