[noncount] : a quality that makes you continue trying to do or achieve something that is difficult. 1  What he lacked in talent he made up for in determination. 2  dogged/fierce/steely/stubborn determination.
The first modern solution of general relativity that would characterize a black hole was found by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, although its interpretation as a region of space from which nothing can escape was first published by David Finkelstein in 1958.
Hawking has devoted most of his life to studying these questions. Initially, cosmologists believed the holes were like a cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up everything in their path. Hawking revolutionized the study of the holes when he demonstrated in 1976 that, under the strange rules of quantum physics, once black holes form they start to evaporate away, radiating energy and losing mass in the process.