REMARKABLE SCIENTISTS: Stephen Hawking & Alan Turing - 2 Biographies in 1Featuring...*Stephen Hawking*Alan Turing2 Great Books in 1!Stephen HawkingDennis William Sciama (1926- 1999) was a don at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He was one of the most eminent physicists of his time. In 1963 he was informed that he was to receive a new pupil, a young man from Oxford who wished to undertake his doctoral thesis under his tutelage. There was nothing unusual in this. Mentoring new pupils was part and parcel of a university academic's life. However the new pupil seemed, on the face of it, unremarkable. In fact he had the reputation of a lazy and somewhat difficult student. In his written exam at Oxford he had achieved neither a first nor a second degree. A first would have entitled him to undertake postgraduate studies at Cambridge; a second at Oxford. He had to submit to an oral exam, an ordeal that terrified him but nevertheless impressed his examiners who remarked that they faced intelligence greater than there own. After a while Sciama also agreed that he was dealing with a highly potent intellect. This man was only 21 years old and moreover had just been given 2 years to live. His name was Stephen William Hawking.Alan TuringIf you have ever used a computer, you owe that joy to Alan Turing. Turing is known by many as the Father of the Modern Computer for his conception of the theoretical stored-memory machine (known as the Turing Machine) and for the subsequent implementation of this idea in the creation of some of the world's first working computers, the Automatic Computing Engine, and the Manchester Mark 1. Essentially, Turing not only conceived of the possible existence of a computer that could perform more than one task, he was also instrumental in helping several computer labs actually bring his ideas to life. He saw his concepts go from mere theory to actual reality in his lifetime. Everything he theorized was then built on by new generations of computer scientists, and eventually led to the technological wonderland in which we live, and often take for granted, today.