Stephen Hawking

He met his first wife, Jane Wilde, a friend of his sister, shortly before the diagnosis of his illness. The couple got married in 1965. They had three children together: Robert, Lucy, and Timothy. Jane was a pillar of strength for Hawking in the beginning of their marriage, but with his regressing physical condition and increasing global popularity, their marriage became a big burden on Jane and stress started to brew in their relationship.

During the late 1980, Hawking had a romantic affair with one of his nurses, Elaine Manson, and left Jane for her. He divorced Jane and married Manson in 1995. Their marriage proved to be detrimental to Hawking’s family life and he largely kept away from his children. It was suspected that Elaine was abusing him physically, but Hawking denied it. He divorced Elaine Manson in 2006.

Hawking’s physical condition increasingly began to deteriorate. He could no longer drive his wheelchair; he required a ventilator at times and was hospitalized several times since 2009. He was closely working with researchers on systems that could translate his brain patterns into switch activations.

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, to Frank and Isobel Hawking. His father was a medical researcher. He belonged to a family of well educated people. His mother was one of the first female students to have graduated from the Oxford University.

Hawking was born when his family as well as the whole nation was going through a financial crunch because of the ongoing World war II. He was the eldest of the four children.

His father became the head of the Division of Parasitology at the National Institute of Medical Research and went to Africa for research. He wanted him to become a doctor, but Hawking seemed more interested in astronomy.

He attended St. Albans School, but he was never a brilliant student. He was more interested in what happened outside the classroom, and spent his time and energy in inventing new things.

Later, against his father’s wishes, he planned to pursue mathematics as his major but as the subject was not taught in Oxford University at the time, he had to take up physics and chemistry instead.

Hawking became a member of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge in 1968 and the discoveries of cosmologist, Roger Penrose, on 'Black Hole' really fascinated him as he himself was working on the phenomena that was responsible for the origin of the Universe.

In 1970, Hawking discovered the 'Second Law of Black Hole Dynamics.' According to it the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller. Along with James M. Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he proposed the four laws of 'Black Hole Mechanics.'

Hawking visited Moscow in 1973 and his discussions with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Alexei Starobinsky helped him to come up with ‘Hawking Radiation.' The following year, he became a 'Fellow of the Royal Society.'

He started to get more recognition for his research and discoveries through his print and TV interviews, and in 1975, he was awarded the Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal, followed by the Dannie Heineman Prize and the Maxwell Prize.

Hawking was then appointed as a professor with a chair in gravitational physics in 1977 and received the 'Albert Einstein Medal' and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Hawking’s main focus of research was in the field of theoretical cosmology, focusing on the evolution of the universe as governed by the laws of general relativity. His most important work is believed to be the study of 'Black Holes.'