Memorial Page for Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking (born 8 January 1942 in Oxford; died 14 March 2018 in Cambridge) was a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist and science writer. He worked on black holes, singularities, cosmology and the relationship between general relativity, quantum physics and thermodynamics. He also became known worldwide through A Brief History of Time, a book that brought questions about space, time, the Big Bang and black holes to a broad public.

Oxford, Cambridge and the large questions

Hawking was born in Oxford and grew up partly in St Albans. From early on he was less interested in memorising facts than in understanding basic structures. In 1959 he began studying at University College Oxford, and in 1962 he moved to Cambridge for doctoral work. There he entered a period in which cosmology and relativity were taking new mathematical forms. The question of whether the universe had a beginning and what happens inside black holes became central to his scientific work.

Illness and scientific concentration

During his early Cambridge years Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. The illness increasingly limited his movement; after a tracheotomy in 1985 he could no longer speak with his natural voice. His scientific life should not be reduced to illness. What mattered was how he continued working with assistants, family, colleagues, technology and enormous concentration. His computer voice later became part of his public presence, but the work behind it remained mathematically and conceptually demanding.

Singularities and black holes

With Roger Penrose, Hawking developed work on singularities in general relativity. It showed that singularities were not merely exotic mathematical cases, but under certain conditions lay deep within the structure of the theory. In the 1970s Hawking then connected relativity, quantum physics and thermodynamics in a new way. His most famous idea became Hawking radiation: black holes are not entirely black, but can emit radiation through quantum effects and over time lose energy.

Cambridge and public science

In 1974 Hawking became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1979 Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. The chair visibly connected him with a long scientific tradition, but his own impact lay in a modern borderland: gravity, quantum field theory, information and the origin of the universe. A Brief History of Time appeared in 1988 and became an unusual bestseller. Not every reader understood every physical idea, but many sensed that large questions were being asked without condescension: why is there a universe, what is time, and what can physics explain?

Fame, wit and the limits of myth

Hawking became a rare public figure in theoretical physics. He appeared in television programmes, wrote popular books and used humour to create distance from his own fame. The zero-gravity flight in 2007 belonged to that side of him: curiosity, performance, enthusiasm for spaceflight and a serious interest in humanity's future beyond Earth came together. At the same time, Hawking should not be read only as a symbol of willpower. His scientific stature rests on concrete contributions to black holes and cosmology, not on a simple story of encouragement.

Farewell

Stephen Hawking died in Cambridge on 14 March 2018. He was 76 years old. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. His name remains connected with a rare double effect: he changed theoretical ideas about black holes while also making millions of people curious about questions larger than everyday life and still connected to it.