On Wednesday, March 14, famed physicist Stephen Hawking passed away at the age of 76, due to the disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gerhig’s disease.

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942. He studied at the University of Oxford, Cambridge, and Trinity Hall Cambridge. Hawking was a physicist, cosmologist, and director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.

While in graduate school, Hawking married Jane Wilde. They remained together for thirty years before divorcing in 1995. He married again later on to Elaine Mason for 11 years.

In 1963, Hawking was diagnosed with ALS when he was 21 years old and was given only a few years to live, but he would overcome the odds and manage to live 55 years with the disease, however it came at a cost. He was left almost completely paralyzed, with only little mobility in some of his fingers on his one hand.

Since he was almost completely paralyzed, he couldn’t talk so he used a computer synthesizer to help him communicate to people. ALS would not stop him from achieving awards such as the Adams Prize (1966), the Eddington Medal (1975), the Hughes Medal (1976), the Dannie Heinemann Prize for Mathematical Physics (1976), the Albert Einstein Award (1978), the Albert Einstein Medal (1979), the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985), the Dirac Medal of the Institute of Physics (1987), the Wolf Prize in Physics (1988), the Princess of Asturias Award (1989), the Copley Medal (2006), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009), and the Special Fundamental Physics Prize (2012).

Not only was Hawking very smart, but he could also act and had a fantastic sense of humor as well. He was in an episode of Star Trek, three episodes of Futurama, How to Lose Weight in 60 Seconds, four episodes of The Simpsons, Anyone Can Quantum, Quantum is Calling, Futurama the Video Game, and seven episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

Hawking was a remarkable man who worked hard to help people understand Physics and Cosmology. He also showed that whenever things aren’t going your way, keep pushing and keep working hard because good things will start to happen.

sources: 

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/health/stephen-hawking-dead/index.html, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370071/,