Stephen Hawking

Biography

Stephen William Hawking (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, known for his work at the University of Cambridge, where he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1979 to 2009, a position previously held by Isaac Newton. Later, he became the director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge. Born in Oxford to a family of doctors, Hawking grew up in St Albans, Hertfordshire, and attended St Albans School before studying physics at University College, Oxford. He earned a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962, then went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, for his graduate work, finishing his PhD in applied mathematics and theoretical physics in 1966, focusing on general relativity and cosmology.

In 1963, at 21, Hawking was diagnosed with a slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease, known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. Doctors initially gave him a few years to live, but he lived for over five decades beyond the diagnosis, gradually losing motor function. By the 1970s, he was using a wheelchair, and after a tracheotomy in 1985, he could no longer speak. He communicated using a speech-generating device, controlled eventually by the movement of a single cheek muscle. Instead of ending his scientific career, his diagnosis seemed to sharpen his focus, and he produced his most significant work in the following years.

Hawking's key scientific contributions were related to black holes and the universe's large-scale structure. Working with mathematician Roger Penrose in the late 1960s, he developed theorems about gravitational singularities, showing they were a typical feature of spacetime under the equations of general relativity, not just odd mathematical quirks. His most famous theoretical discovery, announced in 1974, was that black holes are not entirely black but emit thermal radiation due to quantum effects near the event horizon, known as Hawking radiation. This finding connected general relativity and quantum mechanics in a groundbreaking way and was seen as a vital result in twentieth-century theoretical physics, though it hasn't been directly observed. He also introduced the idea of micro black holes and was the first to suggest a cosmological model that included both general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Hawking gained widespread public fame through his writing. His 1988 book A Brief History of Time became an international bestseller, staying on the Sunday Times bestseller list for a record 237 weeks, and explained concepts such as the Big Bang, black holes, and the nature of time to a worldwide audience. He wrote several other popular science books, including Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell, and God Created the Integers, a historical anthology of mathematical writing. He was married twice, first to Jane Wilde, with whom he had three children, and later to his nurse Elaine Mason. Both marriages ended in divorce. He died in Cambridge on 14 March 2018 at 76.