Life of Stephen Hawking, modern cosmology's brightest star

The English physicist and mathematician, who made significant contributions in cosmology, was the director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, England. Despite suffering from a rare and life-threatening condition of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), he made significant contributions to science, including his revolutionary predictions on black holes. We look at highlights from his life, career and achievements.

Born on Jan. 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, to Isobel and Frank Hawking, he is the eldest of four children in the family. His father was a medical researcher and mother was one of the first female students to have graduated from Oxford University.

Hawking attended St. Albans School where he was an average student and was mostly interested in spending time outside the classroom inventing new things.

While his father wanted him to study medicine, he decided to pursue mathematics. However, as the subject was not taught at University College, Oxford, at the time, he took up physics. He graduated in 1962 and joined Trinity Hall, Cambridge, for a Ph.D. in cosmology, where he started working with mathematician Roger Penrose.

Soon after joining the university, at around the age of 21, he started developing the symptoms for ALS—a disease that shuts down the nerves controlling muscles leading to difficulty in movement, swallowing and eventually breathing. He was confined to a wheelchair, with the doctors believing that he would live for only two to three years.

In 1965, despite his growing physical disabilities, he went on to marry a modern languages undergraduate Jane Wilde, with whom he has three children—Robert, Lucy and Timothy. The couple separated in 1990 and divorced in 1995.

Inspired by Penrose’s theorem of space-time singularity, he wrote a thesis in 1965 by applying the concept on the entire universe, which was approved in 1966 granting Hawking his doctorate degree. He then started working closely with Penrose. In 1968, he became a member of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. Inspired by Penrose’s theories on black holes, he started working on black hole phenomena and postulated what came to be known as the second law of black hole dynamics.

In 1974, Hawking made a huge scientific revelation that black hole was not the information vacuum as earlier stated by scientists. He demonstrated how radiation can escape the gravitational force; the theory is now known as the Hawking radiation. The same year, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Over the years, he received several accolades, including the Eddington Medal, the Pius XI Gold Medal, Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Prize, and Albert Einstein Award.

In 1979, he was appointed the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Cambridge University. With time, his medical condition deteriorated even further and he was unable to feed himself and lost control over his speech.

After a tracheotomy operation in 1985, Hawking lost his voice completely. David Mason, a computer engineer and Hawking's second wife's first husband, customized a speech synthesizer for the scientist's use.

In 1988, Hawking published “A Brief History of Time,” which was a simplified version of cosmology for masses. The book became a bestseller, selling over 10 million copies in 20 years.

After separating from his first wife in 1990, Hawking married his nurse Elaine Mason in 1995. The marriage lasted for 11 years and the couple got divorced in 2006.

In 1993, he published a collection of essays and lectures called “Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays.” It contained topics such as black hole thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.

Hawking has appeared as himself in several shows and has been portrayed and referenced to in several works of art and publications. He portrayed his own hologram on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in 1993 and his voice was recorded and used for “The Simpsons” in 1999. The physicist has also appeared on “The Big Bang Theory” (2012, 2014, 2017). He also lent his distinctive voice for the 1994 Pink Floyd song “Keep Talking.”

In 2001, he wrote another book on cosmology “The Universe in a Nutshell.” It was followed by other works, including “On the Shoulders of Giants” (2002) and some children’s fiction such as “George’s Secret Key to the Universe” (2007) and “George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt” (2009) and “George and the Big Bang” (2011).

In 2004, Hawking made a departure from his earlier proposition that information was lost in a black hole by saying that information can escape from a black hole and hence it is not lost, and conceded that information is returned although not in the same state.  

In 2007, Hawking went on a zero-gravity flight in a Boeing 747, which took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S.

In 2009, Hawking retired as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. By then, he was unable to operate his wheelchair and used cheek muscles to control his speech synthesizer.

In 2010, he co-wrote a book with Leonard Mlodinow, titled “The Grand Design.” In the book, Hawking wrote: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” In an interview with ABC News, he said: “One can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, but science makes God unnecessary.”

The 2014 film, "The Theory of Everything,” was based on the book “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen,” written by Hawking’s first wife Jane Hawking. The film starred Eddie Redmayne (L) as Hawking, for which the actor won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award.

Hawking has received many awards, including Copley Medal (2006), Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2015).  

In 2015, Hawking became a part of the Breakthrough Initiatives, a program funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to search for life in the universe. It’s divided into multiple projects such as Breakthrough Listen, which is a $100 million project that will search one million stars for artificial radio or laser signals. While Breakthrough Message is a project that intends to create a message to be “representative of humanity and planet Earth,” the 2016 program Breakthrough Starshot aims to send series of probes to the nearest star at about 20 percent the speed of light.

Hawking was conferred an honorary doctorate by Imperial College London in July 2017. Accepting the honor, he stated, “I have always felt a deep affinity with Imperial. It gives me great pleasure to accept this honor.”

On March 14, 2018, Hawking died at the age of 76. His children, Lucy, Robert and Timothy, released 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 forever." (Via MSN)