Theoretical physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking is dead at age 76. The revered scientist overcame living with paralysis from Lou Gehrig’s disease to become one of the world’s leading minds on gravity and black holes.
He was diagnosed with the motor neuron disease ALS his first year as a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1963 and was expected to only live a few years. Aided by technology, he surpassed medical expectations and went on to obtain his doctoral degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics.
Despite being bound to a wheelchair he persisted in his research and worked in pursuit of his stated life goal: “complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
In 1974 Hawking expanded the accepted understanding of the nature of black holes—regions in space with gravitational effects so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape. What made his work exceptional was the theoretical argument that due to quantum effects, black holes are not actually black, but radiate energy. That energy is now known as “Hawking radiation.”
He gained mainstream attention in 1988 with the publication of A Brief History of Time. The book explored astronomy and modern physics in simple, accessible language and went on to sell 10 million copies worldwide. Communicating via computer, Hawking produced numerous other books on topics ranging from the thermodynamics of black holes to general relativity to quantum mechanics. He was a sought-after public speaker and inspired countless people to pursue their own research and goals.
In addition to his scientific and theoretical work, in his later years, Hawking enjoyed widespread celebrity as an icon in popular culture. He frequently appeared as a guest-star on television shows The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons. In 2014 his life was dramatized in The Theory of Everything, for which Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar for Best Actor.
Pushing the boundaries of human understanding of space time Stephen Hawking will long be remembered as a triumph of the human spirit and mind.
