stephen hawking short biography

• Games & Quizzes
• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center

• How is a black hole formed?
• What are some examples of black holes?
• Why does physics work in SI units?

Stephen Hawking

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• University of Cambridge - Stephen Hawking
• Official Site of Stephen Hawking
• Famous Scientists - Biography of Stephen Hawking
• Physics LibreTexts - The Science of Hawking
• Space.com - Biography of Stephen Hawking
• Stephen Hawking - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Stephen Hawking - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

When was Stephen Hawking born?

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942.

When did Stephen Hawking die?

Stephen Hawking died on March 14, 2018.

Where did Stephen Hawking get his education?

Stephen Hawking received a bachelor’s degree in physics from University College, Oxford , in 1962 and a doctorate in physics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge , in 1966.

What was Stephen Hawking famous for?

Stephen Hawking worked on the physics of black holes . He proposed that black holes would emit subatomic particles until they eventually exploded. He also wrote best-selling books, the most famous of which was A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988).

Recent News

Stephen Hawking (born January 8, 1942, Oxford , Oxfordshire, England—died March 14, 2018, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) was an English theoretical physicist whose theory of exploding black holes drew upon both relativity theory and quantum mechanics . He also worked with space-time singularities.

Hawking studied physics at University College, Oxford ( B.A. , 1962), and Trinity Hall, Cambridge ( Ph.D. , 1966). He was elected a research fellow at Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge. In the early 1960s Hawking contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , an incurable degenerative neuromuscular disease. He continued to work despite the disease’s progressively disabling effects.

Hawking worked primarily in the field of general relativity and particularly on the physics of black holes. In 1971 he suggested the formation, following the big bang , of numerous objects containing as much as one billion tons of mass but occupying only the space of a proton . These objects, called mini black holes , are unique in that their immense mass and gravity require that they be ruled by the laws of relativity, while their minute size requires that the laws of quantum mechanics apply to them also. In 1974 Hawking proposed that, in accordance with the predictions of quantum theory, black holes emit subatomic particles until they exhaust their energy and finally explode. Hawking’s work greatly spurred efforts to theoretically delineate the properties of black holes, objects about which it was previously thought that nothing could be known. His work was also important because it showed these properties’ relationship to the laws of classical thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.

Hawking’s contributions to physics earned him many exceptional honours. In 1974 the Royal Society elected him one of its youngest fellows. He became professor of gravitational physics at Cambridge in 1977, and in 1979 he was appointed to Cambridge’s Lucasian professorship of mathematics, a post once held by Isaac Newton . Hawking was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and a Companion of Honour in 1989. He also received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 2006 and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. In 2008 he accepted a visiting research chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

His publications included The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (1973; coauthored with G.F.R. Ellis), Superspace and Supergravity (1981), The Very Early Universe (1983), and the best sellers A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988), The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), A Briefer History of Time (2005), and The Grand Design (2010; coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow).

Stephen Hawking biography: Theories, books & quotes

A brief history of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

• Scientific achievements
• Filmography
• Quotes and controversial statements

Additional resources

Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history. 

His work on the origins and structure of the universe, from the Big Bang to black holes, revolutionized the field, while his best-selling books have appealed to readers who may not have Hawking's scientific background. Hawking died on March 14, 2018 , at the age of 76.

Stephen Hawking was seen by many as the world's smartest person, though he never revealed his IQ score. When asked about his IQ score by a New York Times reporter he replied, "I have no idea, people who boast about their IQ are losers," according to the news site The Atlantic .  

Related: 4 bizarre Stephen Hawking theories that turned out to be right (and 6 we're not sure about)

In this brief biography, we look at Hawking's education and career — ranging from his discoveries to the popular books he's written — and the disease that robbed him of mobility and speech.   

The early life of Stephen Hawking

British cosmologist Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England on Jan. 8, 1942  — 300 years to the day after the death of the astronomer Galileo Galilei . He attended University College, Oxford, where he studied physics, despite his father's urging to focus on medicine. Hawking went on to Cambridge to research cosmology , the study of the universe as a whole. 

In early 1963, just shy of his 21st birthday, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) . Doctors told Hawkings that he would likely not survive more than two years with the disease. Completing his doctorate did not appear likely, but Hawking defied the odds. He also obtained his PhD in 1966 for his thesis entitled " Properties of expanding universes ". In that same year, Hawking also won the prestigious Adams Prize for his essay entitled "Singularities and the Geometry of Space-Time".

From then Hawking went on to forge new roads into the understanding of the universe in the decades since. 

As the disease spread, Hawking became less mobile and began using a wheelchair. Talking grew more challenging and, in 1985, an emergency tracheotomy caused his total loss of speech. A speech-generating device constructed at Cambridge, combined with a software program, served as his electronic voice, allowing Hawking to select his words by moving the muscles in his cheek.

Just before his diagnosis, Hawking met Jane Wilde, and the two were married in 1965. The couple had three children before separating in 1990. Hawking remarried in 1995 to Elaine Mason but divorced in 2006.

Stephen Hawking's greatest scientific achievements

Throughout his career, Hawking proposed several theories regarding astronomical anomalies, posed curious questions about the cosmos and enlightened the world about the origin of everything. Here are just some of the many milestones Hawking made in the name of science. 

In 1970, Hawkings and fellow physicist and Oxford classmate, Roger Penrose, published a joint paper entitled " The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology ". In this paper, Hawking and Penrose proposed a new theory of spacetime singularities — a breakdown in the fabric of the universe found in one of Hawking's later discoveries, the black hole. This early work not only challenged concepts in physics but also supported the concept of the Big Bang as the birth of the universe, as outlined in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity in the 1940s. 

Over the course of his career, Hawking studied the basic laws governing the universe. In 1974, Hawking published another paper called " Black hole explosions? ", in which he outlined a theorem that united Einstein's theory of general relativity, with quantum theory — which explains the behavior of matter and energy on an atomic level. In this new paper, Hawking hypothesized that matter not only fell into the gravitational pull of black holes but that photons radiated from them — which has now been confirmed in laboratory experiments by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel — aptly named "Hawking radiation". 

In 1974, Hawking was inducted into the Royal Society, a worldwide fellowship of scientists. Five years later, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, the most famous academic chair in the world (the second holder was Sir Isaac Newton , also a member of the Royal Society).

During the 1980s, Hawking turned his attention to the Big Bang and the uncertainties about the beginning of the universe. "Events before the Big Bang are simply not defined, because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them. Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory and say that time began at the Big Bang," he said during his lecture called The Beginning of Time . In 1983, Hawking, along with scientists James Harlte, published a paper outlining their " no-boundary proposal " for the universe. In their paper, Hawking and Hartle describe the shape of the universe as reminiscent of a shuttlecock — with the Big Bang at the narrowest point and the expanding universe emerging from it.

Related: Can we time travel? A theoretical physicist provides some answers

Books by Stephen Hawking

In the last three decades of Hawking's life, he not only continued to publish academic literature, but he also published several popular science books to share his theories of the history of the universe with the layperson. His most popular book " A Brief History of Time " (10th-anniversary edition: Bantam, 1998) was first published in 1988 and became an international bestseller. It has sold almost 10 million copies and has been translated into 40 different languages.

Hawking went on to write other nonfiction books aimed at non-scientists. These include " A Briefer History of Time ," " The Universe in a Nutshell ," " The Grand Design " and " On the Shoulders of Giants ." 

Along with his many successful books about the inner workings of the universe, Hawking also began a series of science fiction books called " George and the Big Bang ", with his daughter Lucy Hawking in 2011. Aimed at middle school children, the series follows George's adventures as he travels through space. 

Stephen Hawking's filmography

Hawking has made several television appearances, including a playing hologram of himself on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and a cameo on the television show "Big Bang Theory." He has also voiced himself in several episodes of the animated series "Futurama" and "The Simpson". In 1997, PBS also presented an educational miniseries titled " Stephen Hawking's Universe ," which probes the theories of the cosmologist. 

 In 2014, a movie based on Hawking's life was released. Called "The Theory of Everything," the film drew praise from Hawking , who said it made him reflect on his own life. "Although I'm severely disabled, I have been successful in my scientific work," Hawking wrote on Facebook in November 2014. "I travel widely and have been to Antarctica and Easter Island, down in a submarine and up on a zero-gravity flight. One day, I hope to go into space." 

Related: The Theory of Everything: Searching for the universal rules of physics

Stephen Hawking's quotes and controversial statements

Hawking's quotes range from notable to poetic to controversial. Among them: 

• "Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? "— A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes , 1988 
• "All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist."— Stephen Hawking's Universe , 1997.  
• "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in." — The Guardian, 2011 .
• "We should seek the greatest value of our action." — The Guardian, 2011. 
• "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired. "— A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes , 1988.   
• "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."  
• "It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value." — Life in the Universe , 1996.  
• "One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem." — A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes , 1988.  
• "It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining." — The Guardian, 2005 . 
• "I relish the rare opportunity I've been given to live the life of the mind. But I know I need my body and that it will not last forever." — Stem Cell Universe , 2014. 

A list of Hawking quotes would be incomplete without mentioning some of his more controversial statements.

He frequently said that humans must leave Earth if we wished to survive. 

• "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million...Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space," he said during an interview with video site Big Think , 2010. 
• "[W]e must … continue to go into space for the future of humanity…I don't think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet,"  Hawking said during a lecture at the Oxford Union debating society , 2016. 
• "We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth," he said during a speech at the Starmus Festival in Norway, 2017. 

He also said time travel should be possible, and that we should explore space for the romance of it. 

"Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out. I was one of the first to write about the conditions under which this would be possible. I showed it would require matter with negative energy density, which may not be available. Other scientists took courage from my paper and wrote further papers on the subject," he told the new site Parade in 2010. "Science is not only a disciple of reason, but, also, one of romance and passion," he adds.

The theoretical physicist was also concerned that robots could not only have an impact on the economy but also mean doom for humanity.

"The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining," he wrote in a 2016 column in The Guardian .

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," he told the BBC in 2014. Hawking added, however, that AI developed to date has been helpful. It's more the self-replication potential that worries him. "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."

"The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether," Hawking told WIRED in November 2017.

An avowed atheist, Hawking also occasionally waded into the topic of religion.

• "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." — The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. 
• "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail…There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he said during a 2011 interview with The Guardian .
• "Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn't. I'm an atheist," Hawking said in a 2014 interview with the news site El Mundo .  

For more information about Stephen Hawking, his theories and read through the many transcriptions of his influential lectures, check out his official website . You can also watch Hawking probe the origins of the cosmos in his extraordinary TED talk .  

Bibliography

#5: Stephen Hawking’s warning: Abandon earth-or face extinction . Big Think. (2010, July 27). https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction/

Beck, J. (2017, October 11). “people who boast about their IQ are losers.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/trump-tillerson-iq-brag-boast-psychology-study/542544/

The beginning of time . Stephen Hawking. (n.d.-c). https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/the-beginning-of-time

Guardian News and Media. (2005, September 27). Interview: Stephen Hawking . The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/sep/27/scienceandnature.highereducationprofile

Guardian News and Media. (2011a, May 15). Stephen Hawking: “there is no heaven; it’s a Fairy story.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven

Guardian News and Media. (2011b, May 15). Stephen Hawking: “there is no heaven; it’s a Fairy story.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven

Guardian News and Media. (2016, December 1). This is the most dangerous time for our planet | Stephen Hawking . The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/01/stephen-hawking-dangerous-time-planet-inequality

Hartle, J. B., & Hawking, S. W. (1983, December 15). Wave function of the universe . Physical Review D. https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.28.2960

Hawking radiation and the sonic black hole - technion - israel institute of technology . Technion. (2021, February 17). https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2021/02/hawking-radiation-and-the-sonic-black-hole/

Hawking, S. W. (1974, March 1). Black Hole Explosions? . Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/248030a0

Life in the universe . Stephen Hawking. (n.d.-a). https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/life-in-the-universe

Medeiros, J. (2017, November 28). Stephen Hawking: “I fear ai may replace humans altogether.” WIRED UK. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/stephen-hawking-interview-alien-life-climate-change-donald-trump

Oxford Union Speech . Stephen Hawking. (n.d.-b). https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/speeches/speech-5

Pablo Jáuregui, Enviado especial Guía de Isora (Tenerife), & Chocolatillo. (2018, March 14). Stephen Hawking: “no hay ningún dios. soy ateo.” ELMUNDO. https://www.elmundo.es/ciencia/2014/09/21/541dbc12ca474104078b4577.html

The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology . Royal Society Publishing. (1970, January 27). https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.1970.0021

Hawking, S. W. (1966). Properties of expanding universes. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.11283

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Get the Space.com Newsletter

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Nola Taylor Tillman is a contributing writer for Space.com. She loves all things space and astronomy-related, and enjoys the opportunity to learn more. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English and Astrophysics from Agnes Scott college and served as an intern at Sky & Telescope magazine. In her free time, she homeschools her four children. Follow her on Twitter at @NolaTRedd

• Scott Dutfield Contributor

Is there liquid water on Mars today? Marsquake data could tell us

Ed Stone, who led NASA's iconic Voyager project for 50 years, dies at 88

James Webb Space Telescope spies never-before-seen star behavior in distant nebula (video, photo)

Most Popular

• 2 NASA, Boeing delay Starliner astronaut landing again, to study helium leaks and thruster issues
• 3 Magnetic vortices may help feed supermassive black holes. Here's how
• 4 Is there liquid water on Mars today? Marsquake data could tell us
• 5 Gaia space telescope helps astronomers image hidden objects around bright stars

Physics Network

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) was a renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist from England. Diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at a young age, Hawking defied the odds and continued his groundbreaking work in theoretical physics, particularly in the study of black holes and the nature of the universe. His best-known book, “A Brief History of Time,” brought complex scientific concepts to a wider audience. Hawking's contributions to theoretical physics, along with his resilience in the face of physical challenges, made him one of the most iconic figures in contemporary science.

Hawking was born into an academic family. His father, Frank Hawking, was a medical researcher, and his mother, Isobel Hawking, was a philosopher. From an early age, Hawking showed an interest in the mysteries of the cosmos. His family moved to St. Albans, a town near London, when he was eight years old.

Academically gifted, Hawking attended University College, Oxford, where he pursued a degree in physics. Despite initial struggles adapting to the academic environment , he found inspiration in the theoretical physics community at Oxford. Hawking joined the University's Boat Club, where he met Jane Wilde, a modern languages student. The two fell in love, and their relationship would become a central part of Hawking's life.

After completing his undergraduate studies at Oxford, Hawking continued his education at the University of Cambridge, where he pursued a Ph.D. in cosmology . During this time, he began experiencing physical difficulties, including clumsiness and occasional falls. In 1963, at the age of 21, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive and incurable neurodegenerative disorder.

The prognosis for individuals with ALS was grim, with a life expectancy of only a few years. However, Hawking defied the odds and continued his academic pursuits, focusing on understanding the nature of the universe. His early work involved collaborations with physicist Roger Penrose, resulting in groundbreaking theorems related to black holes and the singularity theorems in general relativity .

In 1970, Hawking's research took a significant turn when he applied thermodynamic concepts to black holes. Through his work on black hole thermodynamics, he developed the concept of Hawking radiation. This theoretical prediction suggested that black holes could emit radiation and lose mass, ultimately leading to their evaporation. This groundbreaking idea challenged previous assumptions about the irreversible nature of black holes.

In 1974, Hawking was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, a testament to the impact of his research on theoretical physics. Despite the progression of his physical limitations due to ALS, Hawking's mind remained sharp, and he continued to contribute to the field with remarkable perseverance.

Hawking's book “A Brief History of Time,” published in 1988, brought his ideas to a broader audience. Written in a way that made complex scientific concepts accessible to the general public, the book delved into the nature of the universe, black holes, and the fundamental laws of physics. “A Brief History of Time” became an international bestseller, and its success propelled Hawking into the limelight as a public figure.

Throughout his career, Hawking received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to theoretical physics. He held the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Hawking's work on black holes, Hawking radiation, and cosmology earned him recognition as one of the leading physicists of his time.

In 1995, Hawking faced a personal challenge as his marriage to Jane Wilde Hawking ended in divorce. Despite the difficulties in his personal life, he continued to focus on his scientific work and engage with the public through lectures and media appearances. Hawking's distinctive voice, delivered through a computerized speech synthesizer, became iconic and synonymous with his public image.

In 1997, Hawking married Elaine Mason, one of his nurses. The marriage brought both happiness and controversy, and it ended in divorce in 2006. Despite the personal tumult, Hawking's scientific achievements remained at the forefront of his legacy.

Hawking's contributions extended beyond his own research; he was an advocate for science education and the popularization of scientific knowledge. His life story and resilience in the face of physical challenges inspired millions around the world. Hawking became a symbol of determination, proving that the human mind could triumph over the limitations of the body.

In 2004, Hawking achieved a long-standing goal of experiencing weightlessness. Despite his severe physical condition, he took a flight aboard a modified Boeing 727 that flew parabolic arcs to create periods of weightlessness. The experience was a testament to Hawking's adventurous spirit and his refusal to let physical constraints define his life.

Hawking's later years were marked by continued exploration of theoretical physics and collaboration with other physicists. He worked on the information paradox related to black holes, which questions the fate of information that falls into a black hole. Hawking proposed that information could be released when black holes evaporate, challenging previous assumptions about the conservation of information in the universe.

As his health declined, Hawking's communication became increasingly reliant on advanced technology. His computerized speech synthesizer allowed him to communicate by selecting words and phrases using a single cheek muscle. Despite the challenges, Hawking remained engaged in scientific discussions, participated in conferences, and continued to publish papers.

Stephen Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018, at the age of 76, at his home in Cambridge. His death marked the end of a remarkable life that defied the limitations imposed by ALS. The scientific community mourned the loss of a brilliant mind, and tributes poured in from around the world.

Hawking's legacy lives on through his contributions to theoretical physics, his popular science writings, and the inspiration he provided to countless individuals facing adversity. His work reshaped our understanding of the universe and challenged us to contemplate the profound questions of existence. Stephen Hawking's life exemplified the triumph of intellect, curiosity, and determination over physical limitations, leaving an indelible mark on the scientific and cultural landscape.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Biography of Stephen Hawking, Physicist and Cosmologist

Karwai Tang/Getty Images

• Important Physicists
• Physics Laws, Concepts, and Principles
• Quantum Physics
• Thermodynamics
• Cosmology & Astrophysics
• Weather & Climate

• M.S., Mathematics Education, Indiana University
• B.A., Physics, Wabash College

Stephen Hawking (January 8, 1942–March 14, 2018) was a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist, especially esteemed for overcoming an extreme physical disability to pursue his groundbreaking scientific work. He was a bestselling author whose books made complex ideas accessible to the general public. His theories provided deep insights into the connections between quantum physics and relativity, including how those concepts might be united in explaining fundamental questions related to the development of the universe and the formation of black holes.

Fast Facts: Stephen Hawking

• Known For : Cosmologist, physicist, best-selling science writer
• Also Known As : Steven William Hawking
• Born : January 8, 1942 in Oxfordshire, England
• Parents : Frank and Isobel Hawking
• Died: March 14, 2018 in Cambridge, England
• Education : St Albans School, B.A., University College, Oxford, Ph.D., Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 1966
• Published Works :  A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, The Universe in a Nutshell, On the Shoulders of Giants, A Briefer History of Time, The Grand Design, My Brief History
• Awards and Honors : Fellow of the Royal Society, the Eddington Medal, the Royal Society's Hughes Medal, the Albert Einstein Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Wolf Prize in Physics, the Prince of Asturias Awards in Concord, the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society
• Spouses : Jane Wilde, Elaine Mason
• Children : Robert, Lucy, Timothy
• Notable Quote : “Most of the threats we face come from the progress we’ve made in science and technology. We are not going to stop making progress, or reverse it, so we must recognize the dangers and control them. I’m an optimist, and I believe we can.”

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxfordshire, England, where his mother had been sent for safety during the German bombings of London of World War II. His mother Isobel Hawking was an Oxford graduate and his father Frank Hawking was a medical researcher.

After Stephen's birth, the family reunited in London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research. The family then moved to St. Albans so that Stephen's father could pursue medical research at the nearby Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill.

Education and Medical Diagnosis

Stephen Hawking attended school in St. Albans, where he was an unexceptional student. His brilliance was much more apparent in his years at Oxford University. He specialized in physics and graduated with first-class honors despite his relative lack of diligence. In 1962, he continued his education at Cambridge University, pursuing a Ph.D. in cosmology.

At age 21, a year after beginning his doctoral program, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as motor neuron disease, ALS, and Lou Gehrig's disease). Given only three years to live, he has written that this prognosis helped motivate him in his physics work .

There is little doubt that his ability to remain actively engaged with the world through his scientific work helped him persevere in the face of the disease. The support of family and friends were equally key. This is vividly portrayed in the dramatic film "The Theory of Everything."

The ALS Progresses

As his illness progressed, Hawking became less mobile and began using a wheelchair. As part of his condition, Hawking eventually lost his ability to speak, so he utilized a device capable of translating his eye movements (since he could no longer utilize a keypad) to speak in a digitized voice.

In addition to his keen mind within physics, he gained respect throughout the world as a science communicator. His achievements are deeply impressive on their own, but some of the reason he is so universally respected was his ability to accomplish so much while suffering the severe debility caused by ALS.

Marriage and Children

Just before his diagnosis, Hawking met Jane Wilde, and the two were married in 1965. The couple had three children before separating. Hawking later married Elaine Mason in 1995 and they divorced in 2006.

Career as Academic and Author

Hawking stayed on at Cambridge after his graduation, first as a research fellow and then as a professional fellow. For most of his academic career, Hawking served as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton .

Following a long tradition, Hawking retired from this post at age 67, in the spring of 2009, though he continued his research at the university's cosmology institute. In 2008 he also accepted a position as a visiting researcher at Waterloo, Ontario's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In 1982 Hawking began work on a popular book on cosmology. By 1984 he had produced the first draft of "A Brief History of Time," which he published in 1988 after some medical setbacks. This book remained on the Sunday Times bestsellers list for 237 weeks. Hawking's even more accessible "A Briefer History of Time" was published in 2005.

Fields of Study

Hawking's major research was in the areas of theoretical cosmology , focusing on the evolution of the universe as governed by the laws of general relativity . He is most well-known for his work in the study of black holes . Through his work, Hawking was able to:

• Prove that singularities are general features of spacetime.
• Provide mathematical proof that information which fell into a black hole was lost.
• Demonstrate that black holes evaporate through Hawking radiation .

On March 14, 2018, Stephen Hawking died in his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76. His ashes were placed in London’s Westminster Abbey between the final resting places of Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

Stephen Hawking made large contributions as a scientist, science communicator, and as a heroic example of how enormous obstacles can be overcome. The Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication is a prestigious award that "recognizes the merit of popular science on an international level."

Thanks to his distinctive appearance, voice, and popularity, Stephen Hawking is often represented in popular culture. He made appearances on the television shows "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," as well as having a cameo on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in 1993.

"The Theory of Everything," a biographical drama film about Hawking's life, was released in 2014.

• “ Stephen Hawking .”  Famous Scientists .
• Redd, Nola Taylor. “ Stephen Hawking Biography (1942-2018) .”  Space.com , Space, 14 Mar. 2018.
• “ Stephen William Hawking .”  Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) .
• Biography of Brian Cox
• Biography of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
• What Is Astronomy and Who Does It?
• Leonard Susskind Bio
• Life and Work of Fred Hoyle, British Astronomer
• Biography of John Bardeen, Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist
• Understanding Cosmology and Its Impact
• Niels Bohr and the Manhattan Project
• Biography of Isaac Newton, Mathematician and Scientist
• Biography of Physicist Paul Dirac
• Biography of Charles Wheatstone, British Inventor and Entrepreneur
• Biography of Max Born, Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist
• Biography of Ernest Rutherford
• Biography of Jagadish Chandra Bose, Modern-Day Polymath
• Biography of Humphry Davy, Prominent English Chemist
• The Basics of Physics in Scientific Study

• Fundamentals NEW

• Biographies
• Compare Countries
• World Atlas

Stephen Hawking

Introduction.

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. He studied at the University of Oxford and earned a bachelor’s degree from there in 1962. When Hawking was 21, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—a disease that weakens muscles and causes paralysis. Despite his diagnosis, he continued to work. He earned a doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 1966.

As a cosmologist, Hawking studied the basic laws that govern the universe. One of his theories was that mini black holes were formed following the big bang . These mini black holes contain one billion tons of mass but occupy less than the space of an atom . Hawking’s work inspired others to investigate the properties of black holes.

Hawking became a professor at Cambridge in 1977. Two years later he was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics, a post once held by Isaac Newton . In 2009 he was named the Director of Research for the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge.

Hawking earned many honors and awards, including many honorary degrees. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1974, as one of its youngest fellows. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1982. In 2006 Hawking received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society, and he was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Hawking died on March 14, 2018, in Cambridge.

It’s here: the NEW Britannica Kids website!

We’ve been busy, working hard to bring you new features and an updated design. We hope you and your family enjoy the NEW Britannica Kids. Take a minute to check out all the enhancements!

• The same safe and trusted content for explorers of all ages.
• Accessible across all of today's devices: phones, tablets, and desktops.
• Improved homework resources designed to support a variety of curriculum subjects and standards.
• A new, third level of content, designed specially to meet the advanced needs of the sophisticated scholar.
• And so much more!

Want to see it in action?

Start a free trial

To share with more than one person, separate addresses with a comma

Choose a language from the menu above to view a computer-translated version of this page. Please note: Text within images is not translated, some features may not work properly after translation, and the translation may not accurately convey the intended meaning. Britannica does not review the converted text.

After translating an article, all tools except font up/font down will be disabled. To re-enable the tools or to convert back to English, click "view original" on the Google Translate toolbar.

• Privacy Notice
• Terms of Use

• World Biography

Stephen Hawking Biography

Born: January 8, 1942 Oxford, England English scientist, physicist, and mathematician

British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking has made fundamental contributions to the science of cosmology—the study of the origins, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe.

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. His father, a well-known researcher in tropical medicine, urged his son to seek a career in medicine, but Stephen found biology and medicine were not exact enough. Therefore, he turned to the study of mathematics and physics.

Hawking was not an outstanding student at St. Alban's School, nor later at Oxford University, which he entered in 1959. He was a social young man who did little schoolwork because he was able to grasp the essentials of a mathematics or physics problem quickly. At home he reports, "I would take things apart to see how they worked, but they didn't often go back together." His early school years were marked by unhappiness at school, with his peers and on the playing field. While at Oxford he became increasingly interested in physics (study of matter and energy), eventually graduating with a first class honors in physics (1962). He immediately began postgraduate studies at Cambridge University.

Graduate school

The onset of Hawking's graduate education at Cambridge marked a turning point in his life. It was then that he embarked upon the formal study of cosmology, which focused his study. And it was then that he was first stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease, a weakening disease of the nervous and muscular system that eventually led to his total confinement in a wheelchair. At Cambridge his talents were recognized, and he was encouraged to carry on his studies despite his growing physical disabilities. His marriage in 1965 was an important step in his emotional life. Marriage gave him, he recalled, the determination to live and make professional progress in the world of science. Hawking received his doctorate degree in 1966. He then began his lifelong research and teaching association with Cambridge University.

Theory of singularity

Hawking made his first major contribution to science with his idea of singularity, a work that grew out of his collaboration (working relationship) with Roger Penrose. A singularity is a place in either space or time at which some quantity becomes infinite (without an end). Such a place is found in a black hole, the final stage of a collapsed star, where the gravitational field has infinite strength. Penrose proved that a singularity could exist in the space-time of a real universe.

Drawing upon the work of both Penrose and Albert Einstein (1879–1955), Hawking demonstrated that our universe had its origins in a singularity. In the beginning all of the matter in the universe was concentrated in a single point, making a very small but tremendously dense body. Ten to twenty billion years ago that body exploded in a big bang that initiated time and the universe. Hawking was able to produce current astrophysical (having to do with the study of stars and the events that occur around them) research to support the big bang theory of the origin of the universe and oppose the competing steady-state theory.

Hawking's research led him to study the characteristics of the best-known singularity: the black hole. A black hole's edges, called the event horizon, can be detected. Hawking proved that the surface area (measurement of the surface) of the event horizon could only increase, not decrease, and that when two black holes merged the surface area of the new hole was larger than the sum of the two original.

Hawking's continuing examination of the nature of black holes led to two important discoveries. The first, that black holes can give off heat, opposed the claim that nothing could escape from a black hole. The second concerned the size of black holes. As originally conceived, black holes were immense in size because they were the end result of the collapse of gigantic stars. Hawking suggested the existence of millions of mini-black holes formed by the force of the original big bang explosion.

Unified field theory

In the 1980s Hawking answered one of Einstein's unanswered theories, the famous unified field theory. A complete unified theory includes the four main interactions known to modern physics. The unified theory explains the conditions that were present at the beginning of the universe as well as the features of the physical laws of nature. When humans develop the unified field theory, said Hawking, they will "know the mind of God."

Publications

As Hawking's physical condition grew worse his intellectual achievements increased. He wrote down his ideas in A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. It sold over a million copies and was listed as the best-selling nonfiction book for over a year.

In 1993 Hawking wrote Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, which, in addition to his scientific thoughts, contains chapters about Hawking's personal life. He coauthored a book in 1996 with Sir Roger Penrose titled The Nature of Space and Time. Issues discussed in this book include whether the universe has boundaries and if it will continue to expand forever. Hawking says yes to the first question and no to the second, while Penrose argues the opposite. Hawking joined Penrose again the following year in the creation of another book, The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind (1997). In 2002 he was likewise celebrating the publication of The Universe in a Nutshell. Despite decreasing health, Hawking traveled on the traditional book release circuit. People with disabilities look to him as a hero.

Honors and commitments

Hawking's work in modern cosmology and in theoretical astronomy and physics is widely recognized. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1974 and five years later was named to a professorial chair at Cambridge University that was once held by Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Beyond these honors he has earned a host of honorary degrees, awards, prizes, and lectureships from the major universities and scientific societies of Europe and America. By the end of the twentieth century Stephen Hawking had become one of the best-known scientists in the world. His popularity includes endorsing a wireless Internet connection and speaking to wheelchair-bound youth. He also had a special appearance on the television series Star Trek.

Though very private, it is generally known that Stephen's first marriage ended in 1991. He has three children from that marriage.

When asked about his objectives, Hawking told Zygon in a 1995 interview, "My goal is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."

For More Information

Ferguson, Kitty. Stephen Hawking: A Quest for a Theory of the Universe. New York: F. Watts, 1991.

Henderson, Harry. Stephen Hawking. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1995.

McDaniel, Melissa. Stephen Hawking: Revolutionary Physicist. New York: Chelsea House, 1994.

White, Michael, and John Gribbin. Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science. New York: Viking, 1992.

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:.

• Scientific Methods
• Famous Physicists
• Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking

Stephen Hawking is one of the most precious gems in the world of physics, who was ahead of his time. His disability of having unsteady feet and being diagnosed with degenerative disease couldn’t stop Stephen Hawking from becoming the world’s most famous and acclaimed scientist. Even his survival would have been a marvel to this world, but he lived amazingly till 76.

Table of Contents

• Who was Stephen Hawking?
• Stephen Hawking’s Education Awards & Achievements
• The Black Hole Theory

The Big Bang

Hawking radiation, the multiverse, who was stephen william hawking.

Stephen William Hawking was a British physicist, born on 8th January 1942. He is considered the most brilliant theoretical physicist of all time. He revolutionized the field of physics through his work on the origin of the universe and the black hole explosion theory. From the big bang to black holes, all his best-selling books appealed to physics lovers across the globe.

The English theoretical physicist whose theory of the explosion of black holes illustrated upon the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He also worked in the field of space-time singularities.

Stephen Hawking’s Education Awards & Achievements

Stephen William Hawking studied physics in 1962 at the University College, Cambridge and in 1966 in the Trinity Hall, Cambridge,. His contributions in physics are unparalleled, which often left other scientists scratching their heads.

Professor Stephen William Hawking holds 13 honorary degrees. He was bestowed CBE (1982), Fellow of Honor (1989) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009).

He has received the Fundamental Physics Award (2013), the Copley Medal (2006) and the Wolf Foundation Award (1988). Along with a bunch of other honours awards and medals, he won the Adams Prize in 1966 for his essay Singularities and the Space-time Geometry.

He was also a member of the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The physics of black hole.

Stephen William Hawking’s name has always been associated with the black hole. He put forward his stroke of genius combining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity , which has already aroused curiosity and has been under debate for decades, and the theory of quantum mechanics. In the early 1970s, Hawkins turned his attention to both of these theories, and later on, Stephen William Hawking’s most famous thesis on black holes was proven right.

Hawking’s doctoral thesis was written at a critical time when there was an argument between two cosmological theories: the Big Bang theory and the Steady State theory. Both these theories were considered to be opposing each other at that time. However, both theories accepted that the universe is expanding, but the first one explains that the universe is expanding from an ultra-compact, super-dense state at a finite time in the past, and the second one assumes that the universe has been intensifying forever.

Hawking showed in his thesis that the Steady State theory is mathematically self-contradictory. He reasoned instead that the universe began as a dense point called a singularity which was infinitely small. His description has been accepted worldwide today.

The photons or the particles of light can’t escape from the black holes because of their intense and strong gravity. But Stephen Hawking argued on it, explaining the truth, which was more complex than the assumed fact. He applied quantum theory, especially the idea of “virtual photons”; he realized that some of these photons could appear to be radiated from the black hole . At a laboratory experiment in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, it has recently been confirmed that this theory is correct and is named Hawking Radiation.

Instead of a real black hole, the researchers used a “sonic black hole” from which sound waves cannot outflow.

Stephen Hawking was also involved in the most exciting topics toward the conclusion of his life was the multiverse theory. He proposed the idea that our universe, with its start in the Big Bang, is just one of an infinite number of contemporaneous bubble universes. In his very last paper in 2018, he proposed a novel mathematical framework and tried to seek out the universe in his own words. But as with any assumption concerning parallel universes, we do not have any idea if his ideas are right now. Maybe the scientists will be able to test his belief in the coming times.

Not only an amazing physicist but Stephen Hawking was an amazing and inspiring personality too, he left behind his great research theories and thoughts as his legacy to us, which is truly a gift in physics.

Stay tuned to BYJU’S for more such interesting articles. Also, register to “BYJU’S – The Learning App” for loads of interactive, engaging Physics-related videos and unlimited academic assistance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What stephen hawking is famous for.

Apart from one of the most brilliant British physicists Stephen Hawking is famous for his theories on the Big Bang and the black hole concept.

What is Stephen Hawking’s IQ

Stephen Hawking has tried to keep his IQ a secret but it was estimated that his IQ is around 160.

When did Stephen Hawking write his first book?

In 1973 Stephen Hawking wrote his first book which is named as “The Large Scale Structure of Space-TIme”

How many types of Black holes are there?

There are four types of black holes:

• Intermediate
• Supermassive

What is Big Bang Theory?

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request OTP on Voice Call

Post My Comment

Knowledgable & inspiring.

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

Advertisement

Comment and Physics

A brief history of stephen hawking: a legacy of paradox.

By Stuart Clark

14 March 2018

Gemma Levine/Getty

Stephen Hawking, the world-famous theoretical physicist, has died at the age of 76.

Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.

“He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him for ever.”

Stephen Hawking dies aged 76

Tributes flow in following the death of world-famous theoretical physicist stephen hawking.

The most recognisable scientist of our age, Hawking holds an iconic status. His genre-defining book, A Brief History of Time , has sold more than 10 million copies since its publication in 1988, and has been translated into more than 35 languages. He appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation , The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory . His early life was the subject of an Oscar-winning performance by Eddie Redmayne in the 2014 film  The Theory of Everything . He was routinely consulted for oracular pronouncements on everything from time travel and alien life to Middle Eastern politics and nefarious robots . He had an endearing sense of humour and a daredevil attitude – relatable human traits that, combined with his seemingly superhuman mind, made Hawking eminently marketable.

But his cultural status – amplified by his disability and the media storm it invoked – often overshadowed his scientific legacy. That’s a shame for the man who discovered what might prove to be the key clue to the theory of everything , advanced our understanding of space and time, helped shape the course of physics for the last four decades and whose insight continues to drive progress in fundamental physics today.

Beginning with the big bang

Hawking’s research career began with disappointment. Arriving at the University of Cambridge in 1962 to begin his PhD, he was told that Fred Hoyle , his chosen supervisor, already had a full complement of students. The most famous British astrophysicist at the time, Hoyle was a magnet for the more ambitious students. Hawking didn’t make the cut. Instead, he was to work with Dennis Sciama, a physicist Hawking knew nothing about. In the same year, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative motor neurone disease that quickly robs people of the ability to voluntarily move their muscles. He was told he had two years to live.

Although Hawking’s body may have weakened, his intellect stayed sharp. Two years into his PhD, he was having trouble walking and talking, but it was clear that the disease was progressing more slowly than the doctors had initially feared. Meanwhile, his engagement to Jane Wilde – with whom he later had three children, Robert, Lucy and Tim – renewed his drive to make real progress in physics.

Stephen and Lucy Hawking

James Veysey/Camera Press

Working with Sciama had its advantages. Hoyle’s fame meant that he was seldom in the department, whereas Sciama was around and eager to talk. Those discussions stimulated the young Hawking to pursue his own scientific vision. Hoyle was vehemently opposed to the big bang theory (in fact, he had coined the name “big bang” in mockery). Sciama, on the other hand, was happy for Hawking to investigate the beginning of time.

Time’s arrow

Hawking was studying the work of Roger Penrose , which proved that if Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct, at the heart of every black hole must be a point where space and time themselves break down – a singularity. Hawking realised that if time’s arrow were reversed, the same reasoning would hold true for the universe as a whole. Under Sciama’s encouragement, he worked out the maths and was able to prove it: the universe according to general relativity began in a singularity.

Hawking was well aware, however, that Einstein didn’t have the last word. General relativity, which describes space and time on a large scale, doesn’t take into account quantum mechanics , which describes matter’s strange behaviour at much smaller scales. Some unknown “theory of everything” was needed to unite the two. For Hawking, the singularity at the universe’s origin did not signal the breakdown of space and time; it signalled the need for quantum gravity .

Luckily, the link that he forged between Penrose’s singularity and the singularity at the big bang provided a key clue for finding such a theory. If physicists wanted to understand the origin of the universe, Hawking had just shown them exactly where to look: a black hole .

Black holes were a subject ripe for investigation in the early 1970s. Although Karl Schwarzschild had found such objects lurking in the equations of general relativity back in 1915, theoreticians viewed them as mere mathematical anomalies and were reluctant to believe they could actually exist.

Albeit frightening, their action is reasonably straightforward: black holes have such strong gravitational fields that nothing, not even light, can escape their grip. Any matter that falls into one is forever lost to the outside world. This, however, is a dagger in the heart of thermodynamics.

Stephen Hawking's final theorem turns time and causality inside out

In his final years, Stephen Hawking tackled the question of why the universe appears fine-tuned for life. His collaborator Thomas Hertog explains the radical solution they came up with

Thermodynamic threat

The second law of thermodynamics is one of the most well-established laws of nature. It states that the entropy, or level of disorder in a system, always increases. The second law gives form to the observation that ice cubes will melt into a puddle, but a puddle of water will never spontaneously turn into a block of ice. All matter contains entropy, so what happens when it is dropped into a black hole? Is entropy lost along with it? If so, the total entropy of the universe goes down and black holes would violate the second law of thermodynamics.

Hawking thought that this was fine. He was happy to discard any concept that stood in the way to a deeper truth. And if that meant the second law, then so be it.

Bekenstein and breakthrough

But Hawking met his match at a 1972 physics summer school in the French ski resort of Les Houches, France. Princeton University graduate student Jacob Bekenstein thought that the second law of thermodynamics should apply to black holes too. Bekenstein had been studying the entropy problem and had reached a possible solution thanks to an earlier insight of Hawking’s .

A black hole hides its singularity with a boundary known as the event horizon. Nothing that crosses the event horizon can ever return to the outside. Hawking’s work had shown that the area of a black hole’s event horizon never decreases over time. What’s more, when matter falls into a black hole, the area of its event horizon grows.

Bekenstein realised this was key to the entropy problem. Every time a black hole swallows matter, its entropy appears to be lost, and at the same time, its event horizon grows. So, Bekenstein suggested, what if – to preserve the second law – the area of the horizon is itself a measure of entropy?

Hawking immediately disliked the idea and was angry that his own work had been used in support of a concept so flawed. With entropy comes heat, but the black hole couldn’t be radiating heat – nothing can escape its pull of gravity. During a break from the lectures, Hawking got together with colleagues Brandon Carter, who also studied under Sciama, and James Bardeen, of the University of Washington, and confronted Bekenstein.

The disagreement bothered Bekenstein. “These three were senior people. I was just out of my PhD. You worry whether you are just stupid and these guys know the truth,” he recalls.

Back in Cambridge, Hawking set out to prove Bekenstein wrong. Instead, he discovered the precise form of the mathematical relationship between entropy and the black hole’s horizon. Rather than destroying the idea, he had confirmed it. It was Hawking’s greatest breakthrough.

Hawking radiation

Hawking now embraced the idea that thermodynamics played a part in black holes. Anything that has entropy, he reasoned, also has a temperature – and anything that has a temperature can radiate.

His original mistake, Hawking realised, was in only considering general relativity, which says that nothing – no particles, no heat – can escape the grip of a black hole. That changes when quantum mechanics comes into play. According to quantum mechanics, fleeting pairs of particles and antiparticles are constantly appearing out of empty space, only to annihilate and disappear in the blink of an eye. When this happens in the vicinity of an event horizon, a particle-antiparticle pair can be separated – one falls behind the horizon while one escapes, leaving them forever unable to meet and annihilate. The orphaned particles stream away from the black hole’s edge as radiation. The randomness of quantum creation becomes the randomness of heat.

“I think most physicists would agree that Hawking’s greatest contribution is the prediction that black holes emit radiation,” says Sean Carroll , a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. “While we still don’t have experimental confirmation that Hawking’s prediction is true, nearly every expert believes he was right.”

Experiments to test Hawking’s prediction are so difficult because the more massive a black hole is, the lower its temperature. For a large black hole – the kind astronomers can study with a telescope – the temperature of the radiation is too insignificant to measure. As Hawking himself often noted, it was for this reason that he was never awarded a Nobel Prize. Still, the prediction was enough to secure him a prime place in the annals of science, and the quantum particles that stream from the black hole’s edge would forever be known as Hawking radiation .

Some have suggested that they should more appropriately be called Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, but Bekenstein himself rejects this. “The entropy of a black hole is called Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, which I think is fine. I wrote it down first, Hawking found the numerical value of the constant, so together we found the formula as it is today. The radiation was really Hawking’s work. I had no idea how a black hole could radiate. Hawking brought that out very clearly. So that should be called Hawking radiation.”

Theory of everything

The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy equation is the one Hawking asked to have engraved on his tombstone. It represents the ultimate mash-up of physical disciplines because it contains Newton’s constant, which clearly relates to gravity; Planck’s constant, which betrays quantum mechanics at play; the speed of light, the talisman of Einstein’s relativity; and the Boltzmann constant, the herald of thermodynamics.

The presence of these diverse constants hinted at a theory of everything, in which all physics is unified. Furthermore, it strongly corroborated Hawking’s original hunch that understanding black holes would be key in unlocking that deeper theory.

Hawking’s breakthrough may have solved the entropy problem, but it raised an even more difficult problem in its wake. If black holes can radiate, they will eventually evaporate and disappear. So what happens to all the information that fell in? Does it vanish too? If so, it will violate a central tenet of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, if it escapes from the black hole, it will violate Einstein’s theory of relativity. With the discovery of black hole radiation, Hawking had pit the ultimate laws of physics against one another. The black hole information loss paradox had been born.

Hawking staked his position in another ground-breaking and even more contentious paper entitled Breakdown of predictability in gravitational collapse, published in Physical Review D in 1976. He argued that when a black hole radiates away its mass, it does take all of its information with it – despite the fact that quantum mechanics expressly forbids information loss. Soon other physicists would pick sides, for or against this idea, in a debate that continues to this day. Indeed, many feel that information loss is the most pressing obstacle in understanding quantum gravity.

“Hawking’s 1976 argument that black holes lose information is a towering achievement, perhaps one of the most consequential discoveries on the theoretical side of physics since the subject was invented,” says Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley.

By the late 1990s, results emerging from string theory had most theoretical physicists convinced that Hawking was wrong about information loss, but Hawking, known for his stubbornness, dug in his heels. It wasn’t until 2004 that he would change his mind. And he did it with flair – dramatically showing up at a conference in Dublin and announcing his updated view : black holes cannot lose information.

Today, however, a new paradox known as the firewall has thrown everything into doubt (see “Hawking’s paradox”, below). It is clear that the question Hawking raised is at the core of the quest for quantum gravity.

“Black hole radiation raises serious puzzles we are still working very hard to understand,” says Carroll . “It’s fair to say that Hawking radiation is the single biggest clue we have to the ultimate reconciliation of quantum mechanics and gravity, arguably the greatest challenge facing theoretical physics today.”

Hawking’s legacy, says Bousso, will be “having put his finger on the key difficulty in the search for a theory of everything”.

Hawking continued pushing the boundaries of theoretical physics at a seemingly impossible pace for the rest of his life. He made important inroads towards understanding how quantum mechanics applies to the universe as a whole, leading the way in the field known as quantum cosmology. His progressive disease pushed him to tackle problems in novel ways, which contributed to his remarkable intuition for his subject. As he lost the ability to write out long, complicated equations, Hawking found new and inventive methods to solve problems in his head, usually by reimagining them in geometric form. But, like Einstein before him, Hawking never produced anything quite as revolutionary as his early work.

“Hawking’s most influential work was done in the 1970s, when he was younger,” says Carroll, “but that’s completely standard even for physicists who aren’t burdened with a debilitating neurone disease.”

Stephen Hawking's black hole paradox may finally have a solution

Black holes may not destroy all information about what they were originally made of, according to a new set of quantum calculations, which would solve a major physics paradox first described by Stephen Hawking

Hawking the superstar

In the meantime, the publication of A Brief History of Time catapulted Hawking to cultural stardom and gave a fresh face to theoretical physics. He never seemed to mind. “In front of the camera, Hawking played the character of Hawking. He seemed to play with his cultural status,” says Hélène Mialet, an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley, who courted controversy in 2012 with the publication of her book Hawking Incorporated. In it, she investigated the way the people around Hawking helped him build and maintain his public image .

That public image undoubtedly made his life easier than it might otherwise have been. As Hawking’s disease progressed, technologists gladly provided increasingly complicated machines to allow him to communicate. This, in turn, let him continue doing the thing for which he should ultimately be remembered: his science.

“Stephen Hawking has done more to advance our understanding of gravitation than anyone since Einstein,” Carroll says. “He was a world-leading theoretical physicist, clearly the best in the world for his time among those working at the intersection of gravity and quantum mechanics, and he did it all in the face of a terrible disease. He is an inspirational figure, and history will certainly remember him that way.”

Hawking’s paradox

In 2012, four physicists at the University of California, Santa Barbara – Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, Joseph Polchinski and James Sully, known collectively by physicists as AMPS – shocked the physics community with the results of a thought experiment .

When pairs of particles and antiparticles spawn near a black hole’s event horizon, each pair shares a connection called entanglement. But what happens to this link and the information it holds when one of the pair falls in, leaving its twin to become a particle of Hawking radiation (see main story)?

One school of thought holds that the information is preserved as the hole evaporates, and that it is placed into subtle correlations among these particles of Hawking radiation.

But, AMPS asked, what does it look like to observers inside and outside the black hole? Enter Alice and Bob.

According to Bob, who remains outside the black hole, that particle has been separated from its antiparticle partner by the horizon. In order to preserve information, it must become entangled with another particle of Hawking radiation.

But what’s happening from the point of view of Alice, who falls into the black hole? General relativity says that for a free-falling observer, gravity disappears, so she doesn’t see the event horizon. According to Alice, the particle in question remains entangled with its antiparticle partner, because there is no horizon to separate them. The paradox is born.

So who is right? Bob or Alice? If it’s Bob, then Alice will not encounter empty space at the horizon as general relativity claims. Instead she will be burned to a crisp by a wall of Hawking radiation – a firewall. If it’s Alice who’s right, then information will be lost, breaking a fundamental rule of quantum mechanics. “The fervent controversy surrounding Hawking’s paradox reflects the stakes his work has raised: in quantising gravity, what gives? And how much?” says Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley. The answer awaits us in the theory of everything. Amanda Gefter

Article amended on 14 March 2018

• Stephen Hawking

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

More from New Scientist

Explore the latest news, articles and features

We finally know why Stephen Hawking's black hole equation works

Subscriber-only

The sun could contain a tiny black hole that formed in the big bang

Stephen Hawking’s parting shot is a fresh challenge to cosmologists

Popular articles.

Trending New Scientist articles

Famous Scientists

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, widely considered to be one of the greatest scientists of his time. He was the first scientist to devise a cosmology that married the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, and he made huge contributions to our understanding of black holes.

Hawking wrote a number of popular science books including the bestseller A Brief History of Time .

Early Life and Education

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England, UK. His father was Frank Hawking, an English biologist; his mother was Isobel Walker, a Scottish Philosophy, Politics and Economics graduate; both parents were graduates of the University of Oxford. Stephen had two younger sisters and an adopted brother.

Stephen Hawking was an average student at school, deeply interested in science. After winning a scholarship in Natural Sciences at age 17, he graduated at age 20 with a first-class honors degree in Physics from University College, Oxford.

Thereafter, Hawking carried out research at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, for a PhD in Astronomy and Cosmology.

In his early days at Cambridge, at age 21, Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease in which the nerves controlling the muscles become inactive while the sensory nerves function normally. At first his doctors expected him to die within two years.

Due to this sustained condition, it took him about 40 hours to devise a 45 minute lecture.

Contributions and Achievements

Hawking was known for bringing about a limited union between two very different fields: Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and quantum theory.

At one time it was thought that absolutely nothing could escape from a black hole. Hawking’s equations produced an amazing result – that over time black holes can lose energy – now known as Hawking radiation – hence they can shrink and ‘evaporate,’ disappearing from the universe.

In his 2008 book The Black Hole War , the theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind wrote:

Hawking’s calculation showing how black holes evaporate was more than a brilliant tour de force. I believe that in time, when the repercussions are fully understood, physicists will recognize it as the beginning of a great scientific revolution.

In 1931, Georges Lemaître was the first scientist to propose that the universe and time itself began in a single instant, emerging in a Big Bang. Lemaître believed the universe hatched from a ‘cosmic egg’ whose radius was similar to the earth-sun distance. In 1970, working with Roger Penrose, Hawking showed that if a Big Bang had happened and general relativity were true, then the universe must have grown from a point whose volume was zero, but which contained the entire mass of the universe. Such a point of infinite density is known as a singularity.

Interestingly, at the heart of every black hole lurks a singularity, where gravity has crushed the entire mass of the black hole into a point whose volume is zero.

Hawking was awarded the CBE in 1982, and became a Companion of Honour in 1989. He received numerous awards and medals, including becoming a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

Stephen Hawking was the University of Cambridge’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1979-2009, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton .

A highly successful lecturer and author, from 1986 Hawking made use of an adaptive communication system including a speech synthesizer known as the Equalizer to combat ALS. Using the Equalizer, he authored books, scientific papers, and lectures, and was capable of communicating at the modest rate of about 15 words per minute.

His computer synthesized voice and the concept a genius mind trapped within a powerless body captured the public imagination all over the world. Arguably, Hawking became the most famous scientist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, making appearances in TV shows such as The Big Bang Theory , The Simpsons , and Red Dwarf . The 2014 movie The Theory of Everything was a drama about Hawking’s life and work.

Hawking’s 1988 book A Brief History of Time became an instant best-seller and was translated into 30 languages. It sold over 10 million copies worldwide. His 2001 book The Universe in a Nutshell was hailed as a masterpiece of modern physics.

Personal Life

Stephen Hawking married Jane Wilde, a language student, in 1965, and they had three children: Lucy, Robert and Tim.

The couple separated in 1991. From 2009 Hawking was almost completely paralyzed.

Stephen Hawking died peacefully, age 76, at home, on March 14, 2018, in Cambridge, UK. His ashes were laid to rest in London’s Westminster Abbey between the final resting places of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

More from FamousScientists.org:

Alphabetical List of Scientists

Louis Agassiz | Maria Gaetana Agnesi | Al-Battani Abu Nasr Al-Farabi | Alhazen | Jim Al-Khalili | Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi | Mihailo Petrovic Alas | Angel Alcala | Salim Ali | Luis Alvarez | Andre Marie Ampère | Anaximander | Carl Anderson | Mary Anning | Virginia Apgar | Archimedes | Agnes Arber | Aristarchus | Aristotle | Svante Arrhenius | Oswald Avery | Amedeo Avogadro | Avicenna

Charles Babbage | Francis Bacon | Alexander Bain | John Logie Baird | Joseph Banks | Ramon Barba | John Bardeen | Charles Barkla | Ibn Battuta | William Bayliss | George Beadle | Arnold Orville Beckman | Henri Becquerel | Emil Adolf Behring | Alexander Graham Bell | Emile Berliner | Claude Bernard | Timothy John Berners-Lee | Daniel Bernoulli | Jacob Berzelius | Henry Bessemer | Hans Bethe | Homi Jehangir Bhabha | Alfred Binet | Clarence Birdseye | Kristian Birkeland | James Black | Elizabeth Blackwell | Alfred Blalock | Katharine Burr Blodgett | Franz Boas | David Bohm | Aage Bohr | Niels Bohr | Ludwig Boltzmann | Max Born | Carl Bosch | Robert Bosch | Jagadish Chandra Bose | Satyendra Nath Bose | Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe | Robert Boyle | Lawrence Bragg | Tycho Brahe | Brahmagupta | Hennig Brand | Georg Brandt | Wernher Von Braun | J Harlen Bretz | Louis de Broglie | Alexander Brongniart | Robert Brown | Michael E. Brown | Lester R. Brown | Eduard Buchner | Linda Buck | William Buckland | Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon | Robert Bunsen | Luther Burbank | Jocelyn Bell Burnell | Macfarlane Burnet | Thomas Burnet

Benjamin Cabrera | Santiago Ramon y Cajal | Rachel Carson | George Washington Carver | Henry Cavendish | Anders Celsius | James Chadwick | Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar | Erwin Chargaff | Noam Chomsky | Steven Chu | Leland Clark | John Cockcroft | Arthur Compton | Nicolaus Copernicus | Gerty Theresa Cori | Charles-Augustin de Coulomb | Jacques Cousteau | Brian Cox | Francis Crick | James Croll | Nicholas Culpeper | Marie Curie | Pierre Curie | Georges Cuvier | Adalbert Czerny

Gottlieb Daimler | John Dalton | James Dwight Dana | Charles Darwin | Humphry Davy | Peter Debye | Max Delbruck | Jean Andre Deluc | Democritus | René Descartes | Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel | Diophantus | Paul Dirac | Prokop Divis | Theodosius Dobzhansky | Frank Drake | K. Eric Drexler

John Eccles | Arthur Eddington | Thomas Edison | Paul Ehrlich | Albert Einstein | Gertrude Elion | Empedocles | Eratosthenes | Euclid | Eudoxus | Leonhard Euler

Michael Faraday | Pierre de Fermat | Enrico Fermi | Richard Feynman | Fibonacci – Leonardo of Pisa | Emil Fischer | Ronald Fisher | Alexander Fleming | John Ambrose Fleming | Howard Florey | Henry Ford | Lee De Forest | Dian Fossey | Leon Foucault | Benjamin Franklin | Rosalind Franklin | Sigmund Freud | Elizebeth Smith Friedman

Galen | Galileo Galilei | Francis Galton | Luigi Galvani | George Gamow | Martin Gardner | Carl Friedrich Gauss | Murray Gell-Mann | Sophie Germain | Willard Gibbs | William Gilbert | Sheldon Lee Glashow | Robert Goddard | Maria Goeppert-Mayer | Thomas Gold | Jane Goodall | Stephen Jay Gould | Otto von Guericke

Fritz Haber | Ernst Haeckel | Otto Hahn | Albrecht von Haller | Edmund Halley | Alister Hardy | Thomas Harriot | William Harvey | Stephen Hawking | Otto Haxel | Werner Heisenberg | Hermann von Helmholtz | Jan Baptist von Helmont | Joseph Henry | Caroline Herschel | John Herschel | William Herschel | Gustav Ludwig Hertz | Heinrich Hertz | Karl F. Herzfeld | George de Hevesy | Antony Hewish | David Hilbert | Maurice Hilleman | Hipparchus | Hippocrates | Shintaro Hirase | Dorothy Hodgkin | Robert Hooke | Frederick Gowland Hopkins | William Hopkins | Grace Murray Hopper | Frank Hornby | Jack Horner | Bernardo Houssay | Fred Hoyle | Edwin Hubble | Alexander von Humboldt | Zora Neale Hurston | James Hutton | Christiaan Huygens | Hypatia

Ernesto Illy | Jan Ingenhousz | Ernst Ising | Keisuke Ito

Mae Carol Jemison | Edward Jenner | J. Hans D. Jensen | Irene Joliot-Curie | James Prescott Joule | Percy Lavon Julian

Michio Kaku | Heike Kamerlingh Onnes | Pyotr Kapitsa | Friedrich August Kekulé | Frances Kelsey | Pearl Kendrick | Johannes Kepler | Abdul Qadeer Khan | Omar Khayyam | Alfred Kinsey | Gustav Kirchoff | Martin Klaproth | Robert Koch | Emil Kraepelin | Thomas Kuhn | Stephanie Kwolek

Joseph-Louis Lagrange | Jean-Baptiste Lamarck | Hedy Lamarr | Edwin Herbert Land | Karl Landsteiner | Pierre-Simon Laplace | Max von Laue | Antoine Lavoisier | Ernest Lawrence | Henrietta Leavitt | Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | Inge Lehmann | Gottfried Leibniz | Georges Lemaître | Leonardo da Vinci | Niccolo Leoniceno | Aldo Leopold | Rita Levi-Montalcini | Claude Levi-Strauss | Willard Frank Libby | Justus von Liebig | Carolus Linnaeus | Joseph Lister | John Locke | Hendrik Antoon Lorentz | Konrad Lorenz | Ada Lovelace | Percival Lowell | Lucretius | Charles Lyell | Trofim Lysenko

Ernst Mach | Marcello Malpighi | Jane Marcet | Guglielmo Marconi | Lynn Margulis | Barry Marshall | Polly Matzinger | Matthew Maury | James Clerk Maxwell | Ernst Mayr | Barbara McClintock | Lise Meitner | Gregor Mendel | Dmitri Mendeleev | Franz Mesmer | Antonio Meucci | John Michell | Albert Abraham Michelson | Thomas Midgeley Jr. | Milutin Milankovic | Maria Mitchell | Mario Molina | Thomas Hunt Morgan | Samuel Morse | Henry Moseley

Ukichiro Nakaya | John Napier | Giulio Natta | John Needham | John von Neumann | Thomas Newcomen | Isaac Newton | Charles Nicolle | Florence Nightingale | Tim Noakes | Alfred Nobel | Emmy Noether | Christiane Nusslein-Volhard | Bill Nye

Hans Christian Oersted | Georg Ohm | J. Robert Oppenheimer | Wilhelm Ostwald | William Oughtred

Blaise Pascal | Louis Pasteur | Wolfgang Ernst Pauli | Linus Pauling | Randy Pausch | Ivan Pavlov | Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin | Wilder Penfield | Marguerite Perey | William Perkin | John Philoponus | Jean Piaget | Philippe Pinel | Max Planck | Pliny the Elder | Henri Poincaré | Karl Popper | Beatrix Potter | Joseph Priestley | Proclus | Claudius Ptolemy | Pythagoras

Adolphe Quetelet | Harriet Quimby | Thabit ibn Qurra

C. V. Raman | Srinivasa Ramanujan | William Ramsay | John Ray | Prafulla Chandra Ray | Francesco Redi | Sally Ride | Bernhard Riemann | Wilhelm Röntgen | Hermann Rorschach | Ronald Ross | Ibn Rushd | Ernest Rutherford

Carl Sagan | Abdus Salam | Jonas Salk | Frederick Sanger | Alberto Santos-Dumont | Walter Schottky | Erwin Schrödinger | Theodor Schwann | Glenn Seaborg | Hans Selye | Charles Sherrington | Gene Shoemaker | Ernst Werner von Siemens | George Gaylord Simpson | B. F. Skinner | William Smith | Frederick Soddy | Mary Somerville | Arnold Sommerfeld | Hermann Staudinger | Nicolas Steno | Nettie Stevens | William John Swainson | Leo Szilard

Niccolo Tartaglia | Edward Teller | Nikola Tesla | Thales of Miletus | Theon of Alexandria | Benjamin Thompson | J. J. Thomson | William Thomson | Henry David Thoreau | Kip S. Thorne | Clyde Tombaugh | Susumu Tonegawa | Evangelista Torricelli | Charles Townes | Youyou Tu | Alan Turing | Neil deGrasse Tyson

Harold Urey

Craig Venter | Vladimir Vernadsky | Andreas Vesalius | Rudolf Virchow | Artturi Virtanen | Alessandro Volta

Selman Waksman | George Wald | Alfred Russel Wallace | John Wallis | Ernest Walton | James Watson | James Watt | Alfred Wegener | John Archibald Wheeler | Maurice Wilkins | Thomas Willis | E. O. Wilson | Sven Wingqvist | Sergei Winogradsky | Carl Woese | Friedrich Wöhler | Wilbur and Orville Wright | Wilhelm Wundt

Chen-Ning Yang

Ahmed Zewail

7 Fascinating Facts About Stephen Hawking

In honor of his inspiring endurance, and his immense contributions to the understanding of the cosmos that swirls around us, here are seven facts about the life of this otherworldly scientist:

He was an average student in elementary school

Hawking didn’t have the sort of sparkling early academic career you'd expect from a Grade-A genius. He claimed he didn't learn to properly read until he was 8 years old, and his grades never surpassed the average scores of his classmates at St. Albans School. Of course, there was a reason those same classmates nicknamed him "Einstein"; Hawking built a computer with friends as a teenager and demonstrated a tremendous capacity for grasping issues of space and time. He also got it together when it counted, dominating his Oxford entrance exams to score a scholarship to study physics at age 17.

Upon his ALS diagnosis, Hawking was told he only had two-and-a-half years to live

After falling while ice skating during his first year as a grad student at Cambridge University, Hawking was told he had the degenerative motor neuron disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and had only two-and-a-half years to live. Obviously that prognosis was light years off, but it seems early onset of the disease was a blessing in disguise, of sorts. Most ALS patients are diagnosed in their mid-50s and live another two to five years, but those diagnosed earlier tend to have a slower-progressing form of the disease. Furthermore, the loss of motor skills forced the burgeoning cosmologist to become more creative. "By losing the finer dexterity of my hands, I was forced to travel through the universe in my mind and try to visualize the ways in which it worked," he later noted.

He was initially puzzled by his own equation

Hawking's equation, which involves the speed of light, Newton’s constant and other symbols that make the non-mathematically inclined run for cover, measures emissions from black holes that today is known as Hawking radiation. Hawking was initially puzzled by these findings, as he believed black holes to be celestial death traps that swallowed up all energy. However, he determined there was room for this phenomenon through the merging of quantum theory, general relativity and thermodynamics, distilling it all into one (relatively) simple but elegant formula in 1974. Already known for establishing important ground rules about the properties of black holes, this discovery kicked his career into a higher gear and set him on the path to stardom. Hawking later said he would like this equation to be carved on his tombstone.

Hawking almost died in 1985

Although the doomsday predictions of his early doctors were off, Hawking did almost die after contracting pneumonia while traveling to Geneva in 1985. While he was unconscious and hooked up to a ventilator, the option of removing the fragile scientist from life support was being considered until his then-wife, Jane, rejected the idea. Hawking instead underwent a tracheotomy, an operation that helped him breathe but permanently took away his ability to speak, prompting the creation of his famous speech synthesizer.

He considered his non-descript computer voice part of his identity

Hawking's original synthesizer was created by a California-based company called Words Plus, which ran a speech program called Equalizer on an Apple II computer. Adapted to a portable system that could be mounted on a wheelchair, the program enabled Hawking to "speak" by using a hand clicker to choose words on a screen. After he eventually lost use of his hands, Hawking had an infrared switch mounted on his glasses that generated words by detecting cheek movement. He also had the communication technology overhauled by Intel, though he insisted on retaining the same robotic voice with its distinctly non-British accent he'd been using for three decades, as he considered it an indelible part of his identity.

Hawking wrote books using his vocal synthesizer

Hawking long believed he could write a book about the mysteries of the universe that would connect with the public, a task that seemed all but impossible after he lost the abilities to write and speak. However, he painstakingly pressed forward with his speech synthesizer, receiving valuable assistance from students who relayed draft revisions with his editor in the United States via speakerphone. Hawking's vision ultimately was realized, as A Brief History of Time landed on the London Sunday Times best-seller list for 237 weeks after its publication in 1988. He went on to pen an autobiography, several other books about his field and a series of science-themed novels, co-written with his daughter, Lucy.

He had a wicked sense of humor

Despite his extraordinary physical challenges, Hawking wasn't shy about appearing on television. He first appeared as himself on a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation , cracking jokes while playing poker with Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton . He also lent his voice to the animated shows The Simpsons and Futurama , and, fittingly, surfaced on the hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory . Of course, screen time wasn’t only about laughs for the world-renowned physicist, who returned to his bread-and-butter topics of cosmology and the origins of life for his six-part 1997 miniseries Stephen Hawking's Universe . He also provided plenty of stark, sobering descriptions of his life for the 2013 documentary Hawking .

READ MORE: 10 of Stephen Hawking's Best Zingers

Famous Scientists

The Solar Eclipse That Made Albert Einstein a Star

Jane Goodall

Marie Curie

Howard Carter, King Tut's Tomb, and a Deadly Curse

Benjamin Banneker

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Daniel Hale Williams

Patricia Bath

Mae Jemison

George Washington Carver

Albert Einstein’s Role in the Atomic Bomb

Stephen Hawking

• Occupation: Scientist and astrophysicist
• Born: January 8, 1942 in Oxford, United Kingdom
• Died: March 14, 2018 in Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Best known for: Hawking radiation and the book A Brief History of Time

• He was born on the 300th anniversary of the death of the famous scientist Galileo .
• He has been married twice and has three children.
• Stephen has been on several TV shows including The Simpsons and the Big Bang Theory .
• The book A Brief History of Time only has one equation, Einstein's famous E = mc 2 .
• Hawking has co-written several children's books with his daughter Lucy including George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt and George and the Big Bang .
• He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
• He hoped to travel to space one day and trained with NASA on their zero gravity aircraft.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

• Biographies
• Science Today
• G Knowledge
• Psychologists
• Business Legends
• Cinematic Legends
• Music Legends
• Inspiring Lives
• Animal Kingdom
• Entertainment

Stephen Hawking

• Introduction
• Born in the midst of ice and fire
• Boyhood tales
• The first choice
• Oxford ahoy
• Cosmology calling…
• And so it began…
• Roses in the air
• Shuttling between the humdrum and the glorious
• Black holes, here I come
• The master of black holes
• Honours galore
• Of personal upheavals
• The British Physicist with an American accent
• Bestsellers anyone?
• The parting of ways
• Stephen – The superstar
• Of books, kids and scientists
• The impossible is possible
• God, ETs and a certain Mr. Hawking
• A Man of Many Faces

Ever tried blowing up a balloon? Breathing and puffing away to make it bigger…. remember how your cheeks ached with the effort? Now just imagine how it would feel to blow fifty balloons at one go? Or  hundred? Sounds crazy, right? Doesn’t seem worth the effort, you might say. So you can leave the matter aside, you have a choice. But what if you didn’t have an option? What if you were solely dependent on twitching your cheeks to have any kind of contact with the outside world? Suppose it took ages for you to communicate a single ‘hi’ to someone. What if you couldn’t talk, walk or even move on your own your entire life. Can’t do much with a life like that, right? Wrong!

Sky is the limit for someone who possesses an indomitable spirit. And these aren’t just empty words. Not convinced… well… let me then introduce you to one such man. A man who has defied all odds and survived; someone who is living a life so rich, so spectacular, so full of successes that it deserves a salute. This man has written books, appeared on television and also has a movie based on his life…But who is he? Any guesses? Ladies and gentleman, this person is none other than the world renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking.

Afflicted by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) since his youth, he has gradually lost control over all his limbs, so much so, that he can’t speak even a single word on his own. ALS cost him his voice, his ability to move, but thankfully neither his brains and nor his will. There have been countless scientists through the ages and their discoveries have indeed been astounding. But what sets Stephen Hawking apart from the rest is his ability to achieve all that he has, inspite of his disability. This physicist wanders all over the universe while his body stays immobile in his wheelchair. But does our knowledge stretch beyond the wheelchair and the universe? Who is he? Has the wheelchair always been a part of him? Is there more to him than the bestseller ‘A Brief History of Time’? Read on to discover more about the mysterious Stephen Hawking.

It was the winter of 1942. The sleepy city of Oxford lay covered in a cloak of security; World War II was underway but so far, Oxford and Cambridge, England’s centres of educational excellence had remained unscathed. On a cold January day, a very pregnant young woman could be seen strolling through the streets of Oxford. The young woman Isobel and her husband Frank Hawking had fled from their home in Highgate, London in search of a safe place for the birth of their first child and had fixed upon Oxford. Their son, Stephen, was born on January 8, 1942, exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo (an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher). The timing couldn’t have been more auspicious; this much was clear, the stars had destined great things for the little baby.

Little Stephen was born into a family of thinkers. Both his parents came from humble backgrounds yet had gone on to study at Oxford. Isobel attended the famous university at a time when women were just beginning to pursue higher education. At Oxford, she studied Politics, Economics and Philosophy and after holding a slew of unsatisfactory posts, ended up as a secretary at a medical research institute. Meanwhile, Frank studied Medicine, specialising in tropical diseases and became a medical researcher at an institute in Hampstead. Here, the shy Frank fell in love with fellow Oxford student Isobel and the two were married. The Hawking family grew during the war, daughter Mary was born in 1943, a year after Stephen’s birth and Phillipa, five years later.

As a boy, Stephen was awkward and skinny with clothes that always bordered on messy. He did not shine in sports or handwriting nor did he learn to read properly until the age of 8. Frank’s work as a researcher took him annually to Africa where he would conduct first hand research on tropical diseases. Mary, Stephen’s sister, believed that fathers were “ like migratory birds. They were there for Christmas, and then they vanished until the weather got warm.” Their father became the head of the Division of Parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research, and in 1950 the family moved to St. Albans, Hertfordshire.

Here, the Hawkings bought a sprawling three storey brick house which was badly in need of repairs. The house boasted of peeling wallpaper, broken glass panes and a cool clime, thanks to the absence of a central heater. But whatever else the house lacked, it never lacked books. Piled in stacks throughout the house, books were the Hawkings’ most loved possession. Callers to the house recounted that the Hawkings were inseparable from their books; dinner time at their home was a very silent affair, with every one of the Hawkings eating with their noses buried in books.

They soon earned the tag of being an eccentric family. Their car was a second hand taxi; they kept bees in their basement and made fireworks in their greenhouse. The father spoke with a noticeable stutter and the children talked so very fast that they seemed to stumble on their words. Friends named their particular dialect as ‘Hawkingese’ . Young Stephen also had an imaginary house in a place called Drane and he was forever trying to jump on buses to try and search for this fabled house.

At St. Albans, the 8 year old Stephen attended the High School for Girls which took boys up to the age of 10. One of the younger girls there was Jane Wilde; although they never met while in school, Jane would go on to play a major part in the boy’s life. At the age of 11, Stephen shifted to a free education at St. Albans school by scoring highly on his eleven plus examination. By this time, Stephen’s fascination with science and the sky had already begun. He would take apart clocks and radios to see how they worked, although he couldn’t always put them back together again. His mother, who along with her children often lay down in the backyard on summer evenings to look up at the stars, recounted, “ Stephen always had a strong sense of wonder…And I could see the stars would draw him.”

In school, he was recognised as clever but never especially brilliant. In one year, he was third from the bottom of his class. However, his classmates called him ‘Einstein’ , a prophecy of things to come. He used to delight in creating complex board games which would last for hours and sometimes days. His friend, Michael Church believed that Stephen ‘loved the fact that he had created the world and then created the laws that governed it.’ His friends were divided over his ability to become a genius and one of his friends Basil bet another of his friends John a packet of sweets that ‘ Stephen will turn out to be unusually capable.’

Meanwhile, Frank wanted to send his son to the esteemed Westminster School but private education was expensive and the Hawkings were not very rich. A scholarship was the only option available to Stephen; unfortunately, he fell ill around the time of the exam and had to continue at St. Albans school, where according to him, he received as good an education or better than I would have at Westminster. The illness was prolonged and he had to stay in bed for a long time. This ‘glandular fever’ was perhaps the first indication of the monstrous disease which would attack Stephen in his early adulthood. When he was 14, his parents adopted a son named Edward, who could never quite adjust with his elder siblings and his strange family, but Stephen opined that adopting Edward was ‘probably good for us. He was a rather difficult child, but one couldn’t help liking him.’

During his teenage years, Stephen graduated to building model boats and aeroplanes with his friend John McClenahan. They also explored mystic topics like extra sensory perception (ESP) but always with a scientific eye. In 1958, Stephen along with his friends, developed a basic computer called the Uniselector Computing Engine (LUCE) out of foraged parts from objects such as clocks and telephone switchboards, among others. In their last year of high school, they put together an improved version but even this could perform only the simplest mathematical functions. Unfortunately, LUCE was thrown away in the trash many years later by the school’s new, unsuspicious head of computing.

Time sped by on wings and soon Stephen was facing the decision of which college to attend and more importantly, which subjects to study. Much to his father’s disappointment, Stephen showed no inclination to follow in his medical footsteps. The youngster was decided that science was the field he wanted to study. However, a difficult choice loomed in front of him: which branch of science should he specialise in – Biology or Physics? He thought Biology to be too inexact, too descriptive while Physics was the most fundamental of all the sciences. Then again there was the class issue, Biology was supposed to be the territory of less capable students while Physics was earmarked for the intellectually elite. He was also interested in studying Mathematics, influenced by an inspiring teacher, Mr. Tahta from his school. Frank had his doubts about Stephen taking up a course in Mathematics as he felt that it would lead to a future of unemployment. Also, there was the question of which college he should attend. Frank was resolute that his son must attend his old college, the University College at Oxford University. Unfortunately, this college did not offer a major in Mathematics. Finally, Stephen worked out a compromise; he would study Physics and Chemistry at University College with some Mathematics on the side. Young Stephen was completely oblivious about the amount of trouble this arrangement would give him in the future.

The college was decided but the means to study there were lacking. Both of Stephen’s parents’ families could testify to the fact that an Oxford education did not come cheap; so it again came down to a scholarship, winning which, was crucial. Unfortunately, around this time, Frank was given a long-term exchange assignment to India for a year. The family left for India while Stephen stayed with family friends, the Humphreys and worked for his scholarship. His St. Albans’s headmaster believed that he should wait for another year as he was just 17 at the time. But Stephen was adamant; he would sit for the exams the same year. Determined, he gave the exams and scored quite well on all written work. He performed well in his interviews as well and in October 1959, at the young age of 17, Stephen headed for Oxford, scholarship in hand following in the path of both his proud parents

The young man from St. Albans arrived at Oxford at the beginning of the October term; at 17 he was far younger than the bulk of students in his year. This was owing to the fact that he had given his exams a year early and passed it and also because, most of his fellow students had completed the compulsory military service before joining; this draft had just been abolished and so Stephen was not required to undergo it. In those days, the culture at Oxford was not very conducive to knowledge. As Stephen recounts, “the prevailing attitude at Oxford at that time was very anti-work. You were supposed to be brilliant without effort, or accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. To work hard to get a better class of degree was regarded as the mark of a grey man – the worst epithet in the Oxford vocabulary.”

 Friendless and surrounded by an all pervading atmosphere of boredom, Stephen was lonely and miserable during the first of his three years at Oxford. Everything seemed to conspire to keep him locked in a bubble of loneliness.

Even the Physics program of his year contained only four students. Soon, Stephen became close friends with his Physics tutorial partner, Gordon Berry. But then something happened in his second year, which completely transformed his college existence. He and Gordon entered the ‘ The Boat Club’ , the rowing team of the college as coxswains (the person who sits at the front of the boat and issues orders to the rowers). The members of The Boat Club were popular and Stephen soon found himself part of the hip crowd. Things changed for young Stephen and his Oxford friends remember him as lively, buoyant and adaptable. He wore his hair long, was famous for his wit and liked classical music and science fiction. So much different from the lonely, sad 17 year old who had entered the university only a year back!

The social side of Stephen’s life had started to look up and the study side did not give him much trouble either. Stephen found his Physics program ridiculously easy. One could get through without going to any lectures, just by going to one or two tutorials a week. You did not need to remember many facts, just a few equations. But his classmates vehemently disagreed. Derek Powney, his Physics classmate remembered an incident: once the four of them had been given thirteen homework problems in an Electricity and Magnetism course; their tutor Robert Berman had encouraged them to do as many as they could. After the end of a week, his fellow classmates had not completed more than two problems each; Stephen himself had not even made a start on them. But the next day, he skipped his lectures and completed ten problems on his own by lunch. Powney acknowledged that at that time they realized that it was not just that they weren’t in the same street, but weren’t on the same planet. Their tutor Robert Berman remembered Stephen as the most brilliant student he ever had. He recounted how Stephen would not bother buying many of the text books and also that he never took notes. He reminisces that “ It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it…his mind was completely different from all of his contemporaries.”

Time passed on and soon Stephen was in his final year at Oxford, facing yet another major decision – the area of specialisation for his Ph.D. He would continue in Physics, that much was certain, but what area should he specialise in? Should he go for Cosmology, the study of the universe at its most majestic or particle Physics, which looked at the universe on an infinitesimal scale? Stephen decided on Cosmology as he felt that particle Physics seemed like Botany; there were all these particles, but no theory.

On the other hand, Cosmology was built on a well-defined theory. Yet again, he was set on the subject, but the matter of the university remained undecided. There were no cosmologists on staff at Oxford. On the other hand, Cambridge could boast of the brilliant Fred Hoyle, an internationally reputed scientist who had become a household name through a series of radio talks on scientific topics. However, for a course at Cambridge, Stephen would have to receive a ‘first’ on his final exams. Stephen who had sadly neglected his studies over the past three years was unsure whether he would be able to qualify. Nonetheless, he sat for the exams but believed that he had not performed too well.

As a contingency plan, the young graduate student had applied for a job with the Ministry of Works. Unfortunately, he overslept (as usual) on the day of the exams and ended up missing them. But perhaps this was just as well, for he had underestimated his performance in his college exams. Far from failing, he achieved a borderline grade between a first and a second. So far, so good but this grade wasn’t final; there was supposed to be an interview which would determine his final grade. At this fateful interview he was asked about his plans after graduation to which Stephen replied matter-of-factly: “If I get a first, I shall go to Cambridge. If I receive a second, I will remain at Oxford. So I expect that you will give me a first.” His tutor Berman noted that the examiners then were intelligent enough to realize they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves. So , Stephen got his first and decided to join Cambridge in the fall term.

Life was perfect for the young man from St. Albans or so it seemed to him; but lady luck had other plans. During his last year at Oxford, he observed that he seemed to be getting clumsier and he fell over once or twice for no apparent reason. Though he did not disclose this to his family, he couldn’t hide it from his friends. Towards the end of his last term, he fell down a flight of stairs and landed on his head. He reportedly lost consciousness for a short time and also suffered from temporary memory loss.

Anxious, he took a Mensa intelligence test which proved that he had not suffered mentally. A trip to the doctor drew a blank on any physical injury; and Stephen decided to forget all about it.

Full of high hopes, the young graduate began his term at Cambridge in the fall of 1962. Much to his disappointment, he was not able to study under the renowned Fred Hoyle who already had sufficient number of students under him. He was assigned to Dennis Sciama, another Physicist at Cambridge.

 In the end, it all turned out for the best. Sciama, unlike Hoyle, was a homebody and was always available for discussion and direction. He was also known for his warmth and had a habit of putting his students’ needs before his own. But, Stephen had a tough time initially, partly due to his lack of grounding in Mathematics compared to other students and partly because of the absence of some problem on which he could work. Sciama suggested that he work on Astrophysics but Stephen refused; he was resolute to work on Cosmology and General Relativity (Albert Einstein’s theory which deals with the bending/warping of space-time because of the presence of matter and energy). He read up on the topic on his own and routinely commuted to London to attend the famous cosmologist Herman Bondi’s lectures on General Relativity. One more thing compounded the problem; the cryptic symptoms which had begun in Oxford came knocking again.

On returning home for Christmas, Stephen could no longer hide his growing clumsiness from his family and friends. Once during an ice skating trip with his mother, he fell down on the ice and couldn’t get up again. His panicked mother took him to a local café and wormed the whole story out of him. On his parent’s insistence he visited their family doctor who couldn’t find anything wrong with him but made an appointment for him with a specialist after the holidays. In the meantime, Stephen made the most of his break, attending parties and enjoying life with his friends. He attended one such party hosted by his old friend Basil King ; also invited to this party was a shy girl called Jane Wilde . Jane listened avidly to the flamboyant graduate’s recital of Cambridge tales and at the end of the party the two exchanged names and addresses. She did not expect anything to come out of it and was vastly surprised when she received an invite for a party at the Hawkings house on January 8; Stephen’s birthday. Jane went to the party, nervous and flustered; she felt out of her depth at the celebration which comprised mostly of Stephen’s older graduate friends.

Why had Stephen invited her, a shy undergraduate to his birthday party? Jane did not know The New Year brought new worries for the Hawkings household. Soon after his birthday, Stephen had his appointment with the specialist and was admitted to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where his sister Mary was training to become a doctor. He spent two long agonizing weeks there, undergoing a battery of tests. In the end, the alarmed family was given the shocking news – Stephen was suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). ALS – what is it? The ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease is a baffling, incurable ailment which involves steady deterioration of the ability of the motor neurons to control the voluntary muscles of the body. Motor neurons are nerve cells in the brain, brain stem and spinal cord which function as the body’s control units and as important communication links.

Messages from motor neurons in the brain are transmitted to motor neurons in the spinal cord and from there they are transferred to the specific muscles. In ALS, the motor neuron cells wither or die and the communication between the neurons and the muscles comes to a dead end. Without any messages coming to them, the muscles cannot function and they slowly weaken and waste away. Eventually, the brain loses its ability to control voluntary movement. What Stephen had been suffering for over a year, the stumbling, the tripping, the slurring of the speech were all early symptoms of the onslaught of the disease.

The sufferers of this disease face a grim future. Arms and hands become weaker, making even simple tasks like turning a key or writing a chore extremely agonizing. Walking becomes progressively difficult and wheelchairs become a must. Speaking and swallowing also become painful and in the later stages even breathing becomes a fight. However, the involuntary muscles function as before and the heart, the sexual organs and the muscles involved in digestion and waste elimination remain untouched. Most importantly, the patients mind is unaffected. However, most of them die within two years; though some have been known to live for years, with younger and male patients living the longest.

The doctors painted a grim future to the stunned graduate and his family. Stephen was in shock and went into depression. “Why should this happen to me?” he would ask himself. “Why should I be cut off like this?” However, while he was lying in the hospital, listless and depressed, he watched a young boy die of leukaemia in a nearby bed. It made him realize that there were others whose fate was even harder than his. It also made him feel something akin to panic, there was such a lot to do, his life had been one of boredom and he suddenly realized that if he were reprieved, there were a lot of worthwhile things he could do. Several times he thought of giving himself away for others as he thought if he was going to die anyway, it might do some good. But a deep lethargy had him in his grip and he couldn’t find anything to interest him in life. His doctors encouraged him to continue with his studies but what was the point? ‘ If I am going to die anyway, what difference does it make if I study or not?’ he would think. Life had become a nightmare for the bright young man and what was more, it was soon about to end. Couldn’t anyone save him? Powerless and terrified, Stephen turned to his father, the expert in tropical diseases. Frank Hawking investigated every conceivable lead, every link, however obscure, but his search was in vain. Defeated, Stephen decided to return to Cambridge, studies and death.

Meanwhile, Jane had taken up a secretarial course in London where she used to commute every day. Near the end of Stephen’s stay in the hospital, she met a friend of hers, Diana King, who was now a nursing student. Diana told her about Stephen’s ailment; Jane was shocked to hear about the sad plight of the young man whom she had found so fascinating. The news affected her with a strange intensity; she became silent, hugging her grief to herself. Her altered behaviour was detected by her mother who told her to pray for Stephen as there was nothing else they could do for him.

One day, Jane met Stephen unexpectedly at the train station; she was commuting to London for her secretarial classes and Stephen was on the same train returning to Cambridge. Jane was surprised to find that not only did Stephen seem glad to see her but he was also in a relatively sunny mood. She did not have time to ponder about it as she was completely absorbed in him as he was in her.

London came too soon for the couple; there was so much still left to talk about. The two unwillingly parted ways but not before making plans for their first date – dinner at an upmarket Italian restaurant and tickets to the theatre. And so began a gradual courtship; the young couple would go out on dates, each followed by a period of absence. Every time that Jane met Stephen, she would silently despair at his continuously deteriorating condition, yet, at the same time realize how deeply she had come to care for this young man with the unruly golden brown hair. She knew she would most likely end up with a broken heart but she just couldn’t get him out of her mind.

She burned to help him out of his tragic fate; she tried researching on ALS but it proved fruitless. She would pray for him, worrying that his lack of faith would destroy them both. In the end, she grew philosophical; after all, there was no guarantee to anyone’s life. Disheartened, she prepared for her first term at Westfield College, London, where she planned to study Spanish and French. Their dating continued and they would meet in London sometimes when Stephen came for the general relativity seminars; Jane would also visit Cambridge on several weekends. Stephen refused to discuss his disease with Jane and understandably he never thought about their relationship in the long-term. With her relationship on rocky grounds, Jane left for a term in Spain in April 1963. While there, she frequently wrote to Stephen but he never answered her letters.

The summer of 1963 found Jane holidaying in Europe with her parents while Stephen was attending the celebrated Wagner festival in Germany with his younger sister Philippa . Absence makes the heart grow fonder and the young couple was no exception…their relationship blossomed swiftly once they both returned to St. Albans at the end of the summer. So much so, that in October, Stephen proposed to Jane who gladly accepted and cheerfully gave up her career plans for the sake of their future together. As was customary in those times, Stephen formally asked George Wilde, Jane’s father, for his daughter’s hand in marriage; George consented but put in the condition that Stephen would not make unreasonable demands on his daughter. Frank Hawking, in turn, warned Jane that Stephen had not long to live; but Jane was resolved to marry Stephen and was willing to accept the responsibility of handling the household duties and taking care of Stephen single-handedly. In return, all she wanted from her future husband was that he should love her. Stephen was blissfully happy and often acknowledged that the engagement “changed my life. It gave me something to live for.”

So far, so good; the young couple had managed to allay their parent’s fears but there were still two major obstacles to be overcome before they could get married. One, Westfield, the college where Jane was studying, did not generally allow its undergraduates to get married. But a special concession was made for her as there was a possibility that Stephen might not live till after her graduation. Second, Stephen needed to find a job to support them. That meant deciding on a research topic, completing his research and applying for a job. So, for the first time in his life, Stephen would have to actually work hard at his studies. To his surprise, he found that he quite liked it.

Where there is a will, there is a way; with life beckoning him forward, Stephen soon found his elusive research topic quite unexpectedly. In January 1965, he learned about a theory proposed by Robert Penrose, a Physicist, on dying stars. As per Penrose’s research, when a massive star dies, it collapses into a black hole. (Black holes are objects with such strong gravity fields that not even light can escape from them). Stephen had always thought differently than those around him. Now he set to thinking ‘What if he reversed this theory? What if at the beginning of the universe, space, time and the entire mass was concentrated into a single point or a singularity? Suppose it exploded and gradually expanded into the universe that we know today?’ The young Physicist went to work and using Penrose’s techniques he developed several models of the universe. For once, he remembered the practical side of life as well and applied for a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius College (part of Cambridge) in February 1965. Hermann Bondi and Fred Hoyle provided the necessary references and Stephen began his duties as a research fellow in October 1965. Stephen and Jane were wed in a civil ceremony on July 14, 1965, followed by a religious service at the chapel of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After a brief inexpensive honeymoon in Suffolk, the young couple began their married life.

The couple rented a small house near Stephen’s office so that he could walk to office on his own. During the weekdays, Stephen stayed alone in their house while his student wife boarded at her rented room at Westfield. Jane would return home for the weekends and would get right to work, putting things in order and typing out Stephen’s thesis. Meanwhile, Stephen had started feeling the lack of his mathematical education sorely; he put his brains to work and soon came up with a novel way to improve his mathematical knowledge while earning some money at the same time. He began supervising an undergraduate math course for the college, teaching himself what he lacked on the way!

In the meantime, Jane completed her graduation and decided that if she was to be of any help to her husband she needed to first find some identity and purpose to her own life. With this in mind, she decided to pursue a Ph.D. Knowing her husband’s condition, she selected a topic which could be easily researched through secondary sources. This was just as well, for in the autumn of 1966, she found that she was pregnant. Stephen’s condition was also worsening steadily; his fingers had started to curl, making writing a difficult task. At his father’s urging, he started taking vitamin B injections once every week. His old mentor, Dennis Sciama convinced the Institute of Physics to fund physical therapy twice in a week at the Hawking home in order to control the steady debilitation of Stephen’s health. Between caring for Stephen and the imminent arrival of their child, Jane found little time to work on her thesis. On May 28, 1967, the Hawkings welcomed their first child, Robert George Hawking, into the world.

The baby brought good fortune along with it; Stephen’s research fellowship was renewed for another two years and his reputation as a Physicist also grew steadily. Stephen began working on the Big Bang (a theory dealing with the creation of the universe as a result of huge explosion some 14 billion years ago) with his colleagues and realized that it could be proved that the entire universe had emerged from a singularity.

The young Physicist was completely absorbed in his work and later recalled that it was a “glorious feeling having a whole field virtually to ourselves.” He, along with the famous mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, wrote an essay on the beginning of time which was awarded second place in Gravity Research Foundation Award, 1968. But trouble managed to keep up with the family. In 1969, Stephen’s research fellowship which had already been renewed once was about to be terminated. With his incoherent speech and his physical condition, he could not hope to get a teaching job anywhere. A rumour started doing the rounds that King’s College was about to offer Stephen a Senior Research Fellowship. This worked as a blessing in disguise for Stephen as Gonville and Caius, not wanting to let go of its rising star, hurriedly offered him a special Fellowship for Distinction in Science with a six year contract

On the home front, in early 1970, Jane found herself pregnant once again. Her thesis work took a backseat yet again as family matters took centre stage. On November 2, 1970, the second Hawking child, Lucy was born. Jane was a harried young housewife now; to care for a toddler, a new-born and a disabled husband single-handedly was not an easy task. Stephen’s condition needed more assistance day by day.

He could still climb up the stairs by pulling himself up using the banisters but his gait had become so unstable that he was soon relegated to a wheelchair. Dressing in the morning and undressing at night had become major tasks but he still insisted on doing them himself.

Stephen’s fascination with black holes led him in deeper and deeper into discovering their mysteries. He revolutionised the thinking about black holes and came up with what was called by some as the ‘black holes have no hair’ principle. Simply said, it meant that whatever the initial material which went into making a black hole, once created, it could be described entirely by only three properties – its mass, overall electric charge and rotation . So, technically speaking, a black hole created out of an elephant, a young girl and a bar of soap would appear identical – there would be no way of distinguishing the original material. On the basis of his research, Stephen wrote a paper on black holes for the annual Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971 and was awarded the top prize.                      

The pleased Physicist used the prize money to buy a new car.However, not everything was as rosy as his life at work. The Hawkings struggled against the physical and emotional barriers in the British society against the disabled. The high curbs, the endless stairs, the lack of wheelchair accessible places, all schemed against letting the family live a normal life. Jane and Stephen actively fought for the rights of the disabled and they also won victories, for example, the university gradually made the campus more wheelchair-friendly and the Arts Theatre and Cinema added seating areas for wheelchairs.

Jane later noted that by a curious coincidence, the attitude of the City Council towards access for the disabled mellowed rapidly as Stephen’s fame grew. The Hawking children were growing up as well. Robert had started school and although he shined in Mathematics, he had problems with reading, just like his father. Jane suspected that her child was dyslexic and that he should be enrolled into a private school where he would receive education better suited to his needs. But where was the money going to come from? The Hawkings certainly could not afford a private school education on Stephen’s college salary. Luckily, Stephen’s father stepped in with a family inheritance and Jane and Stephen used this money to buy another house which they let out on rent.

Stephen’s research was also moving in a new direction, that of quantum gravity – the uncomfortable, elusive coupling of General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics (the study of matter at the atomic or minute scale). Scientists world over were puzzled over the unresolved quantum gravity theory, thought to be ‘the theory of everything’. In the meantime, a trip to Russia along with Jane and friend Kip Thorne and a meeting with famous Russian theorist Yakov Zeldovich led Stephen to ponder on the question, “Do black holes radiate?” Stephen’s mind had found a new toy to play with but while his mind was busy roaming the unexplored realms of the universe, his body was deteriorating day by day. Many people now were unable to understand his increasingly slurred speech. Slowly, he was becoming dependent on others for every small physical activity. Even the stairs which he earlier used to manage on his own, had now become an impossibly tough task.

Undaunted, Stephen pressed on with his research. He had earlier rebuffed claims of Jacob Bekenstein , a graduate student at Princeton University regarding black hole radiation. Now he found that this was indeed the case. What was more, he found that the rate of radiation was inversely proportional to the mass of the black hole, which meant, that smaller the black hole, the faster will it radiate away. As the black hole got smaller and smaller, a time would come when it would burst into a shower of gamma rays releasing energy equivalent to a million megaton thermonuclear weapon! This discovery put Stephen on the international research map. What was even more astonishing was the fact that most of his ground-breaking calculations were done in his head. Kip Thorne explained, “because the loss of control over his hands was so gradual, Hawking has had plenty of time to adapt. He has gradually trained his mind to think in a manner different from the minds of other Physicists. He thinks in new types of intuitive mental pictures and mental equations that, for him, have replaced paper-and-pen drawings and written equations.” Stephen himself put it more modestly; he believed that, most people have the mistaken impression that Mathematics is just equation. In fact, equations are just the boring part of Mathematics. And he attempts to see things in terms of geometry.

The year 1974 proved to be an auspicious one for the Hawkings. In May 1974, shortly after his work on black hole radiation, Stephen was inducted to the prestigious Royal Society (a very old learned society for science based in London which acts as scientific advisor to the British government). He was one of the youngest members in its history. It was a tradition that new inductees walk to the podium and sign their name in the official roll book; however, Stephen’s physical condition made it extremely difficult for him to perform either of these tasks. The President, Sir Alan Hodgkin, a Noble laureate in Biology, himself brought the book to Stephen who signed it with great difficulty. In the spring, the young Physicist also received an invitation from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) offering him the ‘Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar’ visiting professorship for the academic year 1974-75. The position proved to be a godsend as it not only included a healthy salary but also an electric wheelchair for Stephen, facility for all other medical needs as well as appropriate schooling for the children. Everything was taken care of except for Stephen’s general care. Jane was finding it increasingly difficult to care single handed for a severely disabled husband and their children. No one was offering to help them and they couldn’t afford paid help. Also, she knew that she could not ask for help from others as that would force Stephen to let his guard down and allow others to see the gravity of his condition and his courage might fail him.

Jane hit on an ingenious way out; if one or more of Stephen’s graduate students moved in with them, her load would lessen and Stephen would always be in the care of someone he trusted. This was decided and the Hawkings set off for sunny Caltech with Bernard Carr in tow. Stephen’s fascination with black holes led him to what was to become the driving force of his entire career – the unification of general theory of relativity with the theory of Quantum Mechanics, something that had eluded even the great Albert Einstein. Stephen’s goal was a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all. The warm and sunny Caltech offered the perfect foil for this work and it was here that Stephen proposed another of his controversial ideas – the black hole paradox. We know that black holes have no hair and after its creation a black hole can be defined only by its mass, electric charge and rotation. Information about the material which formed the black hole must be securely locked away inside the black hole, though it would be inaccessible to an outside observer. But what if a black hole radiated and eventually exploded?

Stephen showed that the information contained in the black hole would die with it and as such it would be forever lost to the universe. This was in direct contradiction to the predictions of Quantum Mechanics. This work created a lot of uproar in the scientific community. There were many who believed that it was our incomplete understanding of nature which made it seem that there was a paradox, but Stephen was adamant and maintained that there was an inherent flaw in Quantum Mechanics. However, not all time in Caltech was spent in disagreements and differences. While there, Stephen and Kip entered into a friendly gamble which went on to become legendary. The bet was made on Stephen’s favourite creatures – the black holes. Countless scientists had been theorizing on black holes but so far there had been no observational evidence to support the existence of these dark monsters. In 1971, sighting of one Cygnus X-1 supported the probability of it being a black hole. By the mid-1970s, there were many who were willing to bet that Cygnus X-1 was indeed a black hole. Stephen and Kip went one further and actually made a written bet which was printed and signed by both parties on December 10, 1974, and kept at Kip’s office at Caltech. The wager read:

“Whereas Stephen Hawking has such a large investment in General Relativity and Black Holes and desires an insurance policy, and whereas Kip Thorne likes to live dangerously without an insurance policy,

Therefore be it resolved that Stephen Hawking bets 1 year’s subscription to ‘Penthouse’ as against Kip Thorne’s wager of a 4 year subscription to ‘Private Eye’ that Cygnus X.1 does not contain a black hole of mass above the Chandrashekhar limit.”

Stephen bet against Cygnus X.1 because if it did prove to be a black hole, he would have the satisfaction of knowing that his work had not been in vain and if it wasn’t, he would at least get the magazine subscription.

Stephen’s popularity continued to soar and he received several awards while at Caltech. One of these was the Pius XI Gold Medal for Science from Pope Paul VI which was awarded to young scientists who had done notable work. It was ironical that in 1663 Galileo was condemned by the Church as ‘vehemently suspected of heresy’ when he had supported the findings of Copernicus who believed that the earth was not the centre of the universe. Surprisingly, now, a scientist born exactly 300 years after Galileo’s death was being awarded by the Vatican for work which would prove to be every bit as revolutionary. The irony was not lost on the young physicist but he used this opportunity to make a special plea for the rehabilitation of Galileo’s memory . Stephen’s appeal did not go in vain, though it took some time. Four years later, Pope John Paul II announced the Vatican’s decision to reopen the case of Galileo. Meanwhile, California’s sunny atmosphere had brushed off on Jane as well; she joined a chorus and found the experience to be an intoxicating compulsion to my generally banal existence.

At the end of the year, the Hawkings returned to Cambridge. Stephen had grown accustomed to the fast electric wheelchair which he had used in Caltech and he found it to be an extremely liberating experience. Back in Cambridge, as was within his rights, he applied for the same to the Department of Health. The department refused his request and asked him to apply for the three wheel electric chair which he had used earlier. However, Stephen’s physical condition had worsened since then and he was not strong enough to operate such a device now. Helpless, the Hawkings had to dive into their personal savings and purchase the much needed electric wheelchair on their own.

However, to compensate, other rewarding things took place. There had been rumours that Stephen planned to permanently settle in California now that his six year fellowship contract with Cambridge had come to an end. Just as before, the university hastened to offer him a job, this time his first official post, that of a readership (an academic rank above senior lecturer awarded for a distinguished record in original research). At home, Jane had resumed work on her long neglected thesis. She also managed to squeeze in time to attend voice lessons once in a week. Spring 1976 saw both children down with chicken pox and the parents bogged down by severe sore throats and fever. Stephen’s condition worsened but he resisted seeing a doctor. However, as a birthday present to his wife, he hesitantly allowed a visit by the family doctor. The doctor came and Stephen was speedily whisked off to the hospital. Although he returned back in a few days, he was very weak and was constantly plagued by choking fits. Jane fell into depression; she could see no way how the family could continue to care for Stephen without any outside help.

 Somehow, she willed herself to go on.

During this time, Don Page, a graduate student who had worked with Stephen at Caltech, shifted to Cambridge and moved in with the Hawkings. Though Don and Stephen were compatible in Physics they were poles apart in everything else. While Stephen was a die-hard atheist, Don was a devout Christian. When he first moved in with the Hawkings, Don tried to change Stephen’s thoughts about religion but he quickly gave it up as a lost cause. However, having Don at home proved to be a blessing for Jane. It left her free to stay at home while Don accompanied Stephen on his work related trips. During the summer of 1977, Stephen went back to Caltech for several weeks and continued his work on quantum gravity. When he returned home, he was promoted to a special chair in gravitational Physics. He was now a professor and was given a salary raise in consequence. Jane joined the local St. Mark’s church choir which was directed by one Jonathan Hellyer Jones. Jonathan who had lost his wife 18 months earlier to leukaemia soon became good friends with Jane and began visiting the Hawking home. He taught Lucy to play the piano and also volunteered to help Jane with Stephen’s needs. Jane was happy; she had found a much needed friend and also another pair of willing hands to help with Stephen.

Accolades continued to pour on Stephen and with the awards came increased public recognition and scrutiny. The media was as interested in Stephen Hawking - the man with the ALS as in Stephen Hawking - the Physicist. In September, Jane was pregnant once again; she was determined to complete her thesis before the baby’s arrival the following spring. Having Jonathan to help her made this at least a remote possibility. In April 1976, on Easter Sunday, the Hawkings welcomed their third child into the world, Timothy. The joy of the baby was followed by more good news. Stephen was appointed to the esteemed Lucasian Chair in Mathematics at Cambridge, recognised as being one of the most honoured academic posts in the world. This chair of which Stephen was the 17 th holder was once held by none other than Sir Isaac Newton. The chair came with a strange but rather fitting decree – the holder must not be active in the church!

1980 arrived on a gloomy note when Stephen went down with a stubborn cold which quickly turned serious. Jane was not well either, caring for her new-born baby and her ill husband were taking a toll on her health. On the advice of their family doctor, Stephen was taken away to a nursing home so that both Stephen and Jane could have some time to rest and recuperate. While his health was recovering, the then Plumian Professor of Astronomy, Martin Rees, had a meeting with Jane regarding Stephen’s worrying condition. He offered to find funding to provide some nursing care for him. At first, Stephen was annoyed at this increasing lack of privacy but later he came to realize that it would actually make him independent of his family and they would also get some rest. Though Jane tried her hardest to keep things as normal as possible for her children, they were always painfully aware that their family was different from other families. Their father was a permanent fixture in his wheelchair since their childhood and he could never perform activities that a normal father could, like playing with them or indulging in a bout of rough and tumble. It was considered a special treat, if their father could be persuaded to wiggle one of his ears. Also, they had to contend with rude stares of passer-by’s and Lucy would counter by staring back at them to see how they liked it.

On April 29, 1980, Stephen took his seat as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. As was the tradition there, he made an inaugural speech which was read by one of his students “Is the end in sight for Theoretical Physics?”, wherein he stated that he expected a complete unification between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity by the end of the twentieth century. More than a year after he had taken office, it was realized that he hadn’t signed a ‘big book’ which every university teaching officer was meant to sign. The book was brought to Stephen’s office and he signed it laboriously. He reminisces, “That was the last time I signed my name.” Meanwhile, Jane officially graduated in April 1981 and took up a part time job at Cambridge Centre where she readied students for their university entrance exams. Finally, she had found an activity which utilized her skills and also let her find time for her husband and children.

In 1981, Stephen received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in Philadelphia; previous awardees included Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble. In his speech, he talked about the pileup of nuclear weapons in the US and USSR and of the dangers they posed to human life. In February 1982, Stephen became a Commander of the British Empire. The ceremony was held at Buckingham palace with Queen Elizabeth doing the honours while Stephen’s son Robert acted as his father’s assistant.

In the spring of 1982, the Physicist gave a few lectures at Harvard on gravitational collapse, the implosion or internal collapse of a star or any other celestial body as a result of its own gravity. It set him to thinking, why couldn’t he write a popular level book on his research? He was confident that “nearly everyone was interested in how the universe operates but most people cannot follow mathematical equations. I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down.” However, there was a practical reason behind this decision as well. Their daughter Lucy was now 11 years old and she, like her brother Robert before her was sure to benefit from attending a private school. But private schools were expensive; the prospective book might just provide the much needed money. To this end, Stephen began working on the manuscript and concluded the first draft in 1984. Then started the quest for a suitable publisher. All his previous books had been published by the elite Cambridge University Press. But this was not going to be a heavy academic tome; it was to be lighter, more suited for the general public. Stephen wanted a publisher who had experience in marketing popular level works and after much searching, he finally decided on Bantam books.

Around this time, Stephen found his personal life suddenly turned upside down. Jane confided to him that her relationship with Jonathan had moved on from friendship to love. But she had no plans of disrupting their family life. She later wrote about this period: “Stephen said he would not object so long as I continued to love him. I could not fail to love him when he showed such understanding…At the time I felt very guilty but [Jonathan] was a godsend. We were rarely alone together and tried to maintain our code of conduct in front of Stephen and the children, suppressing displays of close affection…Jonathan and I had struggled with our own consciences and had decided that the greater good – the survival of the family unit, Stephen’s right to live at home within that family unit and the welfare of the children – outweighed the importance of our relationship.”

Everyone involved were so discreet that few outsiders came to know about this arrangement. That summer the whole family travelled to Europe. Stephen, his secretary Laura Gentry and several students and nurses were heading to the Conseil European pour la Recherché Nucleaire (CERN) at Geneva while the rest of the family holidayed at Lake Geneva. Robert was the exception; he was on his way to Iceland for a Venture Scouts expedition. Jane, Jonathan and the two younger children would be camping their way across Belgium and Germany and meeting up with Stephen’s team at Bayreuth, Germany. On her way, Jane called up Stephen to check on him and was horrified to hear from Laura that her husband was seriously ill and was in the hospital on life support.

The family rushed to the hospital to find that the persistent cough which had started when Stephen was on a trip to China had developed into pneumonia. The doctor had put him into a drug induced coma and he was breathing through a respirator. Jane was beside herself with worry, misery and guilt. “How could I have ever let Stephen go off alone with his entourage, deprived of my intimate knowledge of his condition, his needs, medicines, dislikes, allergies and fears?” The doctor, unaware of Stephen’s zest for life asked Jane if she wanted him to be disconnected from life support and allowed to die. Jane was horrified and was adamant that no such thing should be done. The doctor then discussed the alternative. Stephen would have to undergo a tracheotomy; this would mean a permanent hole being cut in his trachea below his vocal chords. On the plus side, his coughing spells would end but the operation would take away whatever muddled speech he had left to him. Also, he would require constant nursing for the rest of his life.

When Stephen’s health stabilised, the university paid for an air ambulance to fly him back to Cambridge. Once there, the ailing physicist was admitted to Addenbrookes Hospital where several unsuccessful attempts were made to wean him off the respirator, but in the end the tracheotomy had to be performed. During these times, Stephen used to have vivid dreams of flying away in a hot air balloon which seemed a hopeful sign to him. The operation was a success and Stephen’s health started improving. But there was a big price to pay…how would Stephen communicate with anyone when he couldn’t speak or write? At first, he would spell out words slowly and painfully one word at a time by raising his eyebrows when someone pointed out the correct letter on an alphabet card. But this was not easy and he later recalled that it was “pretty difficult to carry on a conversation like that, let alone write a scientific paper.”

Fortunately, science came to the rescue. Walt Woltosz, a computer expert from California had developed a program for his disabled mother-in-law which selected words from a dictionary menu and had a built-in speech synthesizer. Walt sent this program to Stephen; a few tweakings later it was ready for Stephen. This was a giant leap for the physicist as for the first time in years he could write and speak, albeit in a robotic, emotionless voice and with an American accent. But this was not the end of their troubles, a mammoth problem still persisted. All day round nursing would be a huge expense and the Hawkings really couldn’t afford it.

However, help was on its way; friend Kip Thorne suggested that they contact the famed John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which was one of the largest charitable organisations in the United States. One of the committee members was the well-known particle physicist, Murray Gell-Mann. The foundation granted the Hawkings request but on a trial basis, providing just enough funds to cover the continuous nursing care. The family now had the money and Jane and Laura set about putting together a team of nurses to cover three shifts per day. The work was demanding and many nurses came and went. Finally, a team of long-term nurses emerged; one among them was Elaine Mason. It was her husband, David, a computer engineer who dexterously mounted Stephen’s computer, screen and speech synthesizer on to his wheelchair.

By Christmas, Stephen was able to return to his work. Much to his joy, he found that now he could communicate with his colleagues and students much more effectively than before. Public appearances which earlier meant sitting passively while one of his students read his prepared talk suddenly became much more fun. Stephen realized that he could become a successful public speaker, addressing large audiences. As he said, “ I enjoy explaining science and answering questions.” Admittedly, it was an arduous task to compose sentences one selected word at a time but Stephen adapted to it and did not fell into the habit of leaving out even small words such as ‘the’ . His daughter Lucy described him as “incredibly tenacious; a very stubborn person…He’s defied the disease. He’s defied perceptions of a disabled man. I think what he’s done is amazing.” But then tragedy struck yet again. Stephen’s father, who had been ill for several months, passed away in March 1986. Stephen was devastated by the death of his father. His mother described him as “very upset by the death of his father – it was rather a dreadful thing….He was very fond of his father, but they had grown apart rather and hadn’t seen a great deal of each other in the late years.”

Gradually, Stephen started travelling again. His first trip was to Sweden for a conference. There, Gell-Mann personally saw how the money was being used not only to support the Physicist’s home life but also his important scientific work. Later, the foundation agreed to fund Stephen’s expenses on an on-going basis. Back at work, Stephen returned to many incomplete projects which he had left, chief among them being the direction of the arrows of time. He had lightly brushed upon this topic during his Cambridge thesis days but had given it up declaring that he needed something more definite and less airy fairy for his thesis topic. The question was: “Why do the three arrows of time, psychological, thermodynamic and cosmological, point in the same direction and will this always be true?” The psychological arrow of time is the way we humans experience time, the way we continuously grow older, and the way we remember the past and have no idea about our future. The thermodynamic arrow of time refers to the fact that things grow more disordered with time. For example, the way houses need repair and the way a room gets progressively messier if it is not cleaned for a few days. The cosmological arrow of time refers to the growth of the universe from the Big Bang.

Stephen believed that when the universe’s expansion period would come to an end and it would start contracting, the thermodynamic and psychological arrows of time would also change directions. Things would become more ordered instead of messier, people would grow younger instead of aging; we would remember our future but have no clue about our past. Many scientists were sceptical about these results. Don Page and Raymond LaFlamme, a student of Stephen, got completely opposite results from their mentor. It took a month of discussions and calculations to convince him that they were right. He was convinced in the end and later said that this was his “greatest mistake or at least my greatest mistake in science. I once thought there ought to be a journal of recantations, in which scientists could admit their mistakes. But it might not have many contributors.”

Another important incomplete project was the popular book on the universe that Stephen had begun writing. The editor of Bantam Publications, Peter Guzzardi, had given Stephen pages upon pages of suggestions and appraisals. Though irritated by the sheer magnitude of the changes which were to be made, Stephen later acknowledged that ‘it is a better book as a result of his keeping my nose to the grindstone.’ The second draft was finalised in the spring of 1987. Next year spring, Stephen and Jane flew to Jerusalem where he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics, recognised as being second only to the Noble Prize in Physics. Stephen took this opportunity to speak again about world peace. “The progress of science has shown us that we are a very small part of the vast universe, which is governed by rational laws. It is to be hoped that we can also govern our affairs by rational laws, but the same scientific progress threatens to destroy us as all…Let us do all we can to promote peace and so ensure that we will survive till the next century and beyond.”

During this trip, a reporter asked Stephen about his thoughts on religion. Stephen quipped that he “did not believe in God and there was no room for God in his universe.” Jane was infuriated with Stephen’s strong refutation about everything that she believed in. It was her faith that had made it possible for her to stand rock like and serene, whatever the privations, in their years together. Stephen’s atheism drew yet another nail into the coffin of their marriage. In the meantime, the book, A Brief History of Time , was launched in London on June 16, 1988, and soon became an international success. It was on the best seller list for countless weeks and its stay of over four years on the London Sunday Times bestseller list landed the book in the Guinness Book of Records.

It’s ironical that though the book quickly found its way to the best seller list, not many people ever read it. Stephen himself acknowledged that the book was not an easy read. He noted that imaginary time was “the thing in the book with which people have the most trouble. However, it is not really necessary to understand exactly what imaginary time is – just that it is different from what we call real time.”

How did the book become such a success then? Did people buy it because they were interested in science or purely because of their interest in the author? The professor admitted that some of the sales were due to people’s curiosity about himself but he maintained that he had written it “as a history of the universe, not of me.” But those who read the book to the end, found something well worth their pains. There was a much quoted passage towards the end which said that if and when the true unified theory in Physics is found, “we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God.”

On the domestic front, Jane decided that they now had enough money to buy a second house. Stephen wanted to buy a property in Cambridge but Jane dreamed of buying an old farmhouse in France and renovating it. She along with Timothy, travelled to France where she fell in love with an old mill house which she named ‘The Moulin’. Unknown to Jane, this house would soon become her haven in the midst of the personal storm that was about to break loose around them. With the international success of his book, Stephen Hawking had become a household name. Wherever he went, people treated him like a celebrity. Jane observed that so much attention was gratifying and disturbing at one and the same time. Fame came with its own set of problems one of which was the constant influx of would-be physicists to the family home to have a word with Stephen. One caller even proposed marriage to Lucy on the condition that her father read his thesis.

Stephen was named one of the ‘Twenty-Five Most Intriguing People’ of 1988 by People magazine. Accolades came from official quarters as well. He was given an honorary doctorate in science by the University of Cambridge in 1989. Also, Queen Elizabeth named him a Companion of Honour, a title ranking above even a knighthood. Fame did not seem to bother Stephen and he shrugged of comparisons between himself and Albert Einstein but Jane was distraught by the constant media attention and exclaimed, “Nowadays I was there to appease the media desire for comforting personal detail (about Stephen’s life) by performing like a well-behaved circus animal.” She would actively fight back against the fabrications put forth by the media. She worried that the other disabled families would be negatively perceived and censored that they did not live up to the heroism of the Hawkings.

But the façade of a perfect life was soon to be rudely shattered. Stephen had fallen in love with one of his nurses, Elaine Mason.

Jane, for her part, was ready to accept this relationship in the same way that Stephen had accepted her relationship with Jonathan with the proviso that they remain discreet, it does not affect their family and children and that it does not negate her relationship with Stephen. However, this was not to be; in October 1989, the Physicist presented Jane with a letter of intent proclaiming his intention to leave her and move in with Elaine. The press did not get to know about the separation until the summer of 1989 and then all hell broke loose. Jane described the reporters ‘clustering around the gates, like a pack of baying hounds…We were being hunted.’ Rumours abounded about infidelity and religious differences. But why such shock and disapproval if the Hawkings had separated? After all, such things were common and the divorce rates among the disabled were even higher than among the general population. Then why the outrage? The problem was that the Hawkings had attained a legendary status and people everywhere thought them to be above the frailties of mere mortals.

One unfinished business from the past still remained to be settled. It had been over 15 years since Stephen’s bet with Kip Thorne regarding whether Cygnus X.1 was a black hole or not. Odds against his winning were rising as new evidences kept coming in. In June 1990, while Kip was away in Moscow, Stephen broke into his office along with his staff, found the framed bet, and wrote a concessionary note on it with validation by Stephen’s thumbprint. Stephen said, “…there is now so much other observational evidence in favour of black holes that I have conceded the bet. I paid the specified penalty, which was a one year subscription to Penthouse, to the outrage of Kip’s liberated wife.” In 1991, friend Kip Thorne and his graduate students were researching on the existence of wormholes. These are tunnels that connect two different regions of space-time in one universe or two universes to each other. If such things as wormholes existed, it would allow humans to travel in space as well as in time. After much research, Kip concluded that creation of a wormhole machine was not possible currently but there were still hopes that a more advanced society might just succeed in creating such a time machine.

However, Stephen flatly disagreed with Thorne who clarified that “There is little politeness in our community when one of us believes the other is wrong.” The professor created the chronology protection conjecture which said that the laws of nature prevent the appearances of closed time like curves. With his wry sense of humour he stated that “there seems to be a chronology protection agency which protects the appearance of closed time like curves and so makes the universe safe for historians”. He added, “the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.” For Kip’s 60 th birthday, Stephen calculated the probability of a working wormhole time machine and arrived with a probability of 1 part in 10 60.8.

The name Stephen Hawking had attained an iconic status, one proof of which was the movie version of ‘A Brief History of Time’ which premiered on August 14, 1992.

When it started out, Stephen made it clear that the movie should be more like the book and must focus on science and not the scientist. But the movie eventually turned out to be part biography. Although some criticized the blatant omission of Stephen’s separation from Jane in the movie, it was overall highly acclaimed. Stephen himself did not seem to mind the fact that it had turned out to be quite biographical and even thanked the director Morris for turning his mother into a movie star. But this was just Stephen’s first step into the realm of entertainment. Soon, he appeared as a holographic version of himself in one of the episodes of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ where he played poker with holographic versions of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton.

His computerised voice (with credit) also appeared in the song ‘Keep Talking’ by Pink Floyd. In 1993, the Physicist’s second popular level book titled ‘Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays’ was released which was considered by far to be a much easier read than ‘A Brief History of Time.’

Stephen and Jane were finally divorced in the spring of 1995 and Jane set off to Seattle to spend some time with her eldest child Robert who was working there with Microsoft. Meanwhile, the press was digging its nose into Stephen’s private life yet again and were questioning Elaine’s motive for marrying Stephen. Some said it was motivated by the fortune that the Physicist had amassed through royalties from A Brief History of Time. Indifferent to the media, Stephen went ahead and married Elaine in a private civil ceremony on September 16, 1995. It was at this time that Jane who had been pondering on writing a book about her life, set to work on her autobiography.

In November 1996, ‘The Illustrated A Brief History of Time’ was released; the text was livened by coloured illustrations and photographs and apart from some revisions, it also contained an added chapter on wormholes and time travel. In March 1997, daughter Lucy made a surprising announcement; her family was informed that she and her boyfriend Alex Mackenzie Smith, a member of the United Nations Peace Corps in Bosnia were expecting a child and that they would be living together in London. On July 4, 1997, Jane and Jonathan were married. Some months later, Lucy gave birth to her parent’s first grandchild, William. In the meantime, Stephen’s television debut on Star Trek paved the way for other roles. He appeared in a 1999 episode of The Simpsons ‘They Save Lisa’s Brain’. He also appeared in the comic strip Dilbert as well as in Futurama, an animated science fiction sitcom. In early 1999, he went through an operation of his larynx to ensure that food would not fall down the wrong pipe and into his lungs.

In August 1999, Jane’s autobiography ‘Music to Move the Stars – A Life with Stephen Hawking’ was released. The book created a lot of uproar and the media went wild perceiving it to be a ‘tell all’ about the life of the world’s most famous scientist. Stephen himself remained silent as he claimed that he did not read biographies of himself. The wild public interest in Jane’s autobiography shows just how much the word Stephen Hawking had become ingrained in public consciousness. Stephen had become a force to reckon with. In spite of all this negativity, he did not shy away from the media glare. In 1999, in an interview with CNN’s Larry King he was asked how he planned to spend New Year’s Eve.

 In trademark Hawking style he replied that he was going to have a Simpson’s character party and the best part was that he could go as himself. Meanwhile, the Cambridge University was benefitting hugely through its association with Stephen Hawking. By 2000, they had a brand new, $177 million building with a swanky wheelchair accessible office for Stephen. He continued to use his status for the benefit of the disabled. To raise public awareness of the technology available for the disabled, he displayed his new Quantum Jazzy 1400 which was provided to him by Pride Mobility, the world leader in mobility products.

He compared it to a Ferrari and added that it “will also keep my nurses fit as they try to keep up.” His tailor made license plate read: T4SWH (Tea for Stephen W. Hawking) – a tribute to his favourite drink.

Amongst all his other activities, the professor managed to find time for his children. He enjoyed Formula One racing and music concerts with his younger son Timothy. His daughter Lucy adored his father’s uncanny ability of buying her gifts of beautiful clothes which invariably fit perfectly. She added that it “means more to me that he knows what size I am, and not just what size galaxies are.” Stephen had become the darling of the media and the general public. Everything that he said was eagerly lapped up by the public. He had become science’s unofficial spokesman. In 2001, he told German magazine ‘Focus’ that humans will have to modify their DNA so as to keep up with the computers, else there was a significant chance that intelligent machines will take over the world. Another time, he said that humans must start creating space colonies so as to ensure their own survival.

Stephen had won over the public but the clan of scientists thought differently. In a poll by the Physics World magazine as to who was the top scientist of all time, most physicists rooted for Einstein who received 119 votes whereas Stephen received one. In another survey by Physics Web, Isaac Newton was ranked first while Hawking lagged behind at 16. Peter Coles, an astronomy professor at the University of Nottingham puts it interestingly as “coffee time talks in Physics departments often come up with the same topic: it’s very difficult to get anybody to say anything critical of him. But to have somebody like that in an establishment that runs on peer review isn’t healthy. The trouble is, people fear that they will be thought of as jealous.”

The success of A Brief History of Time made many people clamour for a sequel. At that time, Stephen wanted to focus on his research and so the book remained unwritten. With the start of the 21 st century, however, it dawned on him that there is room for a different kind of book that might be easier to understand. With this in mind, he started work on a new book which he called ‘The Universe in a Nutshell ’.

Learning from his past experience, he decided to arrange the book into independent, separate topics which could be read in any order. The book was launched in Munich, Germany in October 2001. The book became a bestseller though it was not as big a success as its predecessor. In June 2002, Stephen was awarded the Aventis Book Prize for distinction in popular science writing. The prize came as a surprise to him and he said, “my previous book did not win any prizes, despite selling millions. But I am very pleased to have had better luck this time.”

On January 8, 2002, Stephen celebrated his sixtieth birthday; a remarkable feat for someone expected to die ever since he grew up. Stephen had now become the British record holder for survival. Long-term friend and colleague Robert Penrose declared that the physicist had officially become an old man and now could get away with saying such outrageous things. A massive celebration was held, which included Stephen’s current and past graduate students and also his ex-wife. Jane was especially pleased to be involved and said, “because I still think that, with the exception of our children, the greatest achievement of my life was helping keep him alive.” But Stephen almost couldn’t attend this celebration. Just after Christmas, he had an argument with ‘a wall’ and ‘the wall won.’ While travelling on a cobbled street, he lost control of his wheelchair and crashed into a wall.

This year also saw the publication of another Stephen Hawking book, ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’ which contained biographies of scientific big-wigs Copernicus, Galileo and Newton along with extracts of their major works.

That April, Stephen told a reporter “I suggested we might find a complete unified theory by the end of the century.” He laughingly added “ Ok I was wrong” . He revised his prediction then and said that “there’s a 50-50 chance that we will find a complete unified theory in the next 20 years.” However, several months later at a talk at Cambridge he said, “ Maybe it is not possible to formulate the theory of the universe in a finite number of statements…Some people will be very disappointed if there is not an ultimate theory that can be formulated as a finite number of principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind.” Once again Stephen had proved that he was not afraid to own up if he was wrong.

Meanwhile, the television appearances continued and in spring 2003, Stephen appeared in the television show ‘Late Night with Conan O’Brien’ along with Jim Carrey.

The public curiosity about Stephen refused to be sated and in April of 2004, BBC premiered its television drama ‘Hawking’.

The movie narrated the two years in Stephen’s life when he was diagnosed with ALS, met Jane and conducted his thesis on singularity theorems. Ex-wife Jane noted that the movie captured “ the sense that we had that, despite it all, everything was going to be possible.” As expected, the movie was much liked and received viewership of more than four million. The author in Stephen was working overtime as well and in 2005, the book ‘A Briefer History of Time’ was released which was jointly written by Stephen Hawking

and author-physicist Leonard Mlodinow. The book provided an abridged yet clear picture of the universe to the average reader.

2006 was a year marked with a major personal disturbance. Stephen got divorced from his second wife Elaine. The 11 year marriage had always been under the public scrutiny and dogged by accusations that Elaine physically abused her wheelchair bound husband. Twice, criminal investigations had been launched by the police after Stephen received unexplained injuries which included broken bones, but on both the occasions the professor remained non-committal and the inquiries had to be dropped. Ex-wife Jane claimed that Elaine had intentionally driven a wedge between her and Stephen while many friends claimed that the nurse had ‘brainwashed’ her patient. The grounds for the divorce remained a mystery; Stephen chose not to comment on his divorce and the only statement from Stephen’s camp was that “He is far too busy. This is just a distraction which is really annoying. We don’t have time for any of this.”

The unpleasantness of 2006 was soon forgotten and in 2007, the author-physicist was back with his first book for children ‘George’s Secret Key to the Universe’ co-authored with daughter Lucy and Christophe Galfard, a former research student of his. The book which was an adventure story explained the mysteries of the universe in a way which could be understood by children. The book received favourable reviews and was followed by ‘George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt’ in 2009 and ‘George and the Big Bang’ in 2011.

On Thursday, April 26, 2007, the intrepid physicist charted another first by becoming the first person with a disability to experience zero gravity in a flight. Before the flight he told reporters that “I have wanted to fly in space all of my life….for someone like me whose muscles don’t work very well, it will be bliss to be weightless.” Florida based Zero Gravity Corp which runs such flights, offered it to Stephen Hawking as a courtesy. The zero gravity flight is dubbed as the Vomit Comet by NASA astronauts because of its tendency to make one retch due to its stomach churning manoeuvres. In anticipation, Stephen was given a pre-flight motion sickness pill and was also attended by two doctors and three nurses. It was decided that the professor have a single zero gravity run but they needn’t have feared; Stephen lapped up the experience and at his insistence the dives were extended to a total of eight. An apple was floated free in the aircraft along with Stephen as a tribute to Isaac Newton. Peter Diamandis, Chairman of Zero Gravity told about Stephen “he was doing gold medal gymnastics in zero-g. It was incredible…his eyebrows went up and there was a big grin…he was grinning the entire time.” After the flight, Stephen said “It was amazing. The zero-g bit was wonderful….I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come.”

In March 2008, Stephen featured in the documentary television series ‘Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe’ produced by television broadcaster Channel 4.

 The series consisted of two 48 minutes episodes dealing with his life and work. The series was a huge success and commanded viewership of more than 1.5 million viewers. In September 2010, Stephen returned to the public eye with the release of yet another of his controversial offerings, this time, the book ‘The Grand Design’. Co-authored by Stephen and Leonard Mlodinow,

the book delved on the controversial topic of the existence of God. As per the book, it was not necessary to resort to the concept of God to explain the origins of the universe; Big Bang was a direct derivation of the laws of Physics. In response to criticism of the book, Stephen countered, “One can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, but science makes God unnecessary.” The authors added, “ Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Despite the criticisms, the book was a success.

A self-confessed atheist and never afraid of speaking his mind, Stephen likens human brain to a computer. In an interview in May 2011, he stated “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” In October, the flamboyant professor was on TV once again, this time in a science documentary series titled ‘Brave New World with Stephen Hawking.’

The series focused on scientific breakthroughs which had the potential to transform our world. It also touched on the theme of space exploration as the only hope of survival for human beings in the future. Before the series’ premiere Stephen warned, “We are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history…But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were our survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.” On the same subject he added, that if there is intelligent life out in the universe, maybe we have been overlooked by it. “ If we should pick up signals from alien civilizations” he cautions “we should be wary of answering back, until we have evolved more.’ He believes that meeting a more advanced society at this stage “might be like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don’t think they were better off for it.”

On January 8, 2012, the poster boy for I.M.Possible celebrated his 70 th birthday. A public symposium was held at Cambridge University on the occasion but unfortunately Stephen couldn’t attend it due to ill health. A recorded speech of the physicist was played at the event instead which was attended by the world’s leading cosmologists. In his speech, the professor talked about his childhood and the highlights of his career. He finished the speech to a standing ovation from the audience

 with the words “Our picture of the universe has changed a great deal in the past 40 years and I’m happy if I’ve made a small contribution. The fact that we humans – who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph.”

Meanwhile, the master of the universe is fast becoming a master actor as well. In April 2012, the professor made another of his celebrated guest appearances on television, this time on the popular sitcom ‘The Big Bang Theory’.

According to his co-star Simon Helberg, Stephen’s comic timing is quite good. He displayed his comic genius once again in July when he held a party for time travellers but did not send out the invitations till after the party. The professor sat waiting for his guests to come complete with balloons and champagne but unfortunately no one turned up. In an interview to Ars Technica, a technology news and information website, Stephen said about his party “I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible.”

In July, Stephen, whose only vice is that he occasionally gambles, was in the news again , this time for a wager made 10 years ago on the Higgs particle or the ‘God particle’ as it is sometimes called. The Physicist had made a $100 bet against fellow scientist, Gordon Kane, that such a particle will never be found. But with news coming in July from scientists in Geneva that the elusive particle has almost been hunted down, he cheerfully conceded the bet. Stephen was pleased that the Higgs particle had been discovered and recommended Peter Higgs, the man who gave his name to the Higgs boson particle, for a Nobel Prize. In typical Hawking style he joked that the discovery had cost him $100!

So, finally what does one make of Stephen Hawking – the living legend? Has Cosmology become famous because of Stephen Hawking or does the cosmologist owe his fame to science? Difficult to answer but perhaps it’s a bit of both. A fact which cannot be denied though is, that there is no other scientist quite as famous, as appealing, as interesting, as mysterious as Stephen W. Hawking. And how could it be any different? Courage, fortitude, perseverance, determination, humour and a dash of stubbornness…Stephen has them all.

The professor loves to teach science to people but there are many valuable lessons which can be learned from his life as well. The fact that he is alive is in itself worth a salute. It teaches us to live life in the present and make the most of our time on this earth. That is the motto by which Stephen lives his life to seek the greatest value of our action. The normalcy which he exudes is uncanny – a wheelchair bound man who cannot speak, write, walk or even eat on his own, is doing brilliantly in his field of work and is a father and grandfather as well.

Stephen Hawking makes us redefine our perceptions about courage. A soldier fighting at the battlefield or an activist fighting for social issues are indeed men of valour. But fighting the unknown every single day, not knowing whether this would be your last breath and yet being a brilliant scientist takes bravery of a different kind. Ever played dumb charades? Remember how difficult it gets to express what we want to say without the comfort of speaking out? Now imagine not being able to talk throughout your life, not even the use of your hands to express yourself. Imagine having only your cheek muscles to select for communicating, for selecting words from a whole dictionary on the computer. Imagine that it takes you a whole twenty minutes to reply to someone. Imagine the way Sir Hawking communicates….by sheer grit and determination. What’s more, just think of the amount of perseverance that the man possesses to churn out book after book with only the aid of his cheek muscles!

The professor’s quirky sense of humour is well-known. Not for him the character of a gruff and stuffy old gentleman. People who know him describe him as an incurable flirt and a party animal who loves to dance in his wheelchair.

Battling such a life threatening disease and yet not being melancholy and gloomy…now that’s strange. Twice married, when asked what he thinks about the most throughout the day, bang comes the reply – women, who are in Stephen’s eyes, a complete mystery. Indeed, the man is every bit as remarkable as his ground-breaking work. What better way to end this than with a quote of Mr. Hawking

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet…Try to make sense of what you see and about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

Brave words from a brave man…let’s each of us try to live up to them.

{{quote.quote[0].title}}

Next Biography

Pierre-auguste renoir, subscribe to our newsletter, new users register.

Reset Password

Back to login

Mocomi Kids

Hawking Biography - Short Biography for Kids | Mocomi

• Famous People

https://mocomi.com/embed/content.php?c=73041|Stephen Hawking Biography|https://mocomi.com/stephen-hawking-biography/

Stephen Hawking Biography from Mocomi

Stephen Hawking Biography

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England.

Both his parents had studied at Oxford.

When he was nine, Stephen got very poor grades in school and just managed to be an average student.

He was always interested in how stuff works and he took clocks and radios apart, but had trouble putting them back together.

Still, his nickname was Einstein.

Stephen was always interested in Math and Science.

He won a scholarship to study Physics at Oxford.

Then, he studied cosmology at Cambridge.

Fighting with ALS

When he was 21, Stephen started tripping, dropping items and his speech became unclear.

After a series of tests, doctors concluded that Stephen was suffering from ALS- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; a disease which paralyzed him and required a speech generating device to communicate.

He worked very hard to earn his Phd and today, even though he is on a wheelchair he can communicate with a touch pad computer and a voice synthesizer.

When he was 65, he took a zero gravity ride, which enabled him to leave his wheelchair, for the first time in 40 years.

Stephen Hawking Quotes

“It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven’t done badly. People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.”

“I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”

Famous Works

His most famous theory is that black holes can emit radiation; also known as Hawking radiation.

Hawking has received numerous awards but never won the Nobel Prize.

He received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 .

Stephen always enjoyed writing books. His best seller, ‘A Brief History in Time’ made terms like the Big Bang and black holes easy to understand.

Other famous Stephen Hawking books include: A Briefer History in Time, On the Shoulders of Giants and The Universe in a Nutshell.

Hawking has also co-written many books for children along with his daughter Lucy. His famous books for children include George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt and George and the Big Bang.

Stephen Hawking IQ- Estimated to be over 160.

Hawking Today

Stephen Hawking is Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge University.

He is a highly successful lecturer and author and has also authored several scientific lectures apart from his books.

Using the equalizer, he is capable of speaking just 15 letters per minute.

Since 2009 he has been completely paralyzed but he is still a living legend.

RELATED ARTICLES

Leonardo Da Vinci Biography

Mother Teresa Biography

Neerja Bhanot Biography

Nikola Tesla Biography

Sir Isaac Newton Biography

Nelson Mandela Biography

George Washington Biography

Dorothea Lange Biography

The Wright Brothers – Biography

Steve Irwin – Wildlife Expert

Alfred Nobel Biography

Thomas Edison Biography

Featured articles.

Winter Foods To Keep You Warm

Invention of the Sewing Machine

Australia is drowning in Plastic Ba

Hampi, Karnataka

Onomatopoeia

Garlic and Onion are good for you!

Aarey Forest Facts

Why do roses have thorns?

Inside a Cricket Ball

A new word is added to the dictiona

Recommended articles.

Mocomi TimePass The Magazine – Issue 35

Mocomi TimePass The Magazine – Issue 36

Mocomi TimePass The Magazine – Issue 38

Mocomi TimePass The Magazine – Issue 40

Mocomi TimePass The Magazine – Issue 37

Mocomi TimePass The Magazine – Issue 39

Cancel reply.

@nihal atar 😀

@nihal atar Thank you! 🙂

@nihal atar Thank you very much!

@nihal atar Thank you!

@Alisa Khan 🙂

@Sneha Roy 😀

@Awinash Hello, how can we help you?

Thank you very much!

Thanks a lots 🙂

Thank you so much!

Hope you liked our article.

U have not updated ur page. The great scientist has died. ????????????

Great man ????????

Thanks Mohan Sahu, Stay Connected with us for regular Updates.

Grea????????

Ammasive life of him. I want to be like him.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Nice V.gud Ossm

very nice…

It’s time to update it.

Such a nice guy he is????????????????

Very hard and inspiring life.

in paragraph

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Login or Register above to download the content.

Subscribe to Mocomag magazine

Stephen Hawking; a Short Biography.

Stephen hawking's life so far....

• Stephen's death.

YOU ARE READING

A short biography of Stephen Hawking's life so far. I made this for school so, it may not be the best, but check it out if you want.

# biography # life # random # school

• Post to Your Profile
• Share via Email

• Report Story

"Only time (whatever that may be) will tell."

-Stephen Hawking, a Brief History of Time.

Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8 1942 (300th anniversary of Galileo's death- Stephen still to this day takes great pride in this little factoid), in Oxford, England. He is known for his work on black holes and for authoring several science books and is one of the most awarded theoretical Physicists today.

When Stephen was born his parents were happy but, worried as the political climate was tense as England was dealing with World War II and the impending storm of German bombs so, the couple Isobel and Frank Hawking made a move back to Isobel's home Oxford England to have their first child Stephen. They would later go on to have two more children (Mary 1943 and Philippa 1947) and adopt another (Edward was adopted in 1956) who was the couple's second son.

Even as a child Stephen had a passion for Science and Mathematics so, despite his Father's wishes for him to study medicine, Stephen went to Oxford and studied Cosmology. By his own account, he didn't put much time into his studies, he later calculated he on average he only spent about an hour focusing on school work, though he obviously didn't really have to do any more than that. In 1962, he graduated with honours in Natural Science and went to Trinity Hall Cambridge University for a PhD in Cosmology.

At the age of 21 Stephen was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's disease) yet, he is still one of the most celebrated Physicists in the world. Stephen first started to notice problems with his health while he was in Oxford, sometimes he would trip and fall or slur his speech; he didn't look into it until 1963, in his first year at Cambridge. Stephen kept most symptoms to himself but, when his Father took notice, he took Stephen to see a doctor. For the next two weeks the, 21 year-old made a home of the medical clinic, where he underwent a series of tests. Doctors later told Stephen he was in the early stages of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In very simply the nerves that controlled his muscles were shutting down. The doctors gave him two and a half years to live.

But, the most significant change in his life was the fact that he was in love with a woman who he met at a new year's party in 1963, her name was Jane Wilde, and he soon married her in 1965 and had three children (Robert 1967, Lucy 1969 and Timothy 1979).

Research from another young Cosmologist, Roger Penrose, about the fate of stars and the creation of black holes tapped into Stephen's interest and his own fascination of how the universe began. This set him on his career course that reshaped how the world thought about the universe and black holes.

While physical control over his body declined (he'd been forced to use a wheelchair by 1969), the effects of his disease slowed down. In 1968 he became a member of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.

Hawking's continued with his research, had two children and published his first book "The Large Scale Structure of Space- Time" (1973) with G.F.R. Ellis.

In 1974 Hawking's research on black holes showed how matter as radiation can escape the gravitational force of collapsed star, this was known as Hawking radiation and he received many awards including the Albert Einstein Award giving him fame worldwide.

Hawking took on teaching positions but, as his fame and accomplishments grew, his illness also grew worse.

In the mid 1970s, he needed a lot of assistance and lost his voice completely in 1985. Hawking was in danger of not being able to work until a computer programmer developed a speaking device for him that has changed from using his head or eye to now using a muscle in his cheek attached to a sensor.

Hawking went on to write three more books. These were: "A brief History of Time", "The Universe in a Nutshell" and "A Briefer History in Time". The books written between 1988 and 2001 followed on from each other with each book easier to understand than the previous book.

Hawking is sure time travel can happen and his theory is his personal search for a single unifying theory that can combine cosmology with quantum mechanics, the big with the small.

Hawking's desire for answers is also driven by his desire to travel in space. In 2007 experienced two hours of no gravity aboard a modified Boeing 727. He was free of his wheelchair for a brief moment.

Hawking appeared on popular T.V shows and in 1992 a documentary was made on his life titled "A Brief History of Time". In his personal life Hawking slit from his wife in 1990 and married his nurse Elaine Mason in 1995. A report that Elaine was abusing Hawking was dropped in 2003 but, in 2006 they were divorced. Hawking Published a book with his daughter Lucy in 2007 called "George's Secret Key to the Universe."

Hawking's health worsened and in 2009 after hawking announced his retirement he was rushed to hospital described to be "Gravely ill" however Hawking recovered.

In 2010 Hawking wrote a book called "The Grand Design" concluding that the big bang was the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and nothing more. Hawking had previously that a creator could be possible. Hawking states that,

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," and he continues on to say "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist."

In 2012 Hawking made news by taking part in a trial for a head-band styled device called the iBrain. The device is designed to read the wearers thoughts using "waves of electrical brain signals, translated using and algorithm." This device could be a revolutionary aid for all those with ALS (or similar disorders affecting speech), including Hawking.

Hawking appeared on the popular comedy show "The Big Bang Theory" as himself and delighted audiences with his spectacular performance. However in 2014 on a more serious issue inspired by the block buster film "Transcendence", Hawking spoke of the possible dangers of artificial intelligence (AI):

"Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history," the scientists wrote. "Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn to avoid the risks." The group warned of a time when this technology would be "outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand."

The year of 2014 also included a movie of the life of Stephen Hawking and Jane Wilde being released. The movie covers Hawking's early school life and school days, his courtship and, marriage to Wilde, the progression of his crippling disease and his scientific triumphs.

Today in 2015, at the age of 73 Stephen has survived through 52 years of ALS and, has realised his dream of leaving a mark on the world, not only in the scientific world but, in the way he has taught and shared his incredible knowledge with the world, allowing future generations to build on the foundations of his achievements. His accomplishments are only matched by the effort and courage he used to achieve them and reach his goal to leave a mark on the world.

There could be more to come from Stephen Hawking yet.