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Stephen Hawking was an English scientist, teacher and author. He used a wheelchair to move around and a computer with a voice synthesiser to talk, after being diagnosed with a disease called ALS when he was at university. Stephen is best known for finding out a lot about the science of how the universe was made and predicting what might happen to it in the future.
Stephen was born on 8th January 1942 in Oxford, England. He was the eldest child of Frank Hawking and Isobel Walker. His parents loved learning and both went to the University of Oxford. Stephen was born in the middle of the Second World War and London was a very dangerous place to be. Stephen’s mother moved away from London to make sure that Stephen would be safe when he was born.
Stephen had two sisters and one brother. People who knew Stephen’s family thought that they were odd. They would each read a book while they ate meals and they didn’t talk. They are said to have kept bees in their basement and made fireworks in their greenhouse!
Stephen became interested in science from an early age. He loved to lie on the grass in the garden and watch the stars with his mother. Stephen liked playing board games and making model planes and boats. Stephen also built a computer out of old clock and telephone parts when he was just 16 years old.
While at university, Stephen became very interested in black holes. At the time, people thought that black holes were places in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. Yet Stephen noticed that one thing was able to get out of a black hole: radiation. Radiation is a wave of energy that can come out of or off something and Stephen found out that radiation can even come out of black holes.
What Stephen found out was so important that this type of radiation was named after him. It is called Hawking radiation. Stephen then used what he had learned to prove that the universe started with the Big Bang. Stephen’s work and his great personality made millions of people become interested in science.