Physicist and inspiration Stephen Hawking is dead
Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, whose mental genius and physical disability made him a household name and inspiration across the globe, died Wednesday aged 76.
Propelled to superstardom by his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time”, which became an unlikely worldwide bestseller, Hawking dedicated his life to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.
His genius and wit won over fans from far beyond the rarified world of astrophysics, earning comparisons with Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton.
Hawking died peacefully at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Born on the 300th death anniversary of Italian polymath Galilio Galilei on January 8, 1942, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21 and was given two years to live. He confounded the medical world by going on to study at Cambridge and becoming one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Albert
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Einstein, on whose birth date — March 14 — he left his body.
Hawking first married Jane Wilde in 1965 and had three children. The couple split after 25 years and he married his former nurse, Elaine Mason, but the union broke down amid allegations, denied by him, of abuse.
“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” professor Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert, and Tim said in a statement carried by Britain’s Press Association news agency. “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.”
The love story between Hawking and Wilde was retold in the 2014 film “The Theory of Everything”, which won Britain’s Eddie Redmayne the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of the scientist.
“But one can’t help asking the question: Why does the universe exist? I don’t know an operational way to give the question or the answer, if there is one, a meaning. But it bothers me,” he had said in 1991.