The physicist and author of A Brief History of Time has died at his home in Cambridge. His children said: ‘We will miss him for ever’
Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions, has died aged 76.
A brief history of Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time Read more
His family released a statement in the early hours of Wednesday morning confirming his death at his home in Cambridge.
Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.
“He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him for ever.”
For fellow scientists and loved ones, it was Hawking’s intuition and wicked sense of humour that marked him out as much as the fierce intellect which, coupled with his illness, came to symbolise the unbounded possibilities of the human mind.
I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first Stephen Hawking
Hawking was driven to Wagner, but not the bottle, when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21. Doctors expected him to live for only two more years. But Hawking had a form of the disease that progressed more slowly than usual. He survived for more than half a century.
Hawking once estimated he worked only 1,000 hours during his three undergraduate years at Oxford. In his finals, he came borderline between a first and second class degree. Convinced that he was seen as a difficult student, he told his viva examiners that if they gave him a first he would move to Cambridge to pursue his PhD. Award a second and he threatened to stay. They opted for a first.
Those who live in the shadow of death are often those who live most. For Hawking, the early diagnosis of his terminal disease, and witnessing the death from leukaemia of a boy he knew in hospital, ignited a fresh sense of purpose. “Although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before. I began to make progress with my research,” he once said. Embarking on his career in earnest, he declared: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
He began to use crutches in the 1960s, but long fought the use of a wheelchair. When he finally relented, he became notorious for his wild driving along the streets of Cambridge, not to mention the intentional running over of students’ toes and the occasional spin on the dance floor at college parties.
The life of Stephen Hawking – in pictures Read more
Hawking’s first major breakthrough came in 1970, when he and Roger Penrose applied the mathematics of black holes to the universe and showed that a singularity, a region of infinite curvature in spacetime, lay in our distant past: the point from which came the big bang.
Penrose found he was able to talk with Hawking even as the latter’s speech failed. Hawking, he said, had an absolute determination not to let anything get in his way. “He thought he didn’t have long to live, and he really wanted to get as much as he could done at that time.”
There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark Stephen Hawking
In 1974 Hawking drew on quantum theory to declare that black holes should emit heat and eventually pop out of existence. For normal-sized black holes, the process is extremely slow, but miniature black holes would release heat at a spectacular rate, eventually exploding with the energy of a million one-megaton hydrogen bombs.
His proposal that black holes radiate heat stirred up one of the most passionate debates in modern cosmology. Hawking argued that if a black hole could evaporate, all the information that fell inside over its lifetime would be lost forever. It contradicted one of the most basic laws of quantum mechanics, and plenty of physicists disagreed. Hawking came round to believing the more common, if no less baffling, explanation that information is stored at a black hole’s event horizon, and encoded back into radiation as the black hole radiates.
Marika Taylor, a former student of Hawking’s and now professor of theoretical physics at Southampton University, remembers how Hawking announced his U-turn on the information paradox to his students. He was discussing their work with them in the pub when Taylor noticed he was turning his speech synthesiser up to the max. “I’m coming out!” he bellowed. The whole pub turned around and looked at the group before Hawking turned the volume down and clarified the statement: “I’m coming out and admitting that maybe information loss doesn’t occur.” He had, Taylor said, “a wicked sense of humour.”
Hawking’s run of radical discoveries led to his election in 1974 to the Royal Society at the young age of 32. Five years later, he became the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, arguably Britain’s most distinguished chair, and one formerly held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Paul Dirac, the latter one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics.
Hawking’s seminal contributions continued through the 1980s. The theory of cosmic inflation holds that the fledgling universe went through a period of terrific expansion. 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. In these tiny ripples lay the seeds of stars, planets and life as we know it.
But it was A Brief History of Time that rocketed Hawking to stardom. Published for the first time in 1988, the title made the Guinness Book of Records after it stayed on the Sunday Times bestsellers list for an unprecedented 237 weeks. It sold 10m copies and was translated into 40 different languages. Nevertheless, wags called it the greatest unread book in history.
Hawking married his college sweetheart, Jane Wilde, in 1965, two years after his diagnosis. She first set eyes on him in 1962, lolloping down the street in St Albans, his face down, covered by an unruly mass of brown hair. A friend warned her she was marrying into “a mad, mad family”. With all the innocence of her 21 years, she trusted that Stephen would cherish her, she wrote in her 2013 book, Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.
In 1985, during a trip to Cern, Hawking was taken to hospital with an infection. He was so ill that doctors asked Jane if they should withdraw life support. She refused, and Hawking was flown back to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge for a lifesaving tracheotomy. The operation saved his life but destroyed his voice. The couple had three children, but the marriage broke down in 1991. Hawking’s progressive condition, his demands on Jane, and his refusal to discuss his illness, were destructive forces the relationship could not endure, she said. Jane wrote of him being “a child possessed of a massive and fractious ego,” and how husband and wife became “master” and “slave”.
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all Stephen Hawking
Four years later, Hawking married Elaine Mason, one of the nurses employed to give him round-the-clock care. The marriage lasted 11 years, during which Cambridgeshire police investigated a series of alleged assaults on Hawking. The physicist denied that Elaine was involved, and refused to cooperate with police, who dropped the investigation.
Hawking was not, perhaps, the greatest physicist of his time, but in cosmology he was a towering figure. There is no perfect proxy for scientific worth, but Hawking won the Albert Einstein Award, the Wolf Prize, the Copley Medal, and the Fundamental Physics Prize. The Nobel prize, however, eluded him.
He was fond of scientific wagers, despite a knack for losing them. In 1975, he bet the US physicist Kip Thorne a subscription to Penthouse that the cosmic x-ray source Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole. He lost in 1990. In 1997, Hawking and Thorne bet John Preskill an encyclopaedia that information must be lost in black holes. Hawking conceded in 2004. In 2012, Hawking lost $100 to Gordon Kane for betting that the Higgs boson would not be discovered.
He lectured at the White House during the Clinton administration – his oblique references to the Monica Lewinsky episode evidently lost on those who screened his speech – and returned in 2009 to receive the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama. His life was played out in biographies and documentaries, most recently The Theory of Everything, in which Eddie Redmayne played him. He appeared on The Simpsons and played poker with Einstein and Newton on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He delivered gorgeous put-downs on The Big Bang Theory. “What do Sheldon Cooper and a black hole have in common?” Hawking asked the fictional Caltech physicist whose IQ comfortably outstrips his social skills. After a pause, the answer came: “They both suck.”
Hawking has argued that for humanity to survive it must spread out into space, and has warned against the worst applications of artificial intelligence, including autonomous weapons.
Stephen Hawking – obituary by Roger Penrose Read more
Hawking was happy to court controversy and was accused of being sexist and misogynist. He turned up at Stringfellows lap dancing club in 2003, and years later declared women “a complete mystery”. In 2013, he boycotted a major conference in Israel on the advice of Palestinian academics.
Some of his most outspoken comments offended the religious. In his 2010 book, Grand Design, he declared that God was not needed to set the universe going, and in an interview with the Guardian a year later, dismissed the comforts of religious belief.
“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he said.
He spoke also of death, an eventuality that sat on a more distant horizon than doctors thought. “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,” he said.
What astounded those around him was how much he did achieve. He leaves three children, Robert, Lucy and Timothy, from his first marriage to Jane Wilde, and three grandchildren.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nick Higham looks back at Stephen Hawking's life
World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.
He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday, his family said.
The British scientist was famed for his work with black holes and relativity, and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.
At the age of 22 Prof Hawking was given only a few years to live after being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease.
The illness left him in a wheelchair and largely unable to speak except through a voice synthesiser.
Image copyright BBC/Richard Ansett
In a statement his children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said: "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.
"He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years."
They praised his "courage and persistence" and said his "brilliance and humour" inspired people across the world.
"He once said, 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him forever."
A book of condolence is due to be opened at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where Prof Hawking was a fellow.
Image copyright BBC/PA Image caption Stephen Hawking was portrayed on TV and film by Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne
Prof Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology as a union of relativity and quantum mechanics.
He also discovered that black holes leak energy and fade to nothing - a phenomenon that would later become known as Hawking radiation.
Through his work with mathematician Sir Roger Penrose he demonstrated that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implies space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.
The scientist gained popularity outside the academic world and appeared in several TV shows including The Simpsons, Red Dwarf and The Big Bang Theory.
He was portrayed in both TV and film - recently by Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, which charted his rise to fame and relationship with his first wife, Jane.
The actor paid tribute to him, saying: "We have lost a truly beautiful mind, an astonishing scientist and the funniest man I have ever had the pleasure to meet.
"My love and thoughts are with his extraordinary family."
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
Outlined his theory that black holes emit "Hawking radiation" in 1974
In 1979, he became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Cambridge - a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton
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
His life story was the subject of the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was one of the first people to pay tribute to Prof Hawking.
"We have lost a colossal mind and a wonderful spirit. Rest in peace, Stephen Hawking," he said.
The vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge - where Prof Hawking had studied and worked - Professor Stephen Toope, said he was a "unique individual" who would be remembered with "warmth and affection".
He added: "His exceptional contributions to scientific knowledge and the popularisation of science and mathematics have left an indelible legacy. His character was an inspiration to millions."
Prof James Hartle, who worked with him to create the Hartle-Hawking wavefunction to explain the Big Bang, said Prof Hawking had a "unique" ability to "see through all the clutter in physics" and get to the point.
He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme: "My memory of him would be… first our work together as scientists and, second, as a human being whose whole story is a triumph over adversity [and] who inspired a lot of people, including me."
Skip Twitter post by @NASA Remembering Stephen Hawking, a renowned physicist and ambassador of science. His theories unlocked a universe of possibilities that we & the world are exploring. May you keep flying like superman in microgravity, as you said to astronauts on @Space_Station in 2014 pic.twitter.com/FeR4fd2zZ5 — NASA (@NASA) March 14, 2018 Report
American astrophysicist Prof George Smoot, who knew and worked with Prof Hawking, described him as "very competitive".
He told Today: "Whenever I did something, he wanted to do it better.
"The one thing he was jealous of was I got the Nobel Prize before he did."
Prof Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, who was at university with Prof Hawking when he was diagnosed, said his friend had "amazing willpower and determination".
"Even mere survival would have been a medical marvel, but of course he didn't just survive," he said. "He became one of the most famous scientists in the world."
Skip Twitter post by @RichardDawkins “Silent face, the marble index of a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.” Wordsworth was writing of Newton, but he might have been foreseeing the silent face of Newton’s great successor as Lucasian Professor. pic.twitter.com/VZIP0xdQmG — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) March 14, 2018 Report
Prof Brian Cox, science presenter and professor of physics at the University of Manchester, described him as "one of the greats".
"There are physicists that in 1,000 years' time they will still be talking about Hawking radiation, they will be using his fundamental results on black holes.
"There are at least three areas where his work will be remembered as long as there are cosmologists and that is the best you can hope for as a scientist."
The comedian and presenter of the BBC's Stargazing Live Dara O'Briain said the scientist had an "immeasurable life" and "one of the few people I would call a hero of mine".
He added: "His work elevated us to the extra-ordinary; his life pushed down a terrible, limiting disease so that he could enjoy the full joy of the ordinary. In both, he was a triumph of what we, as humans, can achieve."
British astronaut Tim Peake said Prof Hawking "inspired generations to look beyond our own blue planet and expand our understanding of the universe".
He added: "His personality and genius will be sorely missed. My thoughts are with his family."
Skip Twitter post by @neiltyson His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018. pic.twitter.com/nAanMySqkt — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 14, 2018 Report
Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood said Prof Hawking was "an inspiration to us all, whatever our station in life, to reach for the stars".
He tweeted: "RIP Sir. You epitomised true courage over adversity as you explained the wonders of the universe to the world. Your achievements symbolise the pwr (sic) of the human mind."
Local government minister Sajid Javid said: "One of most inspirational people throughout my life. A brief history on earth, an eternity in the stars."
Labour's Chuka Umunna tweeted: "What a wonderful and extraordinary man. A huge loss for the world, not just our country. Thinking of his family today."
Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak said: "Stephen Hawking's integrity and scientific dedication placed him above pure brilliance,"
Satya Nadella, Microsoft chief executive, said: "We lost a great one today. Stephen Hawking will be remembered for his incredible contributions to science - making complex theories and concepts more accessible to the masses.
"He'll also be remembered for his spirit and unbounded pursuit to gain a complete understanding of the universe, despite the obstacles he faced."
Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Stephen Hawking arrives on the red carpet with former wife Jane Hawking (l) and daughter Lucy Hawking (r).
In his 2013 memoir he described how he felt when first diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
"I felt it was very unfair - why should this happen to me," he wrote.
"At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realise the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life."
Speaking to the BBC in 2002, his mother, Isobelle, described him as a "very normal young man".
She said: "He liked parties. He liked pretty girls - only pretty ones. He liked adventure and he did, to some extent, like work."
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Jakarta, CNN Indonesia -- Ahli fisikadilaporkan meninggal dunia pada Rabu (14/3) dini hari di usia 76 tahun. Kabar ini pertama kali diungkapkan oleh Lucy, Robert, dan Tim yang merupakan anak Hawking."Kami berduka cita yang sedalam-dalamnya atas meninggalnya ayah kami pada hari ini. Kami akan merindukannya selamanya," tulisnya dalam keterangan resmi seperti dilansir Sky "Dia adalah ilmuwan hebat dan pria luar biasa yang ide dan warisannya akan diteruskan selama bertahun-tahun".Sebelum menghembuskan nafas terakhir, Hawking mengidap penyakit motor neuron sejak tahun 1963. Meski menderita penyakit, Hawking tetap melanjutkan studinya di Cambridge University dan mengantarkannya sebagai salah satu fisikawan paling berpengaruh sejak masa Albert Einstein.Hawking dikenal sebagai seorang fisikawan dan ahli kosmologi di dunia. Kisah hidupnya sempat diangkat ke dalam film layar lebar 'The Theory of Everything' yang dibintangi Eddie Redmayne pada tahun 2014.
KOMPAS.com — Berita duka kembali menyambangi dunia sains. Kali ini duka datang dari Stephen Hawking.
Fisikawan besar tersebut dikabarkan meninggal dunia. Hal ini dikonfirmasi keluarga Hawking.
"Kami sangat sedih karena ayah tercinta kami telah meninggal dunia hari ini," ungkap Lucy, Robert, dan Tim, anak-anak Hawking, dikutip dari Sky News, Rabu (14/3/2018).
Fisikawan yang kisah hidupnya diangkat dalam film The Theory of Everything ini meninggal pada usia 76 tahun. Dia baru saja merayakan ulang tahunnya pada 8 Januari lalu.
Baca juga: Ulang Tahun Ke-76, Bagaimana Stephen Hawking Hidup Lama dengan ALS?
