Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. From an early age, he
showed a passion for science and the sky. At age 21, while studying cosmology at Cambridge,
Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Despite his debilitating illness,
he has done ground-breaking work in physics and cosmology and his several books strive to make
science accessible to everyone.
Stephen Hawking's birth came at an inopportune time for his parents, who didn't have much
money. The political climate was also tense, as England was dealing with World War II and the
onslaught of German bombs. In an effort to seek a safer place to have their first child, Frank moved
his pregnant wife from their London home to Oxford. The Hawkings would go on to have two other
children, Mary (1943) and Philippa (1947). A second son, Edward, was adopted in 1956.
The Hawkings, as one close family friend described them, were an "eccentric" bunch. Dinner was
often eaten in silence, each of the Hawkings intently reading a book. The family car was an old
London taxi and their home in St. Albans was a three-story fixer-upper that never quite got fixed. The
Hawkings also kept bees in the basement, and made fireworks in the greenhouse.
Hawking's quest for big answers to big questions includes his own personal desire to travel
into space. In 2007, at the age of 65, Hawking made an important step toward space travel. While
visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, he was given the opportunity to experience an
environment without gravity. Over the course of two hours over the Atlantic, Hawking, a passenger
on a modified Boeing 727, was freed from his wheelchair to experience bursts of weightlessness.
Pictures of the freely floating physicist splashed across newspapers around the globe.
"The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on.
Space, here I come!" he said.
Groundbreaking findings from another young cosmologist, Roger Primrose, about the fate of
stars and the creation of black holes tapped into Hawking's own fascination with how the universe
began. This set him on a career course that reshaped the way the world thinks about black holes and
the universe.
While physical control over his body diminished (he'd be forced to use a wheelchair by 1969), the
effects of his disease started to slow down. In 1968, a year after the birth of his son Robert, Stephen
Hawking became a member of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.
The next few years were a fruitful time for Hawking. A daughter, Lucy, was born to Stephen and Jane
in 1969 (a third child, Timothy, arrived 10 years later), while Hawking continued with his research.
He then published his first book, the highly technical Large Scale Structure of Space Time (1975). He
also teamed up with Penrose to expand upon his friend's earlier work.

Stephen Hawking

NAME: Stephen Hawking

OCCUPATION: Physicist
BIRTH DATE: January 08, 1942 (Age: 70)
EDUCATION: Oxford University, Cambridge University, Caltech, Gonville & Caius College
PLACE OPF BIRTH: Oxford, United Kingdom