Stephen Hawking, tourist of the universe, dies at 76

LONDON -- Stephen Hawking, whose brilliant mind ranged across time and space though his body was paralyzed by disease, died Wednesday. He was 76. Hawking died at his home in Cambridge, England, according to a statement by the University of Cambridge. The best-known theoretical physicist of his time, Hawking wrote so lucidly of the mysteries of space, time and black holes that his book, “A Brief History of Time,” became an international bestseller, making him one of science’s biggest celebrities since Albert Einstein “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” his children Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement. “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.” Even though his body was attacked by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, when Hawking was 21, he stunned doctors by living with the normally fatal illness for more than 50 years. A severe attack of pneumonia in 1985 left him breathing through a tube, forcing him to communicate through an electronic voice synthesizer that gave him his distinctive robotic monotone. But he continued his scientific work, ap- peared on television and married for a second time. As one of Isaac Newton’s successors as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, Hawking was involved in the search for the great goal of physics -- a “unified theory.” Such a theory would resolve the contradictions between Einstein’s theory of relativity, which describes the laws of gravity that govern the motion of large objects like planets, and the quantum mechanics theory, which deals with the world of subatomic particles. For Hawking, the search was almost a religious quest -- he said finding a “theory of everything” would allow mankind to “know the mind of God.” “A complete, consistent unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence,” he wrote in “A Brief History of Time.” In later years, though, he suggested a unified theory might not exist.