Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Five things you may not have known about Prof Hawking

World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday, his family said.

The British scientist was famed for his work with black holes and relativity, and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.

At the age of 22 Prof Hawking was given only a few years to live after being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease.

The illness left him in a wheelchair and largely unable to speak except through a voice synthesiser.

In a statement his children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said: "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."

They praised his "courage and persistence" and said 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."

A book of condolence has been opened at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where Prof Hawking was a fellow.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Professor Brian Cox on the legacy and wonder of Hawking's work

Prof Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology as a union of relativity and quantum mechanics.

He also discovered that black holes leak energy and fade to nothing - a phenomenon that would later become known as Hawking radiation.

Through his work with mathematician Sir 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.

The scientist gained popularity outside the academic world and appeared in several TV shows including The Simpsons, Red Dwarf and The Big Bang Theory.

He was portrayed in both TV and film - recently by Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, which charted his rise to fame and relationship with his first wife, Jane.

The actor paid tribute to him, saying: "We have lost a truly beautiful mind, an astonishing scientist and the funniest man I have ever had the pleasure to meet."

Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Prof Hawking in a BBC drama, said he was "a true inspiration for me and for millions around the world".

Image copyright BBC/PA Image caption Stephen Hawking was portrayed on TV and film by Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne

His most famous book - A Brief History of Time - has now shot to the top of the Amazon Best Sellers list.

The Motor Neurone Disease Association, of which Prof Hawking had been a patron since 2008, reported that its website had crashed because of an influx of donations to the charity.

Factfile: Stephen Hawking

Born 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England

Earned place at Oxford University to read natural science in 1959, before studying for his PhD at Cambridge

By 1963, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to live

Outlined his theory that black holes emit "Hawking radiation" in 1974

In 1979, he became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge - a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton

Published his book A Brief History of Time in 1988, which has sold more than 10 million copies

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

Tributes have poured in for Prof Hawking since the announcement of his death.

Prof Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, who was at university with Prof Hawking when he was diagnosed, said his friend had "amazing willpower and determination".

Prime Minister Theresa May called him a "brilliant and extraordinary mind" and "one of the great scientists of his generation".

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn praised the scientist for his "determination to explain the mysteries of the cosmos" and his "burning passion to protect our National Health Service."

Skip Twitter post by @NASA Remembering Stephen Hawking, a renowned physicist and ambassador of science. His theories unlocked a universe of possibilities that we & the world are exploring. May you keep flying like superman in microgravity, as you said to astronauts on @Space_Station in 2014 pic.twitter.com/FeR4fd2zZ5 — NASA (@NASA) March 14, 2018 Report

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, said: "We have lost a colossal mind and a wonderful spirit. Rest in peace, Stephen Hawking," he said.

The vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge - where Prof Hawking had studied and worked - Professor Stephen Toope, said he was a "unique individual" who would be remembered with "warmth and affection".

Prof James Hartle, who worked with him to create the Hartle-Hawking wavefunction to explain the Big Bang, said Prof Hawking had a "unique" ability to "see through all the clutter in physics" and get to the point.

He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme: "My memory of him would be… first our work together as scientists and, second, as a human being whose whole story is a triumph over adversity [and] who inspired a lot of people, including me."

Skip Twitter post by @neiltyson His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018. pic.twitter.com/nAanMySqkt — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 14, 2018 Report

The comedian and presenter of the BBC's Stargazing Live Dara O'Briain said the scientist had an "immeasurable life" and "one of the few people I would call a hero of mine".

Theoretical physicist, professor Jim Al-Khalili, from Surrey University said Prof Hawking had a tremendous sense of humour.

He told BBC Radio Surrey: "He was a fun loving guy. Inside that shell, inside that body that was paralysed, was someone who was full of vigour, full of passion for life."

Hawking's discoveries

With the Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose, he showed that if there was a Big Bang, it must have started from an infinitely small point - a singularity

Black holes radiate energy known as Hawking radiation, while gradually losing mass. This is due to quantum effects near the edge of the black hole, a region called the event horizon

He predicted the existence of mini-black holes at the time of the Big Bang. These black holes would have shed mass until they vanished, potentially ending their lives in an explosion that would release vast amounts of energy

In the 1970s, Hawking considered whether the particles and light that enter a black hole were ultimately destroyed if the black hole evaporated. Hawking initially thought that this "information" was lost from the Universe. But the US physicist Leonard Susskind disagreed. These ideas became known as the information paradox. In 2004, Hawking conceded that the information must be conserved

British astronaut Tim Peake said Prof Hawking "inspired generations to look beyond our own blue planet and expand our understanding of the universe".

Gian Giudice, head of theoretical physics at the European nuclear research laboratory CERN, said Prof Hawking had a "great impact" on the centre's research, adding: "A giant of our field has left us, but his immortal contributions will remain forever."

Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak said: "Stephen Hawking's integrity and scientific dedication placed him above pure brilliance,"

Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Stephen Hawking arrives on the red carpet with former wife Jane Hawking (L) and daughter Lucy Hawking (R).

In his 2013 memoir he described how he felt when first diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

"I felt it was very unfair - why should this happen to me," he wrote.

"At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realise the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life."

Speaking to the BBC in 2002, his mother, Isobelle, described him as a "very normal young man".

She said: "He liked parties. He liked pretty girls - only pretty ones. He liked adventure and he did, to some extent, like work."</s>A brief history of Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking spent his scientific life exploring some of the deepest questions a human caught in the Einsteinian opera of space and time could ask.

Although Einstein himself never really accepted it, his general theory of relativity predicted that if enough mass or energy were concentrated at one point, space would sag like mattress and eventually close itself off, creating a black hole from which nothing, not even light, could ever escape.

It would be Dr. Hawking’s fate to explore these imagined monsters and ask what their presence portends for the universe, and for those of us who live inside it.</s>The physicist and author of A Brief History of Time has died at his home in Cambridge. His children said: ‘We will miss him for ever’

Tributes poured in on Wednesday to Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions. He died at the age of 76 in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

A brief history of Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time Read more

In a statement that confirmed his death at home in Cambridge, Hawking’s children said: “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.”

For fellow scientists and loved ones, it was Hawking’s intuition and wicked sense of humour that marked him out as much as the fierce intellect that, coupled with his illness, came to symbolise the unbounded possibilities of the human mind.

“Stephen was far from being the archetypal unworldy or nerdish scientist. His personality remained amazingly unwarped by his frustrations,” said Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, who praised Hawking’s half century of work as an “inspiring crescendo of achievement.” He added: “Few, if any, of Einstein’s successors have done more to deepen our insights into gravity, space and time.”

The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield lamented on Twitter that “Genius is so fine and rare”, while Theresa May noted Hawking’s “courage, humour and determination to get the most from life was an inspiration.” The US rock band Foo Fighters was more succinct, calling Hawking a “fucking legend.”

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first Stephen Hawking

Hawking was driven to Wagner, but not the bottle, when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21. Doctors expected him to live for only two more years. But Hawking had a form of the disease that progressed more slowly than usual. He survived for more than half a century.

Hawking once estimated he worked only 1,000 hours during his three undergraduate years at Oxford. In his finals, he came borderline between a first- and second-class degree. Convinced that he was seen as a difficult student, he told his viva examiners that if they gave him a first he would move to Cambridge to pursue his PhD. Award a second and he threatened to stay. They opted for a first.

Those who live in the shadow of death are often those who live most. For Hawking, the early diagnosis of his terminal disease, and witnessing the death from leukaemia of a boy he knew in hospital, ignited a fresh sense of purpose. “Although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before. I began to make progress with my research,” he once said. Embarking on his career in earnest, he declared: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

He began to use crutches in the 1960s, but long fought the use of a wheelchair. When he finally relented, he became notorious for his wild driving along the streets of Cambridge, not to mention the intentional running over of students’ toes and the occasional spin on the dance floor at college parties.

The life of Stephen Hawking – in pictures Read more

Hawking’s first major breakthrough came in 1970, when he and Roger Penrose applied the mathematics of black holes to the universe and showed that a singularity, a region of infinite curvature in spacetime, lay in our distant past: the point from which came the big bang.

Penrose found he was able to talk with Hawking even as the latter’s speech failed. Hawking, he said, had an absolute determination not to let anything get in his way. “He thought he didn’t have long to live, and he really wanted to get as much as he could done at that time.”

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark Stephen Hawking

In 1974 Hawking drew on quantum theory to declare that black holes should emit heat and eventually pop out of existence. For normal-sized black holes, the process is extremely slow, but miniature black holes would release heat at a spectacular rate, eventually exploding with the energy of a million one-megaton hydrogen bombs.

His proposal that black holes radiate heat stirred up one of the most passionate debates in modern cosmology. Hawking argued that if a black hole could evaporate, all the information that fell inside over its lifetime would be lost forever. It contradicted one of the most basic laws of quantum mechanics, and plenty of physicists disagreed. Hawking came round to believing the more common, if no less baffling, explanation that information is stored at a black hole’s event horizon, and encoded back into radiation as the black hole radiates.

Marika Taylor, a former student of Hawking’s and now professor of theoretical physics at Southampton University, remembers how Hawking announced his U-turn on the information paradox to his students. He was discussing their work with them in the pub when Taylor noticed he was turning his speech synthesiser up to the max. “I’m coming out!” he bellowed. The whole pub turned around and looked at the group before Hawking turned the volume down and clarified the statement: “I’m coming out and admitting that maybe information loss doesn’t occur.” He had, Taylor said, “a wicked sense of humour.”

Hawking’s run of radical discoveries led to his election in 1974 to the Royal Society at the young age of 32. Five years later, he became the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, arguably Britain’s most distinguished chair, and a post formerly held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Paul Dirac, one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics.

Hawking’s seminal contributions continued through the 1980s. The theory of cosmic inflation holds that the fledgling universe went through a period of terrific expansion. In 1982, Hawking was among the first to show how quantum fluctuations – tiny variations in the distribution of matter – might give rise through inflation to the spread of galaxies in the universe. In these tiny ripples lay the seeds of stars, planets and life as we know it. “It is one of the most beautiful ideas in the history of science,” said Max Tegmark, a physics professor at MIT.

But it was A Brief History of Time that rocketed Hawking to stardom. Published for the first time in 1988, the title made the Guinness Book of Records after it stayed on the Sunday Times bestsellers list for an unprecedented 237 weeks. It sold 10m copies and was translated into 40 different languages. Some credit must go to Hawking’s editor at Bantam, Peter Guzzardi, who took the original title: “From the Big Bang to Black Holes: A Short History of Time”, turned it around, and changed the “Short” to “Brief”. Nevertheless, wags called it the greatest unread book in history.

Hawking married his college sweetheart, Jane Wilde, in 1965, two years after his diagnosis. She first set eyes on him in 1962, lolloping down the street in St Albans, his face down, covered by an unruly mass of brown hair. A friend warned her she was marrying into “a mad, mad family”. With all the innocence of her 21 years, she trusted that Stephen would cherish her, she wrote in her 2013 book, Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.

In 1985, during a trip to Cern, Hawking was taken to hospital with an infection. He was so ill that doctors asked Jane if they should withdraw life support. She refused, and Hawking was flown back to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge for a lifesaving tracheotomy. The operation saved his life but destroyed his voice. The couple had three children, but the marriage broke down in 1991. Hawking’s progressive condition, his demands on Jane, and his refusal to discuss his illness, were destructive forces the relationship could not endure, she said. Jane wrote of him being “a child possessed of a massive and fractious ego,” and how husband and wife became “master” and “slave”.

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

Four years later, Hawking married Elaine Mason, one of the nurses employed to give him round-the-clock care. The marriage lasted 11 years, during which Cambridgeshire police investigated a series of alleged assaults on Hawking. The physicist denied that Elaine was involved, and refused to cooperate with police, who dropped the investigation.

Hawking was not, perhaps, the greatest physicist of his time, but in cosmology he was a towering figure. There is no perfect proxy for scientific worth, but Hawking won the Albert Einstein award, the Wolf prize, the Copley medal, and the Fundamental Physics prize. The Nobel prize, however, eluded him.

He was fond of scientific wagers, despite a knack for losing them. In 1975, he bet the US physicist Kip Thorne a subscription to Penthouse that the cosmic x-ray source Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole. He lost in 1990. In 1997, Hawking and Thorne bet John Preskill an encyclopaedia that information must be lost in black holes. Hawking conceded in 2004. In 2012, Hawking lost $100 to Gordon Kane for betting that the Higgs boson would not be discovered.

He lectured at the White House during the Clinton administration – his oblique references to the Monica Lewinsky episode were evidently lost on those who screened his speech – and returned in 2009 to receive the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama. His life was played out in biographies and documentaries, most recently The Theory of Everything, in which Eddie Redmayne played him. He appeared on The Simpsons and played poker with Einstein and Newton on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He delivered gorgeous put-downs on The Big Bang Theory. “What do Sheldon Cooper and a black hole have in common?” Hawking asked the fictional Caltech physicist whose IQ comfortably outstrips his social skills. After a pause, the answer came: “They both suck.”

Hawking has argued that for humanity to survive it must spread out into space, and has warned against the worst applications of artificial intelligence, including autonomous weapons.

Stephen Hawking – obituary by Roger Penrose Read more

Hawking was happy to court controversy and was accused of being sexist and misogynist. He turned up at Stringfellows lap dancing club in 2003, and years later declared women “a complete mystery”. In 2013, he boycotted a major conference in Israel on the advice of Palestinian academics.

Some of his most outspoken comments offended the religious. In his 2010 book, Grand Design, he declared that God was not needed to set the universe going, and in an interview with the Guardian a year later, dismissed the comforts of religious belief.

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail,” he said. “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

He spoke also of death, an eventuality that sat on a more distant horizon than doctors thought. “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die,” he said. “I have so much I want to do first.”

What astounded those around him was how much he did achieve. He leaves his three children, from his first marriage to Jane Wilde, and three grandchildren.</s>Stephen Hawking, the most famous modern-day scientist, has died aged 76.

The British physicist died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday morning, his family said.

Hawking was world renowned for his groundbreaking research and theories into relativity and black holes.
• Lucy Hawking reveals the other side of her father Stephen
• Stephen Hawking: “My sense of humour keeps me going”

Aged 21, Hawking was diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease and told he only had a few years to live. He had to use a wheelchair and was unable to speak except through a voice synthesiser.

In a statement, his children Lucy, Robert and Tim said, “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.’

Hawking’s 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris.

A movie was made about his life in 2014, The Theory of Everything. Eddie Redmayne won the Best Actor Oscar for the role.

Hawking also appeared in several TV shows including The Simpsons, Red Dwarf and The Big Bang Theory.

On Twitter, Nasa described Hawking as an “ambassador of science” and said he “unlocked a universe of possibilities”.

Professor Brian Cox said, “He spoke about the value and fragility of human life and civilisation and greatly enhanced both.”

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said that “his passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake”.

And many celebrities and people who worked with Hawking honoured the genius…</s>Stephen Hawking, the British theoretical physicist who beat the odds his entire life, has died. He was 76.

The University of Cambridge, where Hawking was director of research in applied mathematics and theoretical physics and founder of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, confirmed his death early Wednesday to NBC News.

Hawking was as famous for his insights on black holes, the existence of God and quantum gravity as he was for his unique way of speaking while living his life in a wheelchair. Operating his trademark computer system with his cheek, Hawking gave the world insights into the unknown and gems of quotations, including, “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”

Diagnosed at age 21 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS — also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — Hawking proved every doctor wrong as he defied their grim prognoses decade after decade again.

ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that robs its victims of muscle movement, is “100 percent fatal,” according to the ALS Association. Most sufferers are diagnosed in their 50s, as opposed to the young age Hawking was. Only half live more than five years.

Given just two years to live when he received his diagnosis, Hawking went on to have a lifetime of achievements, including his 1988 best-selling book, “A Brief History of Time,” which translated the complex fundamentals of physics into simple language. As the world’s best-known physicist, he became a pop culture fixture, as well, with a 2012 cameo on “The Big Bang Theory” and a movie based on his improbable life and career, “The Theory of Everything” in 2014.

Hawking came to prominence in the early 1970s for work done in collaboration with mathematician Roger Penrose. They devised a revolutionary theory of gravity positing that if the universe obeys Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and fits the standard model of physical cosmology (the study of the structures and dynamics of the universe), then it must have begun as an infinitesimally small point in the center of a black hole.

In 1974, Hawking theorized that black holes emit radiation, a startling but now widely accepted conclusion that is central to modern theoretical physics. His theory that information in a black hole is lost forever when a black hole evaporates, which he put forth in 1981, was more controversial, and it remains so today.

Related: ‘I’m an atheist’: Stephen Hawking on God and space travel

Hawking was the rare theoretical scientist who could relay the abstruse ideas of advanced physics in language accessible to the public. His landmark popular science book, “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988, laid out the dominant thinking about the origin and structure of the universe, space and time, with stops to explain black holes and the Big Bang.

“A Brief History of Time” is estimated to have sold 10 million copies in more than 40 languages, and it made Hawking a household name.

Long an advocate of spreading humanity out from Earth’s cocoon, Hawking gave a presentation in Beijing last November projecting that human beings have less than 600 years left on the planet before population growth and energy depletion burn it to a cinder.

Related: Stephen Hawking says time travel should be possible

He proposed an eventual transportation system that could relocate humans at the speed of light to an exo-planet in the Alpha Centauri system, one of the closest star systems outside Earth’s solar system.

Such concerns led Hawking to join with other prominent scientists in 2015 to fund Breakthrough Initiatives, a project designed to “reinvigorate the search for life in the universe.”

Born Stephen William Hawking in 1942 in Oxford, England — 300 years to the day after Galileo’s death — Hawking didn’t excel in school as a child. It wasn’t until college and grad school that he immersed himself in his studies, but it was also there, while pursuing his PhD in cosmology at the University of Cambridge, that he got his ALS diagnosis.

“In my third year at Oxford, I noticed that I seemed to be getting more clumsy, and I fell over once or twice for no apparent reason,” Hawking once wrote. “But it was not until I was at Cambridge that my father noticed, and took me to the family doctor. He referred me to a specialist, and shortly after my 21st birthday, I went into hospitals for tests. … It was a great shock to me to discover that I had motor neuron disease.”

Despite his fears for his future, the disease seemed to focus him.

“Before my condition was diagnosed, I had been very bored with life,” Hawking told an audience of disabled students at Seattle University in 1993, adding that after coming face to face with a death sentence, he pored over his research.

He kept cheating death, however. His ability to survive so long baffled medical experts, to the point where some doubted that he had received a correct diagnosis.

“He is exceptional,” Nigel Leigh, a professor of clinical neurology at King’s College London, told the British Medical Journal in 2002. “I am not aware of anyone else who has survived with [ALS] as long.”

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking overcame severe disability to become the most famous living scientist. AFP / AFP/Getty Images

Hawking did have a health scare in 2009: a chest infection that left him on the brink of death. But he surprised doctors to make a full recovery.

ALS meant Hawking began using a wheelchair in 1969, but it didn’t keep him from living a full life. He and his wife, Jane Wilde, had three children. His career skyrocketed in 1974, when he theorized that the universe’s black holes aren’t vacuums through which nothing escapes, as the science community had previously thought. He received numerous accolades and awards for his research.

But as his professional life flourished, his health diminished. He started needing help for everyday tasks, and his speech became so slurred that few could understand him. In 1985, a tracheotomy landed him in a round-the-clock nursing care facility.

But Hawking’s mind was as intact as ever, and with the help of a computerized voice system controlled by a muscle in his cheek, he was able to continue his work.

Stephen Hawking fears Higgs Boson doomsday, and he’s not alone

“I can select a character by moving my cheek to stop the cursor. My cheek movement is detected by an infrared switch that is mounted on my spectacles,” Hawking explained on his

Over the years, Hawking continued to publish books, give speeches and research how the universe began.

In May 2016, he made headlines for reasons that had nothing to do with science when he told NBC News’ British partner, ITV that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s popularity had him stumped.

“He is a demagogue, who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” Hawking said, angering Trump supporters.

Hawking, a commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor, in 2009.

For all his remarkable fame and success, Hawking joked in 1993 that he had only one complaint: that his voice synthesizer didn’t accurately reflect his British heritage.

“The only trouble is it gives me an American accent,” Hawking said.</s>His work ok black holes changed the way scientists saw the universe (Photo: AFP)

London: Legendary British scientist Stephen Hawking has died at his home in Cambridge aged 76, his family said on Wednesday.

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," the statement said.

"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," it further added.

Hawking contracted motor neurone disease in 1963 and was given two years to live but he went on to study at Cambridge and became one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Albert Einstein.

Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

He was also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the US. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

The world famous physicist and cosmologist was the subject of the 2014 film 'The Theory Of Everything', which starred Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones.</s>Famed physicist Stephen Hawking, noted for his work with black holes and relativity, passed away peacefully at his home in Cambridge early this morning. He was 76.

At the age of 22, Hawking was only given a few weeks to live by doctors after being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease. While the illness left him in a wheelchair, and unable to speak, he defied all expectations by surviving and thriving in his field. His children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, released a statement saying “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. 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.”

Plenty of celebrities, from actors to scientists have tweeted tributes to Hawking, as he gained popularity well outside the realm of physics in his 76 years.</s>LONDON — A family spokesman says renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

The British native was best known for his groundbreaking work with black holes and relativity, and was the author of several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.

His children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said their father died peacefully at his home in Cambridge, England in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

They said Hawking was a "great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years."</s>The UK's most celebrated scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking, has died peacefully at home aged 76.

His family has confirmed he died in the early hours of this morning (Wednesday) at his home in Cambridge.

Professor Hawking defied being diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21 to change the way people see the universe with some astonishing scientific breakthroughs in a distinguished career.

His 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 forever."

Professor Hawking spent most of his life in a wheelchair, unable to speak or move after being diagnosed with ALS - or motor neurone disease - at the age of 21, reports the Mirror .

His sharp mind changed the way people understand the universe with his breakthrough theory that radiation comes from black holes.

While most experts in his field remain relatively unnoticed by the public, Mr Hawking achieved a rare rock star-like status with his ability to explain his theories and his outspoken views on the future of the universe, philosophy, politics and even aliens.

He became a best-selling author and acclaimed scientist and even earned a special place in pop culture lore thanks to appearances on TV programmes such as The Simpsons.

Professor Hawking leaves behind a fascinating legacy after defying the odds with every accomplishment.

Doctors gave him just two years to live when he was first diagnosed with ALS, but he defied the dim prognosis by decades and worked right up until his death.

The physicist was a prolific author and published a number of books, but none were as famous as his best-selling A Brief History of Time, which has sold more than 10 million copies after it was published in 1988.

And almost as confirmation of his celebrity status, the story of his early life and studies, rise to global fame and turbulent first marriage were turned into a Hollywood script - with the 2014 film The Theory of Everything proving to be a big screen hit.

Actor Eddie Redmayne won an Academy Award and BAFTA for his portrayal of the physicist, adding another layer to Mr Hawking's celebrity status.

Stephen William Hawking was born to Oxford-educated parents Frank and Isobel Hawking in Oxford on 8 January 1942, at the height of World War Two,

Frank, a medical researcher, and Isobel, a secretary, lived in Highgate, north London, but decided it would be safer to have their baby back in Oxford after the Germans had bombed the capital in the Blitz.

They sent their son to Byron House School in Highgate but the eccentric family moved to St Albans when he was eight after his father got a job at the National Institute for Medical Research. A young Stephen Hawking was then educated at St Albans School from the age of 11 and attended his father's old college, University College, Oxford.

Mr Hawking himself admitted he wasn't a brilliant student during his childhood, as he was unable to read properly until he was eight and struggled to score higher than his classmates in St Albans.

But as he grew into a genius it seems his journey into the physics elite was almost written in the stars.

He was originally interested in mathematics and his father had hoped he would pursue a career in medicine.

However mathematics was not available at University College, so he decided to pursue physics instead.

After three years and “not very much work”, he was awarded a first class honours degree in natural science. Mr Hawking then went on to the University of Cambridge to research cosmology under the supervision of Denis Sciama, a founder of modern cosmology - although he had hoped to be assigned to astronomer Fred Hoyle.

After he started work on his graduate degree Mr Hawking began to experience symptoms such as slurred speech and stumbling, and received shocking news that sent his life into a tailspin.

Shortly after his 21st birthday in 1963 he was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which destroys the muscles and central nervous system.

Doctors offered a grim prognosis, telling him he had around two years left to live.

By then he had fallen in love with his future wife Jane Wilde, a languages student, who pulled him out of a deep depression.

The young couple married in 1965 and had three children - Lucy, Robert and Timothy - but their marriage was doomed.

Mr Hawking's disease progressed rapidly, but eventually slowed as he devoted himself to his studies and work without knowing how much time he had left to live.

He investigated the basic laws which govern the universe and with physicist Roger Penrose showed that Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity implied that space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.

It was a major scientific breakthrough, suggesting that it was necessary to unify general relativity with quantum theory.

While his work life was flourishing, his marriage was under immense strain as his isolated wife struggled to cope with the demands of a young family and a husband in a wheelchair.

She told the Telegraph in 2015 that she was driven to the brink of suicide several times while caring for her husband and their children.

In Mr Hawking's memoir, My Brief History, published in 2013, he wrote that Jane feared he would die soon and, when that happened, she wanted someone who would support her and marry her.

In 1977, with Mr Hawking's star rising, she met musician Jonathan Hellyer Jones after joining a local church choir.

He became part of the family after moving into their Cambridge flat with Mr Hawking's blessing, as he too wanted someone to care for Jane and his children after he died.

*Professor Stephen Hawking dies at the age of 76*

Jane and Jonathan maintained a platonic relationship, and married in 1997 after her split from Professor Hawking.

By the mid-1980s, Professor Hawking was renowned for his work and he was in demand all over the world.

But his health took another turn for the worse when, in 1985, he lost his ability to speak after he came down with pneumonia during a visit to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

He was in a critical condition in hospital and put on a ventilator, but Jane wouldn’t allow doctors to switch off his life support.

He was flown back to Cambridge, where doctors performed a tracheotomy that left him unable to speak.

Jane remained by her husband's side but the stress of the ordeal and Hawking's recovery had taken its toll. The fame he had gained from A Brief History of Time only made things worse.

By then he had grown increasingly unhappy with his wife's relationship with Jonathan, and had grown close to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, whose first husband invented the computerised voice synthesiser that Professor Hawking used.

In 1990, after 26 years of marriage, Hawking left Jane and moved into a flat with Elaine.

The couple married in 1995, but that relationship became turbulent.

In 2004 nurses caring for Professor Hawking went to police with claims that his wife was physically and emotionally abusing him.

The couple denied the allegations and an investigation was dropped by police. They eventually divorced in 2007.

While he had a grasp on things that most people couldn’t comprehend, Professor Hawking admitted he struggled to understand the opposite sex.

In an interview in 2012 a New Scientist reporter asked him what he thought about most during the day.

Professor Hawking - a grandfather of three - obtained his PhD in cosmology in 1966 and became a research fellow and a professorial fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

He left the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 and joined the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1979, holding the prestigious post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics for 30 years until 2009. The chair was created in 1663 and one of the early holders was Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the laws of gravity and motion, and invented calculus.

Up until his death, Professor Hawking was an active member of the Cambridge University community and still had an office at the Department for Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics.

His official title was the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of Research.

Over his career he received a number of awards, medals and prizes from countries around the world, and at least dozen honorary degrees in recognition for his work.

He was awarded the CBE in 1982 and made a Companion of Honour in 1989, and was a fellow of The Royal Society and member of the US National Academy of Science.

Other honours included the Pius XI Gold Medal from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1975, the Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal in 1985, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the Fundamental Physics Prize from Russia in 2012.

Before his death he continued to combine family life and his research into theoretical physics, along with travel and public lectures, his biography stated.

And he still hoped to one day make it into space.

Sir Richard Branson had offered him a seat on a Virgin Galactic commercial spacecraft.</s>Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, whose mental genius and physical disability made him a household name and inspiration across the globe, has died at age 76, his family said Wednesday.

Hawking, whose 1988 book “A Brief History of Time” became an unlikely worldwide bestseller and cemented his superstar status, dedicated his life to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.

His genius and wit won over fans from far beyond the rarified world of astrophysics.

He died peacefully at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” professor Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert, and Tim said in a statement carried by Britain’s Press Association news agency.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.”

Hawking defied predictions he would only live for a few years after developing a form of motor neurone disease in 1964 at the age of 22.

The illness gradually robbed him of mobility, leaving him confined to a wheelchair, almost completely paralysed and unable to speak except through his trademark voice synthesiser.

“His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world,” the family said.

“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.”

Born on January 8, 1942, Stephen William Hawking became one of the world’s most well-regarded scientists, earning comparisons with Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton.

His work focused on bringing together relativity — the nature of space and time — and quantum theory — how the smallest particles in the Universe behave — to explain the creation of the Universe and how it is governed.

In 1974, he became one of the youngest fellows of Britain’s most prestigious scientific body, the Royal Society, at the age of 32.

In 1979 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, where he had moved from Oxford University to study theoretical astronomy and cosmology.

Newton was a previous holder of that prestigious post.

Inside the shell of his increasingly useless body was a razor-sharp mind, fascinated by the nature of the Universe, how it was formed and how it might end.

“My goal is simple,” he once said. “It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking dies aged 76 at his home in Cambridge.