short biography about stephen hawking

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Stephen Hawking Biography

Early life Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England. His family had moved to Oxford to escape the threat of V2 rockets over London. As a child, he showed prodigious talent and unorthodox study methods. On leaving school, he got a place at University College, Oxford University where he studied Physics. His physics tutor at Oxford, Robert Berman, later said that Stephen Hawking was an extraordinary student. He used few books and made no notes, but could work out theorems and solutions in a way other students couldn’t.

“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

– Stephen Hawking’s Universe (1985) by John Boslough, Ch. 7

It was in Cambridge that Stephen Hawking first started to develop symptoms of neuro-muscular problems – a type of motor neuron disease. This quickly started to hamper his physical movements. His speech became slurred, and he became unable to even to feed himself. At one stage, the doctors gave him a lifespan of three years. However, the progress of the disease slowed down, and he has managed to overcome his severe disability to continue his research and active public engagements. At Cambridge, a fellow scientist developed a synthetic speech device which enabled him to speak by using a touchpad. This early synthetic speech sound has become the ‘voice’ of Stephen Hawking, and as a result, he has kept the original sound of this early model – despite technological advancements.

Nevertheless, despite the latest technology, it can still be a time-consuming process for him to communicate. Stephen Hawking has taken a pragmatic view to his disability:

“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 (27 September 2005)

Stephen Hawking’s principal fields of research have been involved in theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity.

Amongst many other achievements, he developed a mathematical model for Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. He has also undertaken a lot of work on the nature of the Universe, The Big Bang and Black Holes.

In 1974, he outlined his theory that black holes leak energy and fade away to nothing. This became known as “Hawking radiation” in 1974. With mathematicians Roger Penrose he demonstrated that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity implies space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.

Despite being one of the best physicists of his generation, he has also been able to translate difficult physics models into a general understanding for the general public. His books – A Brief History of Time and The Universe in A Nutshell have both became runaway bestsellers – with a Brief History of Time staying in the Bestsellers lists for over 230 weeks and selling over 10 million copies. In his books, Hawking tries to explain scientific concepts in everyday language and give an overview to the workings behind the cosmos.

“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 (1998) ch. 8

Stephen Hawking has become one of the most famous scientists of his generation. He makes frequent public engagements and his portrayed himself in popular media culture from programmes, such as The Simpsons to Star Trek.

Hawking had the capacity to relate the most complex physics to relateable incidents in everyday life.

“The message of this lecture is that black holes ain’t as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up – there’s a way out.”

Stephen Hawking. 7 January 2016 –  Reith lecture at the Royal Institute in London.

In the late 1990s, he was reportedly offered a knighthood, but 10 years later revealed he had turned it down over issues with the government’s funding for science

He married Jane Wilde, a language student in 1965. He said this was a real turning point for him at a time when he was fatalistic because of his illness. They later divorced but had three children.

Stephen Hawking passed away on 14 March 2018 at his home in Cambridge.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Stephen Hawking ”, Oxford, UK – www.biographyonline.net . Last updated 15 January 2018.

A Brief History Of Time

A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking at Amazon

Quotes of Stephen Hawking

“If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then 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.”

– Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)

“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 (1988)

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.”

– Stephen Hawking

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”

– Stephen Hawking (BT advert 1993)

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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

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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.

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Biography of Stephen Hawking, Physicist and Cosmologist

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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.
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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.

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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

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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.

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10 facts about Stephen Hawking

Learn about one of the most influential scientists of our time….

On 14 March 2018, Stephen Hawking passed away aged 76. Meet the inspirational British scientist in our Stephen Hawking facts..

Stephen Hawking facts

Full name: Stephen William Hawking Born: 8 January 1942 Hometown: Oxford, England Occupation: Scientist Died: 14 March 2018 Best known for: His work on explaining the origins of the universe and black holes

1) Stephen grew up in a house where education was very important. His parents were both academics who had studied at Oxford University . Dinner times were often spent in silence while the family read books!

2) When he was a teenager, Stephen and his friends built a computer out of old clock parts, telephone switchboards and other recycled items. His friends nicknamed him, ‘ Einstein ‘!

3) When Stephen was 17, he went to Oxford University to study physics and chemistry . He later said that he found his first year very boring! After graduating from Oxford, he went to  Cambridge University to further his studies in cosmology (the science of the origin of the universe).

4) Sadly, when he was 21 , Stephen was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) and told that he only had two years to live . MND gradually affects the brain cells that communicate with the body’s muscles. Over time, sufferers struggle to walk, talk and even swallow without help.

5) Stephen used walking sticks and crutches after his diagnosis, but as his illness got worse he had to use an electric wheelchair to get around. He became notorious for driving it a little too fast around the streets of Cambridge and running over other students’ toes!

6) Stephen made many important contributions to the world of science . He developed  theories about how the world began and furthered our understanding of black holes , stars and the universe.

7) Stephen was always keen for his work to be accessible to everyone, not just scientists. He wrote books that explained his theories in simple terms for everyone to understand, including a children’s book. His most famous book, A Brief History of Time , sold more than 10 million copies !

8) In 1985 , Stephen developed a life-threatening infection. He had an emergency operation that saved his life but left him unable to talk. He was given a  special computer that talked for him, which he controlled by moving a muscle in his cheek – clever !

9) Stephen has received many awards for his work including the 1979 Albert Einstein Medal , the Order of the British Empire (Commander) in 1982 and the 1988 Wolf Prize in Physics.

10) Stephen is remembered as an inspiration to many people. He had an amazing mind, incredible determination and didn’t let his illness stand in his way. He defied doctors’ predictions, living for a further 55 years after his diagnosis.

What do you think of our Stephen Hawking facts? Let us know by leaving a comment, below!

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Steven Hawking died on 14 March 2018 at the age of 76

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He is just the acronym for beyond awesomeness. by end of the last fact in this page im just crying by knowing how greatful he is. salute tou you sir. You are just one of the amazing creature that this universe is ever gifted. With Lots of Love nad respect kiran

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Thanks Stephen for the amazing things and the courage you show to all of us. Your determination change the way we look at the cosmos.

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50 Facts About Stephen Hawking

Last updated on April 1st, 2023

Stephen Hawking is one of the most recognized names around the world. His name is mostly synonymous with images of a paralyzed man who is stuck in a wheelchair, but his lack of mobility never slowed him down. Hawking once stated that “the human race is so puny compared to the universe that being disabled is not of much cosmic significance.” The magnitude of his fame started with his contributions to cosmology, which is the study of the universe, and his theories related to black holes and stars. His rise to fame is peppered with all kinds of events, such as speaking at important ceremonies, receiving awards, advancing his education and publishing books. Here are 50 facts about Stephen Hawking.

1. Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England during World War II on January 8, 1942, making his zodiac sign the Capricorn.

2. His birthday fell on the exact day that physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei ‘s death occurred 300 years prior, on January 8 in 1642.

3. Both of Hawking’s parents, named Isobel and Frank Hawking, attended the University of Oxford. His mother took on a few different jobs following her graduation but prior to his birth, while his father worked as a research biologist.

4. It was not immediately apparent that Hawking was a genius. At the age of 9, his grades were among the worst in his entire class. After working to improve his grades, Hawking was still only regarded as being average.

5. As a teenager, Hawking’s friends called him “Einstein” after they created a computer using telephone switchboards, old clock parts and additional items that were meant to be recycled.

6. Although he was fond of mathematics and thought about majoring in it, his father strongly urged him to study medicine. His father was mostly concerned about the number of available careers for mathematics graduates, which was considerably low. He also wanted his son to attend Oxford just as he had, but the University did not have a mathematics program at that time.

7. Hawking’s parents could not afford to send him to college, but he was able to go after getting an almost perfect score on his scholarship physics exam and receiving a scholarship.

8. Hawking was not happy during his first year at Oxford, but things started to turn around when he became a member of the Oxford Rowing Team.

9. In 1962, he received his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Oxford after completing the mandatory four years of coursework.

10. One year later, Hawking was diagnosed with a motor neuron disease called Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which is also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or simply ALS. According to the Mayo Clinic, ALS destroys nerve cells and causes disability. The causes were unknown and a cure was nonexistent. Instead, the disease had been known to usually prove fatal after only three years.

11. Hawking would greatly outlive the estimation commonly associated with those who suffered from ALS at the time. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that approximately 6,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with ALS each year, and that only 10 percent of those diagnosed would live for more than 10 years. Hawking went on to defy statistics and survive for 55 years after his initial diagnosis.

12. However, the disease slowly took its toll on his body. First he needed crutches and walking sticks, but eventually he required the use of a wheelchair in order to get around.

13. Over time, Hawking lost all mobility until he was completely paralyzed. He was forced to rely on other people and even technology for absolutely everything, including getting dressed, getting in and out of his wheelchair, taking a bath, eating his meals and even communicating.

14. The condition deteriorated his body so much that eventually, Hawking could only move some of his fingers. Sadly, this ability was limited to only one of his hands.

15. He was known for recklessly driving his wheelchair through the Cambridge streets and rumor has it that he even ran over the toes of fellow students. In one incident, Hawking broke his femur after crashing his wheelchair into a wall. He simply stated that “the wall won.” Unfortunately, there would be many police investigations conducted and countless allegations thrown around regarding the way people were taking care of Hawking over the years. Though he denied any wrong-doing by any of his carers, he would sport countless injuries without ever offering explanations.

16. Hawking received his Doctor of Philosophy, also known as a Ph.D., in physics from Cambridge University in 1966. His doctoral work was in theoretical physics and his thesis concentrated on black holes.

17. Hawking was married twice. In 1965, he married his first wife, Jane Wilde, but they divorced in 1991. Although she was a devoted wife, mother and full-time caretaker for Hawking, Jane could not handle the pressure and ever-growing list of responsibilities that came along with Hawking’s rise to fame.

18. In 1970, Hawking combined quantum theory with the theory of relativity to deduce that, theoretically, black holes should give off radiation.

19. Colleagues originally dismissed Hawking’s theory, but it was later found that based on the current understanding of physics, Hawking was correct. His concept was named “Hawking radiation” and is still considered to be among his largest contributions to the field of cosmology.

20. He joined The Royal Society in London as a Fellow in 1974. According to their website, The Royal Society’s primary purpose is to “recognize, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.”

21. Hawking began teaching at Cambridge University in 1979, where he was the seventeenth Lucian Professor of Mathematics. At one time, Isaac Newton held the same position.

22. Hawking had three children with his first wife, Jane Wilde. Their first son, Robert, was born in 1967 and would later become a software engineer. Their second child was a daughter named Lucy, who would establish a career as an author and journalist. Timothy was the youngest child and would take on a number of jobs in the future, including an account manager, a brand development specialist and a loyalty executive.

23. Hawking collaborated with Jim Hartle in 1983 to combine quantum mechanics with general relativity and develop a theory stating that there are no boundaries to the universe, despite it being a contained entity.

24. In 1985, Hawking suffered from pneumonia and was hospitalized. Doctors were forced to perform an emergency tracheotomy, which left him with permanent damage to his vocal cords and larynx.

25. One of Hawking’s nurses and his future wife, Elaine Mason, introduced him to her then-husband, an engineer named David Mason. David refined an electronic speech synthesizer which was operated by a keyboard and attached it to Hawking’s wheelchair, which gave him the ability to communicate.

26. Hawking’s first synthesizer was created in California and ran a program named Equalizer on an Apple computer. He controlled it through the use of a hand clicker that let him select words from a screen.

27. After the disease stole his ability to move his hands, an infrared switch was mounted to his eyeglasses. Hawking controlled this device using a muscle in his cheek.

28. His speech synthesizer spoke with an American accent, which Hawking insisted on keeping the same , even when his equipment was upgraded.

29. Hawking received several awards, such as the Albert Einstein Medal in 1979, a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1982 and the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1988.

30. Hawking published his first book in 1988, titled A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. It became a best-seller around the world and ultimately sold over 10 million copies. He would joke that the book was the most-purchased but least-read.

31. Hawking guest-starred as himself in a few television shows. The first was in 1993 when he was on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also appeared in The Simpsons, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Futurama and The Big Bang Theory.

32. In 1995, Hawking married his second wife, Elaine Mason. This marriage would only last until 2006.

33. Hawking turned the field of cosmology on its head in 2004, when he personally reversed his 1966 theory that stated black holes swallow anything that gets in their way. He also stated at this time that black holes would never be a means of space travel to a different universe.

34. In 2005, Hawking reworked his best-selling book to be a little bit easier to understand for those who were not scientists. It was aptly named A Briefer History of Time.

35. On April 26, 2007, at 65 years old, Hawking embarked on a Zero Gravity Corporation flight. He was the first quadriplegic to know what zero gravity feels like.

36. In October of that same year, he published a children’s book that he had written with his daughter Lucy, titled George’s Secret Key to the Universe. He and his daughter would eventually publish four additional books.

37. In 2008, Hawking spoke at the celebration of NASA’s 50 th anniversary. During his speech, he hinted at the possibility of alien existence, but warned that we should be wary of coming into contact with aliens. Hawking noted that aliens are unlikely to be DNA-based lifeforms, and therefore we would not be resistant to their diseases.

38. He also focused on the subject of aliens during one episode of his Discovery Channel show, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. The show was marketed as revealing “the splendor and majesty of the cosmos” and discussing topics such as “alien life, time travel, how the universe began and how everything will end.”

39. Hawking was appointed to the first Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario.

40. From 2009 until his death in 2018, he was also the University of Cambridge’s Director of Research at the Center for Theoretical Cosmology.

41. President Barack Obama awarded Hawking the highest civilian honor in the United States, called the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

42. The following year, Hawking published a book he wrote with Leonard Mlodinow titled The Grand Design.

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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

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Enjoy this short biographical video that details the incredible life of English scientist Stephen Hawking. Hailed as one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Hawking has contributed much to the field of theoretical physics with breakthrough theories on black holes and thermodynamics. His 1998 book 'A Brief History of Time' was a bestseller and he is perhaps the most popular physicist since Einstein. Check out our page for more.         Stephen Hawking Science Kids ©  |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |  Updated: Oct 9, 2023 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: 310 IMAGES Stephen Hawking A Short Biography Stephen Hawking: A Biography • ABC-CLIO A brief history of Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking All About Stephen Hawking Biography of Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and inspiring author COMMENTS Stephen Hawking 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. Stephen Hawking: Biography, Scientist, Relativity, ALS Stephen Hawking was a scientist known for his work with black holes and relativity, and the author of popular science books like 'A Brief History of Time.' By Biography.com Editors Updated: Jul 17 ... Stephen Hawking v. t. e. Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. [ 6][ 17][ 18] Between 1979 and 2009, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge ... Stephen Hawking Biography Stephen Hawking (1942 - 2018) is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author. He is best known for his attempts to explain in clear terms the origins of the universe and some of the most complicated aspects of the cosmos and physics. Hawking was the first scientist to offer a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the ... Stephen Hawking biography: Theories, books & quotes 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 ... Stephen Hawking Watch a short biography video about Stephen Hawking and learn about his childhood, his theory on black holes, his living with ALS, and his popular science bo... 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 ... Biography of Stephen Hawking, Physicist and Cosmologist Updated on July 12, 2019. 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. Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018) was a British theoretical physicist and mathematician.He was born in Oxford.In 1950, he moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire.He was one of the world's leading theoretical physicists. [17] Hawking has written many science books for people who are not scientists.. Hawking was a professor of mathematics at the University of ... Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking is an English scientist. He is a cosmologist, or someone who studies the universe as a whole. He is known for his work on black holes . Hawking has also written a number of best-selling books, including A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988). A brief history of Stephen Hawking: A legacy of paradox 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 ... Stephen Hawking Lived 1942 - 2018. 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. Biography Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England. His parents' house was in north London, but during the second world war Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. When he was eight, his family moved to St Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. 10 facts about Stephen Hawking! Full name: Stephen William Hawking. Born: 8 January 1942. Hometown: Oxford, England. Occupation: Scientist. Died: 14 March 2018. Best known for: His work on explaining the origins of the universe and black holes. 1) Stephen grew up in a house where education was very important. His parents were both academics who had studied at Oxford University. Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) Stephen Hawking's achievements as a scientist, communicator, and public figure were commensurate with his great fame. Stephen was born in Oxford on 8 January 1942 (which, as he enjoyed pointing out, was the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death) and entered the University of Oxford in 1959. Although his mathematical aptitude was quickly ... Stephen Hawking: A life in pictures Stephen Hawking, who was born in 1942, studied physics in Oxford and later went on to Cambridge for his postgraduate research in cosmology. At the age of 22, he was diagnosed with a rare form of ... 50 Facts About Stephen Hawking Here are 50 facts about Stephen Hawking. 1. Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England during World War II on January 8, 1942, making his zodiac sign the Capricorn. 2. His birthday fell on the exact day that physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei 's death occurred 300 years prior, on January 8 in 1642. 3. 7 Fascinating Facts About Stephen Hawking 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 ... Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) Known worldwide for his contributions to theoretical physics and cosmology and for his popular-science writings, Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford on 8 January 1942 to Frank and Isobel Hawking, and grew up in Highgate, London and St Albans, Hertfordshire. He was educated at St Albans School and at University ... Stephen Hawking Video Stephen Hawking Biography. Enjoy this short biographical video that details the incredible life of English scientist Stephen Hawking. Hailed as one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, Hawking has contributed much to the field of theoretical physics with breakthrough theories on black holes and thermodynamics. His 1998 book 'A Brief ... Stephen Hawking Biography Died: March 14, 2018 in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Best known for: Hawking radiation and the book A Brief History of Time. Biography: Early Life. Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford, England on January 8, 1942. He grew up in a highly educated family. Both of his parents had attended Oxford University and his father, Frank, was a medical researcher. Stephen Hawking Biography Early Life. 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. assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis