Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born to science researchers Frank and Isobel on the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo Galilei, Jan 8, 1942. He grew up in St. Albans in England as the eldest of four children. He graduated from Oxford University with top grades in physics, before moving to Cambridge University to study cosmology. In 1963 he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and was given two years to live. Nevertheless, he married his wife Jane Wilde in 1965, with whom he had three children, and completed his PhD. He went on to become a member of the Royal Society in 1974 and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1979, just as Sir Isaac Newton had centuries before. He spent much of his career studying both the vastest and minutest details of how the universe works, seeking a way to unify Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics. In 1985 an emergency procedure took away his ability to talk, but a cutting-edge device developed at Cambridge University allowed him to control a computer voice by moving his cheek muscles. His work on black holes earned him fame among scientific circles, but his public prominence came with the publication of A Brief History of Time in 1988. After the book became a bestseller, he was considered a celebrity scientist. Hawking divorced Jane in 1995 and married his nurse Elaine Mason. The two split in 2006. In 2014, a Hollywood film, The Theory of Everything, celebrated his life and struggles with his disability. Hawking continued to push the boundaries of humanity’s understanding of the universe, publishing many works both in academic circles and for public audiences. Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018 at age 76.