Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of an Infinite Mind

Early Life at Oxford

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo — a coincidence he relished. The son of a biologist father and a politically active mother, young Stephen was not an exceptional student early on. He was known as "Einstein" among friends at St Albans School — partly a joke, partly prophetic.

He enrolled at University College, Oxford, where he studied physics despite his father's wish that he pursue medicine. He graduated with first-class honors in natural science and moved to Cambridge to pursue a PhD in cosmology under Dennis Sciama.

Diagnosis and the Fight to Continue

In 1963, at age 21, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive motor neuron disease that would slowly paralyze him. Doctors gave him two years to live. He was devastated — but a chance meeting with Jane Wilde, whom he would marry in 1965, gave him reason to fight. His determination to complete his PhD and understand the universe overrode his despair.

Black Holes and Hawking Radiation

Hawking's greatest scientific contribution was his theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation — now called "Hawking Radiation" — due to quantum effects near the event horizon. This was revolutionary because it linked quantum mechanics and general relativity for the first time. His 1973 paper with Jacob Bekenstein on black hole thermodynamics fundamentally changed theoretical physics.

A Brief History of Time

In 1988, Hawking published "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes." It became one of the best-selling science books in history, staying on the Sunday Times bestseller list for a record 237 weeks and selling over 25 million copies worldwide. He wrote it while communicating only through a cheek muscle after pneumonia had taken his voice in 1985, using a speech synthesizer.

Icon of Human Resilience

Stephen Hawking died on March 14, 2018 — Albert Einstein's birthday — having outlived his ALS diagnosis by 55 years. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009), the Copley Medal, and an Honorary Doctorate from virtually every major university. He was played by Eddie Redmayne in "The Theory of Everything" (2014), which won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Hawking proved that a body may be imprisoned, but a mind can explore infinity.