Stephen Hawking, renowned physicist, dies at 76

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, whose research influenced cosmology and relativity, died early Monday at his home in Cambridge, England, his family confirmed. He was 76. Hawking was born Jan. 8, 1942, in Oxford. At 21, his doctors diagnosed him with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which eventually left him paralyzed and using a voice synthesizer to speak. Doctors said he only had a few years to live with the usually deadly illness—only 5 percent of patients survive 10 years or longer, according to the Motor Neurone Disease Association in Britain. Hawking proved that black holes emit energy, a discovery known as “Hawking radiation.” He also was the first to use the theory of cosmology as a union of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was inducted into the Royal Society in 1974 and received the Albert Einstein Award four years later. Hawking was an avowed atheist who insisted the universe came into existence without the work of a creator. “But one can’t help asking the question: Why does the universe exist?” he asked in 1991. “I don’t know an operational way to give the question or the answer, if there is one, a meaning. But it bothers me.” In 1965, he married his college love Jane Wilde and had three children. They divorced in 1991, and he married his former nurse Elaine Mason four years later. They separated in 2006. “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” his children Lucy, Robert, and Timothy Hawking, said in a statement.