Prof Stephen Hawking A BRIEF HISTORY
19 42
Born 8 January in Oxford to Frank and Isobel Hawking. He is the eldest of four siblings. In 1950 the family moves to St Albans, where Hawking attends the private St Albans School.
19 58
Assisted by their maths teacher Dikran Tahta, Hawking and a group of schoolfriends build a working computer from a telephone switchboard and some old clock parts.
19 62
Graduates from University College, Oxford with a first-class honours degree in natural sciences. He begins studying for a doctorate in cosmology at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
19 63
Diagnosed with a type of motor neurone disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS). He is told he has just two years to live.
19 70
Publishes an essay with cosmologist Roger Penrose ( pictured right) that offers ‘proof’ of the Big Bang, as opposed to Fred Hoyle’s rival steady state theory.
19 74
Publishes a paper showing that black holes emit radiation due to quantum effects around their event horizon. The discovery of ‘Hawking radiation’ is soon hailed as a major cosmological breakthrough, and Hawking is made a Fellow of the Royal Society.
19 79
Becomes the first recipient of the Albert Einstein Medal, awarded annually for “scientific findings, works, or publications related to Albert Einstein”.
19 81
Hawking is made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honours list.
19 82
Decides to start writing a book that will explain the history of the Universe in layman’s terms for a mass readership. The first draft of A Brief History Of Time is completed in 1984.
19 86
With his speech now having seriously deteriorated due to his ALS, Hawking begins to communicate via a computer voice synthesiser called ‘ the Equalizer’. At first he punches buttons to select words from a list, but as his condition worsens, the equipment is modified so that he can move a cursor using his cheek muscles.
19 88
A Brief History Of Time is published and becomes an instant bestseller. To date, the book has sold over 10 million copies and been translated into at least 35 languages. In 1992, a biographical film produced by Steven Spielberg was released on VHS.
19 93
Hawking makes an appearance – in hologram form – on Star Trek: The Next
Generation. Over the next 25 years, he will go on to appear in several episodes of The Simpsons, Futurama and The Big Bang Theory.
20 06
Hawking says that, faced by the multiple existential threats of climate change, mass extinction and nuclear war, space exploration – and future colonisation of other planets – is crucial if the human race is to survive.
20 09
Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the United States’ highest civilian honour.
20 10
Hawking questions attempts (such as Voyager’s golden record) to communicate with putative alien intelligences, saying: “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”
20 12
Hawking provides the narration for the Enlightenment segment of the opening ceremony for the London Paralympics.
20 14
Eddie Redmayne plays Hawking in a biopic entitled The Theory Of
Everything. The film is based on a memoir written by his first wife, Jane, called Travelling To Infinity.
20 16
Launches the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, awarded to artists, entertainers and media figures whose work has helped improve public understanding of science.
20 18
On 14 March 2018, Hawking dies at home in Cambridge. He is survived by his three children and three grandchildren.