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Stephen Hawking

1942–2018 · Theoretical physicist and cosmologist

Portrait of Stephen Hawking
NASA · Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Bio

British theoretical physicist known for work on black holes and cosmology, including singularity theorems developed with Roger Penrose and the prediction that black holes emit radiation, now called Hawking radiation. Diagnosed with motor neurone disease in his early twenties, he held the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge for thirty years and reached a wide public through A Brief History of Time.