# Stephen Hawking

| Stephen HawkingCH CBE FRS FRSA |
| --- |
| Hawking at NASA's StarChild Learning Center, 1980s |
| Born | Stephen William Hawking (1942-01-08)8 January 1942 Oxford, England |
| Died | 14 March 2018(2018-03-14) (aged 76) Cambridge, England |
| Resting place | Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | St Albans School, Hertfordshire |
| Alma mater | * University of Oxford (BA)
* University of Cambridge (MA, PhD)
 |
| Known for | * Hawking radiation
* *A Brief History of Time*
* Penrose–Hawking theorems
* Bekenstein–Hawking formula
* Hawking energy
* Gibbons–Hawking ansatz
* Gibbons–Hawking effect
* Gibbons–Hawking space
* Gibbons–Hawking–York boundary term
* Thorne–Hawking–Preskill bet
 |
| Spouses |

Jane Wilde
​ ​(m. 1965; div. 1995)​

Elaine Mason
​ ​(m. 1995; div. 2007)​ |
| Children | 3, including Lucy Hawking |
| Awards | * Adams Prize (1966)
* Eddington Medal (1975)
* Maxwell Medal and Prize (1976)
* Heineman Prize (1976)
* Hughes Medal (1976)
* Albert Einstein Award (1978)
* Albert Einstein Medal (1979)
* RAS Gold Medal (1985)
* Dirac Medal (1987)
* Wolf Prize (1988)
* Prince of Asturias Award (1989)
* Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1992)
* Andrew Gemant Award (1998)
* Naylor Prize and Lectureship (1999)
* Lilienfeld Prize (1999)
* Albert Medal (1999)
* Copley Medal (2006)
* Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009)
* Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2012)
* BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2015)
 |
| **Scientific career** |
| Fields | * General relativity
* Quantum gravity
 |
| Institutions | * Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
* California Institute of Technology
* Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
 |
| Thesis | *Properties of Expanding Universes* (1966) |
| Doctoral advisor | Dennis Sciama |
| Other academic advisors | Robert Berman |
| Doctoral students | * Bruce Allen
* Raphael Bousso
* Bernard Carr
* Fay Dowker
* Christophe Galfard
* Gary Gibbons
* Thomas Hertog
* Raymond Laflamme
* Don Page
* Malcolm Perry
* Marika Taylor
* Alan Yuille
* Wu Zhongchao
* 29 others
 |
|  |
| Website | hawking.org.uk |

**Stephen William Hawking** CH CBE FRS FRSA (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018) was a British theoretical physicist and mathematician. He was born in Oxford. In 1950, he moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. He was one of the world's leading theoretical physicists. Hawking has written many science books for people who are not scientists.

Hawking was a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge (a position that Isaac Newton once had). He retired on 1 October 2009.

Hawking had a motor neurone disease, and because of that he could not move or talk very well. The illness worsened over the years and he was almost completely paralysed. He used a wheelchair to move, and an Intel computer to talk for him. He died on 14 March 2018.

## Early life and education

Hawking went to St Albans School, a local public school in Hertfordshire. At 17, he passed an exam to study at Oxford. He studied physics and chemistry there. Because he found it really easy at the beginning, he didn't study a lot for the final exams.

In October 1962 he started his graduate course at Trinity Hall. It was at this time that his illness started to show up. He had difficulties in rowing and then even simply in walking. However, he finished his PhD and wrote about black holes in his thesis. He then got a fellowship (a job as a university teacher) at Gonville and Caius College in 1965.

## Career

Hawking was a cosmologist—someone who studies the structure of the universe (stars and space). He invented important theories about the Big Bang (the start of the universe), black holes and how they work.

Stephen Hawking predicted that black holes eject some radiation (energy), even though they normally swallow everything. That kind of radiation is named "Hawking Radiation."

Hawking also worked on the problem of quantum gravity. Quantum gravity tries to explain how gravity works with quantum mechanics (physics of tiny things.) That is a hard problem that scientists have not solved yet.

Hawking also wrote popular books about science for non-scientists. His first book, *A Brief History of Time,* sold over ten million copies. Hawking had many other jobs as well. He was an Actor, Mathematician, etc. More info on the official site

## Death

Hawking died on 14 March 2018 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire of complications from motor neuron disease at the age of 76. His ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey in London near Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton.

## Selected publications

### Technical

* Singularities in Collapsing Stars and Expanding Universes, with D.W. Sciama, 1969. *Comments on Astrophysics and Space Physics*. Vol **1 Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (2000). *The Nature of Space and Time*. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05084-3.
* Hawking, S.W.; Ellis, G.F.R. (1973). *The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time*. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-09906-6.
* Penrose, Roger (1997). *The Large, the Small and the Human Mind*. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-56330-7.
* *Information Loss in Black Holes*, Cambridge University Press, 2005

### Popular

Hawking in 2013
* Hawking, Stephen (1988). *A brief history of time: from the big bang to black holes*. Bantam.
* Hawking, Stephen; Hawking, Stephen (1994). *Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays*. Bantam. ISBN 978-0-553-37411-7.
* Stephen W. Hawking (2001). *The Universe in a Nutshell*. Bantam. ISBN 0-553-80202-X.
* *On The Shoulders of Giants. The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy*, Running Press 2002. ISBN 978-0-7624-1698-1
* Hawking, Stephen; Hawking, Stephen; Mlodinow, Leonard (2005). *A Briefer History of Time*. Bantam. ISBN 0-553-80436-7.
* Hawking, Stephen (2005). *God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History*. Taylor & Francis US. ISBN 978-0-7624-1922-7.

### Children's books

* *George's Secret Key to the Universe*, with Lucy Hawking. Simon & Taylor Blevins Publishing.
* *George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt*, with Lucy Hawking. Simon & Taylor Blevins Publishing.
* *George and the Big Bang*, with Lucy Hawking. Simon & Taylor Blevins Publishing.

## Related pages

* List of astrophysicists