Arguably the smartest man on earth, physicist Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, the 300th death anniversary of the pathbreaking astronomer Galileo Galilei, and died on the birth anniversary of another genius Albert Einstein. Destiny? Unlike his counterparts, Hawking was never one to shy away from fame. It was this trait that prompted him to give the publishing rights of A Brief History of Time to Bantam Books, whose reach, and ability to cater to the masses, outclassed some of the most prestigious publishing houses at the time. The book found a place in The Guinness Book of Records as an international bestseller. His body may have atrophied over the years, but his mind was in hyper-drive, and the recognition he received equalled that of a celebrity athlete or actor.
Widely recognised as the world's greatest scientist, Hawking was known for his works in cosmology, astronomy and mathematics. He has authored numerous books, and among his considerable laurels are the Order of the British Empire (1982), Companion of Honour (1989), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009). He has received the Fundamental Physics Prize (2013), Copley Medal (2006), and the Wolf Foundation Prize (1988). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He also held the post of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge from 1979 to 2009, a post held by Isaac Newton in 1663.
His most notable achievement was proving how Black Holes emitted heat, a phenomenon which later came to be known as Hawking Radiation. Along with Roger Penrose, he proved the existence of singularities—one-dimensional points which contain infinite mass in an infinitely small space. He theorised that the universe might have originated from a singularity. Along with James Bardeen and Bradon Carter, he wrote the four laws of black hole mechanics. In 1971, his essay 'Black Holes' won the Gravity Research Foundation Award. In 1983, along with James Hartle, he published a research paper on the Hartle-Hawking state, proposing that time didn't exist before the Big Bang.
Belying his achievements, he had a slow academic start—learning to read only at the age of 8, academically weaker than his friends in school. But he was nicknamed 'Einstein' by his friends, a nod to his intellect. His flight to greatness and intellectual immortality was strewn with hurdles. He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease when he was just 21; he had to undergo a tracheotomy in 1985 that rendered him speechless for the rest of his life; he lost mobility in his hands in 2005, and the ability to move his wheelchair independently in 2009.
But Hawking's journey was one about defying all odds. When he couldn't walk, he used a wheelchair. His loss of speech gave birth to the famous voice synthesiser, and when he lost his ability to use his hands, he communicated using an infrared switch mounted on his glasses that generated words by detecting his cheek movements.
As popular as he was for his intellectual prowess, Hawking was also known for his wit, appearing on television on a handful of occasions, most recently as part of the hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory. In 2012, he famously threw a party, but only sent the invitation after the event, an attempt to see if time travellers existed. Alas, it wasn't received by anyone across time, space or galaxies, forcing him to conclude that time travelling was not possible!
He met his first wife Jane Wilde shortly before the diagnosis of his illness, and got married in 1965. They have three children—Robert, Lucy and Timothy. They divorced in 1995, after years of strain in the marriage due to Hawking's deteriorating health condition and the constant intrusion of nurses and doctors in the household. He married Elaine Mason in 1995 and divorced in 2006.
Although a proponent of technology, he cautioned the rise of artificial intelligence, saying that it could be one of the worst inventions in human history. He also believed that human life was at risk on earth due to the possibility of outbreaks of war or other hazards, and said that humans needed to find a way to live in space!
A fighter all his life, his only defeat—apart from that of his illness— was in 1997, when he lost a bet to American theoretical physicist John Perskill, on the concept of Black Holes. The mind that could solve immensely complex problems also once admitted that the most mysterious thing in the world was a woman!
His absence will definitely leave a void in science, but such was his contribution that his legacy will live on. As noted theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss tweeted, 'A star just went out in the cosmos'.