Cambridge: Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s finest scientific minds, has died at the age of 76, according to his family.
He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of this morning.
The physicist and cosmologist was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neurone disease, when he was a 22-year-old student at Cambridge University. Most people die within a few years of the diagnosis.
Prof Hawking first gained attention with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time”, a simplified overview of the universe. It has sold millions of copies across the world.
His subsequent theories revolutionised modern understanding of concepts like relativity, black holes and the Big Bang theory of how the universe began.
For 30 years, he held a mathematics post at Cambridge University previously held by Sir Isaac Newton.
Prof Hawking retired from that position in 2009 and became director of research at the university’s Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.
He achieved all that despite being almost entirely paralysed and in a wheelchair since 1970.
