Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, and initially studied natural sciences at University College, Oxford, graduating with honors in 1962. He then pursued a PhD in cosmology at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, under Dennis Sciama, where he encountered Roger Penrose's work on singularities—points where physics breaks down, such as at the Big Bang or inside black holes. Hawking applied these ideas to prove that the universe had a beginning at the Big Bang and would likely end in similar singularities, marking early breakthroughs in general relativity. In his late 20s, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), given a prognosis of just a few years to live, yet he continued prolific research. By 1968, he joined Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, and in 1973 co-authored 'The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time' with G.F.R. Ellis. His 1974 discovery of Hawking radiation—showing black holes emit particles and evaporate due to quantum effects—revolutionized physics, linking relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics. He became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1979, a post once held by Isaac Newton, and later directed research in applied mathematics until his death. Hawking's later career emphasized cosmology, including theories on the universe having 'no boundary' and black hole thermodynamics. He popularized science through books like the 1988 bestseller 'A Brief History of Time', which sold over nine million copies and explained complex ideas accessibly. Despite progressive disability requiring a wheelchair and speech synthesizer, he remained active in research, media, and advocacy until his death on March 14, 2018, founding Cambridge's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology in 2007.