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2 mag 2018 · Groundbreaking physicist Stephen Hawking left us one last shimmering piece of brilliance before he died: his final paper, detailing his last theory on the origin of the Universe, co-authored with Thomas Hertog from KU Leuven.
- Overview
- Early Years
- Later Celebrity
Hawking's scientific claim to fame was his revelation that the universe began in a singularity, an infinitely dense point of spacetime.
Editor's Note: This is a breaking news story. We will update with further details once we receive them.
Stephen Hawking, the British theoretical physicist who found a link between gravity and quantum theory, and who declared that black holes aren't really black at all, has died, a spokesperson for the family told the Guardian and the Associated Press.
“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years," Hawking's children Lucy, Robert, and Tim said in a statement. "His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor 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.”
Hawking was 76 years old, more than 50 years older than the age doctors told him he could expect to reach after being diagnosed in 1963 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease.
Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England, on January 8, 1942, a date that he often noted was exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo. The first of four children of Oxford University graduates Isobel and Frank Hawking, he grew up in a prodigiously intellectual family that read books at the dinner table and that he later described as "slightly eccentric."
His father, a noted researcher on tropical diseases, wanted his son to go into medicine; young Hawking was drawn to the stars. Hawking attended St. Alban's School and Oxford, where he studied cosmology and fought off boredom before graduating with honors.
He went on to Cambridge for his doctorate, earning it in 1966, three years after receiving the devastating diagnosis of ALS at age 21 and being given two and a half years to live.
The scientist would credit his relationship with Jane Wilde, whom he met shortly before his diagnosis, with giving him a reason to live. The couple married in 1965 and had three children, who survive him.
Hawking became an international celebrity in 1988 when his book, A Brief History of Time, was published. A layman's guide to the universe that explains complex mathematics and concepts in terms non-scientists can understand, it sold more than ten million copies and made him a household name.
In the years that followed, Steven Spielberg produced the film version while its author appeared in a string of films and TV shows, including a six-part series, Stephen Hawking's Universe. He played a hologram of himself on Star Trek: The Next Generation and an animated character in the Simpsons.
Hawking's franchise wasn't based solely on his work, though he'd already been elected at age 32 to Britain's prestigious Royal Society. "Because of his physical appearance," Fahy said, "he became a symbol of pure intellect, an image journalists recycled over and over again. That image connected with people around the world."
It also dismayed many of Hawking's fellow physicists, who considered comparisons to Einstein to be "over the top."
He was "a symbol of the overcoming of great difficulty, and that, obviously, you have to admire," said Virginia Trimble, an astronomer at the University of California, Irvine, who was a fellow student at Cambridge. "But I think the work would not have raised him as high in the pantheon if he'd done it as someone who could go out skiing every weekend."
Hawking himself acknowledged that he "fit the stereotype of a disabled genius," though he never let his wheelchair slow him down. He traveled the world giving lectures, always accompanied by a retinue of caregivers. At Cambridge, he held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, Isaac Newton's former chair, and was director of research at the university's Center for Theoretical Cosmology.
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- Andrea Stone
3 mag 2018 · Read Stephen Hawking’s final theory on the Big Bang. Science May 3, 2018 3:46 PM EDT. Before he passed away in March, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking had published more than 230...
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- Nsikan Akpan
14 apr 2023 · Daily briefing: Stephen Hawking’s final theory. nature briefing. article. NATURE BRIEFING. 14 April 2023. Daily briefing: Stephen Hawking’s final theory. Hawking flip-flopped on...
- Flora Graham
Stephen Hawking: Visionary physicist dies aged 76. The British scientist who explained the Universe to millions died peacefully at home aged 76.
28 mag 2023 · Home. Physics. General Physics. May 28, 2023. Editors' notes. Stephen Hawking's last collaborator on physicist's final theory. by Daniel Lawler. Stephen Hawking in his Cambridge office,...
14 mar 2018 · LONDON (AP) — Stephen Hawking, whose brilliant mind ranged across time and space though his body was paralyzed by disease, died Wednesday. He was 76. Hawking died at his home in Cambridge, England, according to a statement by the University of Cambridge.
