Professor Stephen William Hawking, born on 8th January 1942, died on 14th March 2018 at the age of 76, in his home in Cambridge, England. The theoretical physicist was born exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo in Oxford, England. Apart from being a great scientist, he was also known for his wit and humor. He fascinated the world with his teachings on space, time and the Universe.
# Books:
Some of his popular publications include The Large Scale Structure of Space-time with G.F.R. Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey and 300 Years of Gravitation, with W Israel. Some of his best-sellers are A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design. A Brief History of Time published in 1988, spent 237 weeks on Sunday Times best-sellers list, got him fame worldwide.
# Awards and Honorary:
Professor Stephen Hawking received 13 honorary degrees. He was awarded the CBE in 1982, Companion of Honour, 1989 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He received many awards, medals and prizes, most notably the Fundamental Physics prize in 2013, Copley Medal, 2006 and the Wolf Foundation prize in 1988. He was also the Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
# Personal Life:
At the age of 21, he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a form motor neurone disease, in 1963 shortly after his birthday. The doctors expected him to live only for 2 years but just like his weird revelations, Stephen Hawking astonished everyone and lived like a legend for almost 5 more decades. Despite being on wheelchair and dependent on a computerised voice system for communication which worked on his eyebrows movement, Hawking continued his research into theoretical physics. He also has a family of three children and three grandchildren. He married twice, first to Jane Wilde who is the mother of his three children and then to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason. Stephen Hawking in his memoir wrote that he was in love with his first wife but their relationship could not succeed as his condition worsened. He said “she was worried that I will die soon and wanted to marry someone who could support her and our children.”
# Here are Some of The Breathtaking Quotes by Stephen Hawking:
1. “My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically.” -Stephen Hawking
2. “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.” -Stephen Hawking
3. “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” -Stephen Hawking
4. “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” -Stephen Hawking
5. “So remember, look at the stars and not at your feet.” -Stephen Hawking
6. “Women will always remain a mystery.” -Stephen Hawking
7. “God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.” -Stephen Hawking
8. “I don’t know. People who boast about their IQ are losers.” -Stephen Hawking
9. “Next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell that person that it might be a good thing because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.” -Stephen Hawking
10. “If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.” -Stephen Hawking
11. “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.” -Stephen Hawking
12. “The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.” -Stephen Hawking
