Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018) was a British theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose contributions to the understanding of black holes, the nature of time, and the origin of the universe fundamentally shaped modern physics. Born in Oxford, England, he spent the majority of his academic career at the University of Cambridge, where he held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics — a chair once occupied by Isaac Newton — from 1979 to 2009.

Hawking is equally celebrated for communicating complex scientific ideas to general audiences, most notably through his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for more than four years and sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. He conducted his scientific work while living with a motor neurone disease (a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS) that was diagnosed in 1963 and gradually left him almost entirely paralysed, relying on a speech-generating device to communicate.

Early life and education

Hawking was born in Oxford on 8 January 1942 — the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo Galilei, a coincidence he noted with pride. His father, Frank Hawking, was a medical researcher, and his mother, Isobel Eileen Walker, was a political activist. The family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire, when Stephen was eight years old.

He attended St Albans School before reading physics at University College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class honours degree in natural science in 1962. He then moved to Cambridge to pursue graduate research in cosmology under the supervision of Dennis Sciama at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). His doctoral thesis, Properties of Expanding Universes (1965), applied Roger Penrose's singularity theorems to the universe as a whole, laying a cornerstone for his later work.

Scientific contributions

Singularity theorems and the Big Bang

Working with Roger Penrose in the late 1960s, Hawking proved that if general relativity is correct and certain energy conditions hold, the universe must have originated in a singularity — a point of infinite density — now understood as the Big Bang. These Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems were among the most significant results in mathematical physics of the era.

Hawking radiation

Hawking's most celebrated theoretical discovery, published in 1974, is the prediction that black holes are not entirely black but emit thermal radiation as a consequence of quantum mechanical effects near the event horizon. This phenomenon, now universally known as Hawking radiation, implied that black holes could slowly lose mass and eventually evaporate. The result was groundbreaking because it synthesised general relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics in a single framework, and it remains one of the most important unverified predictions in physics — unverified because Hawking radiation from astrophysical black holes is too faint to detect with current instruments.

Black hole thermodynamics

Building on work by Jacob Bekenstein, Hawking demonstrated that black holes obey laws analogous to the laws of thermodynamics, with the surface area of a black hole's event horizon corresponding to entropy. This insight deepened the connection between gravity and quantum field theory and seeded decades of subsequent research into the nature of quantum gravity.

No-boundary proposal

In collaboration with James Hartle, Hawking developed the no-boundary proposal (sometimes called the Hartle–Hawking state) in 1983, which suggests that the universe has no beginning or boundary in imaginary time — effectively removing the singularity at the Big Bang as a boundary condition. This model, while still debated, represents a significant attempt to describe the quantum origin of the universe.

The information paradox

Hawking's work on black hole evaporation raised the black hole information paradox: whether information about matter swallowed by a black hole is permanently lost when the black hole evaporates, violating unitarity in quantum mechanics. Hawking himself changed his position on this question over the decades; by 2004 he conceded that information is likely preserved, though the precise mechanism remains an active area of research.

Personal life and health

Diagnosed with a slow-progressing form of ALS at age 21, Hawking was initially given two years to live. He defied those prognoses by more than five decades. The disease progressed gradually, confining him to a wheelchair by the mid-1970s, and a tracheotomy following pneumonia in 1985 removed his ability to speak unaided. He subsequently communicated through a computerised voice synthesiser, latterly controlled by a single cheek muscle.

Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1965; the couple had three children — Robert, Lucy, and Timothy — before divorcing in 1995. He subsequently married his nurse, Elaine Mason, in 1995, and that marriage ended in divorce in 2006.

His life and the early period of his illness were depicted in the 2014 biographical film The Theory of Everything, in which he was portrayed by Eddie Redmayne.

Public engagement and legacy

Beyond A Brief History of Time, Hawking authored or co-authored several other popular science books, including The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), The Grand Design (with Leonard Mlodinow, 2010), and Brief Answers to the Big Questions (published posthumously in 2018). He made numerous television appearances, including cameo roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Simpsons, and The Big Bang Theory.

Hawking received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and held honorary degrees from dozens of universities worldwide. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected 1974) and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Notably, he was never awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, largely because Hawking radiation has not been experimentally confirmed — Nobel Prizes require experimental verification.

Hawking died on 14 March 2018 in Cambridge, England — coincidentally the birthday of Albert Einstein. He was 76. His ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. The gravitational wave equation encoding his work on black holes was inscribed on his memorial stone.

Frequently asked questions

Is Hawking radiation proven?

As of the knowledge cutoff for this article, Hawking radiation has not been directly observed from an astrophysical black hole, because the predicted radiation from stellar-mass or larger black holes is far too faint to detect. Analogous effects have been reported in laboratory experiments using acoustic or optical systems, but these remain experimental analogues rather than direct confirmation.

Is Stephen Hawking the author of A Brief History of Time?

Yes. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes was written by Stephen Hawking and first published in 1988 by Bantam Books. It became one of the best-selling popular science books ever written.

Is the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics still associated with Hawking?

Hawking held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1979 to 2009, when he retired from the chair. The position has since been held by other distinguished physicists; Hawking's tenure is the most publicly prominent in the chair's modern history.

Is there a film about Stephen Hawking's life?

Yes. The Theory of Everything (2014), directed by James Marsh and produced by Working Title Films, is a biographical drama depicting Hawking's early life, his relationship with Jane Wilde, and his diagnosis with ALS. Eddie Redmayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal.

Did Stephen Hawking believe in God?

Hawking was publicly atheistic, stating in multiple interviews and in his books that he did not believe in a personal God. In The Grand Design (2010) he argued that the laws of physics alone are sufficient to explain the origin of the universe without invoking a creator, though his views on this subject evolved and were sometimes characterised in different ways across his writings.