Stephen Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA (born January 8, 1942) was a 21st-century theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, and the Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, England.
Hawking was born in Oxford, England, to father Frank and mother Isobel Hawking as their fourth child on the 300th death anniversary of late scientist Galileo Galilei. His mother is of Scottish descent. Philippa and Mary are his two sisters, and he also has an adopted brother, Edward.
The Theory of Everything author Stephen Hawking was not a bright student in his early days but managed to go to Oxford University at the age of 17. At age 21, while he was still in university, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also known as motor neuron disease.
Stephen Hawking was married twice and has three children. He had an affair with his wife Jane Wilde and they got engaged in October 1964 and later married on 14 July 1965.
Their first son, Robert Hawking, was born in May 1967. Later in 1970, daughter Lucy Hawking was born and third child, Timothy Hawking, who didn't understand his father until he was five, was born in April 1979.
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They divorced in 1995 and later in the same year, he married his nurse Elaine Mason in September 1995. Mason and Hawking separated in 2006. Again Jane Wilde became close to his family and he remarried Jane which is illustrated in Jane’s book called Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.
At age 21, while Stephen Hawking was studying cosmology in university, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also known as motor neuron disease. But doctors suggested him to continue his study and work.
He wrote a thesis on the entire universe in 1965 relating his ideas with Roger Penrose's theorem of a spacetime singularity in the center of black holes. This helped Hawking get his Ph.D. in cosmology in March 1966 and also received a research program at Gonville and Caius College.
Stephen Hawking, in 1970, published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedman, then it must have begun as a singularity in the field of Quantum Physics.
In 1971, his essay titled, Black Holes won the Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971.
Hawking had published a number of books during his life. His first book was The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time in 1973 which was written by George Ellis.
He had such other academic and children books such as My Brief History, The Grand Design, A Brief History of Time, George and the Blue Moon.
Everything was great for the scientist but, on 12 December 2017, Stephen Hawking gave his last speech. He died at his home early in the morning of March 14th, 2018, at the age of 76. His family stated that the scientist died peacefully.
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The date of his death coincides with the 139th anniversary of Albert Einstein's birth. Stephen Hawking had his funeral at 2 pm at Great St. Mary's Church, Cambridge on the 31st of March 2018.
According to several tabloids, even after Stephen Hawking's death, his net worth is around $20 million. It is said he received a salary of around $25000 per year when he was still living.
