Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was a British theoretical physicist and cosmologist who became one of the most famous scientists of the modern era. Born in Oxford in 1942, he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease at 21 but went on to hold the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge for thirty years. His 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time made complex cosmological concepts accessible to millions and spent a record-breaking 237 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Hawking's groundbreaking work on black holes and the origins of the universe, combined with his extraordinary personal story, made him a global icon of scientific inquiry until his death in 2018.