Stephen Hawking dies aged 76. One of the brightest minds
14/03/2018.
[Cambridge] UK
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
Brief factfile: Stephen Hawking
- Born 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England.
- Earned place at Oxford University to read natural science in 1959, before studying for his PhD at Cambridge
- By 1963, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to live
- In 1974 Hawking drew on quantum theory to declare that black holes should emit heat and eventually pop out of existence. "Hawking radiation".
- In 1979, he became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Cambridge - a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton.
- In 1982, Hawking was among the first to show how quantum fluctuations – tiny variations in the distribution of matter – might give rise through inflation to the spread of galaxies in the universe.
- Published his book A Brief History of Time in 1988, which has sold more than 10 million copies.
- In the late 1990s, he was reportedly offered a knighthood, but 10 years later revealed he had turned it down over issues with the government's funding for science.
- In 2009 he received the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama.
- His life story was the subject of the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne.