Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. As he was growing up, his passion was academics since he had no interest in any particular sports. He attended Oxford in 1959 after graduating from St. Albans School. It was the wish of his father that he study medicine, but Stephen wanted to study mathematics which led him on to the area of physics. It only took him three years to complete his undergraduate work. He wanted to do research in the area of cosmology so he moved to Cambridge and studied under Denis Sciama in 1962. Early in 1963 he was diagnosed with the incurable ailment amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He was initially told that he would not live to the age of 25. In 1965, Penrose published Hawking's work on applying Roger's singularity theory to the entire universe. This work was written up as his thesis and he was awarded a Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1965. This work also helped to launch Hawking's professional career. He has held fellowship positions in Caius and Gonville College. In 1973, he arrived at the Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics Department in Cambridge, and since 1979, Hawking has held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. This post was held by such famous scientists as Barrow and Newton. His current work involves an investigation of the origin of the universe and an understanding of how the universe operates. Hawking has published countless papers and some best-selling books including A Brief History of Time. He is very well respected by his colleagues and has been described as a fine mentor with a great sense of humor. He gracefully accepts his mistakes when they are pointed out to him and he simply moves on. Hawking has been awarded 12 honorary doctorates including ones from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, and Notre Dame. He has also received other awards such as being elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as well as to the famed Royal Society (which he considers to be his proudest achievement). In addition, the British Royalty made him a Commander of the British Empire. In 1989, Hawking became a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth. Ironically, Hawking has not been the recipient of a Nobel Prize since the prize requires a major achievement to be proven, and Hawking's ideas are so advanced that they have not been proven yet. Professor Stephen Hawking still teaches at Cambridge and lives with his wife, three children and one grandchild.

Hawking combined the fields of Quantum Theory and General Relativity through his research. This combination of the two fields happened after he was able to show that when the General Theory of Relativity is utilized, this implies that both time and space would have a defined starting and ending point. The beginning would occur during the big bang and the end would be inside of the black holes. Hawking theorized that black holes were not entirely black but in fact emitted certain types of radiation. Over time, the black holes could evaporate and ultimately disappear from existence. Hawking also contributed to the idea of imaginary time. This sort of time is somewhat related to the idea of imaginary numbers (multiples of the square root of -1). In this realm of thought and existence, he has theorized that the universe would have no boundaries. Hawking has also had an interest in the classification of gravitational waves. These waves can help physicists and astronomers identify when and where stellar events occur. These waves can also give the scientific community idea of what the initial conditions of the universe were. A constant has also been named for him in the equation S = kA, where S is the heat capacity of a black hole, A is the area, and k is Hawking's Constant. Hawking has theorized that the arrow of time can only point in one direction which is forward. Two more postulates that Hawking has formulated include wormholes and baby universes. He theorizes that only subatomic particles can travel through wormholes to alternate universes, if they in fact exist. Baby universes are another modification of the Big Bang Theory in that after the explosion many different universes were created like bubbles. Also, each bubble has the ability to create another baby universe. Both Hawking and Kip Thorne have theorized that a singularity exists in the interior of a black hole. He has also been able to modify the laws of thermodynamics into the laws of black holes with the addition that the entropy of any given black hole is directly proportional to the surface area. Stephen Hawking is obviously the greatest theoretical physicist of the modern era and perhaps of all time because of his work with the properties of space, time, and relativity.

Hawking is certainly one of the most amazing scientific success stories of all time. For a man to overcome such an obstacle like the crippling disease ALS and still be able to accomplish as much as he has is amazing. He has spent his lifetime applying the concepts of relativity to determining the origins of the universe. This man has not only inspired the scientific community with his theories, but the common man as well.