Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
Stephen Hawking died early Wednesday, March 14 at his home in Cambridge, England.
The dates of Hawking’s birth and death are shared by two other intellectual giants who also dedicated their lives to studying the cosmos. Hawking was born on Jan. 8, 1942—300 years to the day after the death of Galileo, as he liked to point out.
He passed away on Albert Einstein’s birthday, March 14.Hawking’s work, as he put it, dealt with “the big question: Where did the universe come from?” He provided some answers in his 1988 book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, which has sold more than 10 million copies.
Hawking will be remembered for numerous scientific papers and important discoveries in cosmology and astrophysics, including his work on the nature of black holes, the origin of the universe, and attempts to unite quantum theory and Einstein’s relativity.
But Hawking’s reach wasn’t limited to academic circles. Despite suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that left him paralyzed in his twenties, the astrophysicist traveled the world, spoke at conferences, and served as a chief representative for science in popular culture, appearing in shows like The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Futurama, not to mention having his life story dramatized in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything.
“Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview.
Hawking spoke with Big Think years ago about some of the greatest threats facing humanity.
“There have been a number of times in the past when [humanity’s] survival has been a question of touch and go,” he said. “The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 was one of these. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future.”
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