Born: 8 January 1942 · Died: 14 March 2018 · Age: 76
Cambridge physicist who revealed that black holes emit radiation and wrote the bestseller A Brief History of Time despite motor neurone disease
Did you know?He was born on the three hundredth anniversary of the death of the astronomer Galileo Galilei.
Quick facts
Date of birth8 January 1942
Date of death14 March 2018
Age at death76
Cause of deathAmyotrophic lateral sclerosis
NationalityBritish
BirthplaceOxford, England
Occupationtheoretical physicist, cosmologist
Editor's Take:
Stephen Hawking became a symbol of the human mind's refusal to be limited. Diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21 and given only a few years to live, he went on to work for more than half a century, gradually losing almost all movement and speaking through a computer voice that became instantly recognisable. His most famous insight was that black holes are not entirely black: they should slowly leak radiation, now called Hawking radiation, linking gravity with quantum theory. His book A Brief History of Time took cosmology to millions of readers who had never opened a physics text. He loved a joke, appeared on The Simpsons and Star Trek, and proved that serious science can have a sense of humour.
Key Milestones
1963: Diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21
1974: Predicts that black holes emit radiation
1979: Becomes Lucasian Professor at Cambridge
1988: Publishes A Brief History of Time
2007: Experiences weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight
2014: His life is dramatised in The Theory of Everything
Theoretical physicist known for his work on black holes and the bestselling book A Brief History of Time.
Stephen Hawking's birthday is January 8. He was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England.
How old was Stephen Hawking when he died?
Stephen Hawking died on March 14, 2018, aged 76.
Who shares a birthday with Stephen Hawking?
Famous people who share Stephen Hawking's January 8 birthday include Elvis Presley, Kim Jong-un, David Bowie, Alfred Russel Wallace and Junichiro Koizumi.
