Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford. A British theoretical physicist, Hawking studied at Oxford and Cambridge and was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of twenty-one, but lived for more than fifty years, communicating latterly through a speech-generating device. With Roger Penrose he showed that general relativity implies singularities such as the Big Bang, and in the 1970s he proposed that black holes emit radiation, now called Hawking radiation. He held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge. His popular book A Brief History of Time of 1988 sold millions of copies and made him one of the best-known scientists in the world.
Before and after
- 1942Siege of Malta
- 1942Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
- 1942Construction of London Stansted Airport
- 8 January 1942Birth of Junichiro Koizumi
- 8 January 1942Birth of Stephen Hawking
- 17 January 1942Birth of Muhammad Ali
- 20 January 1942Wannsee Conference
- 1 February 1942Launch of Voice of America
- from 8 February 1942 to 15 February 1942Battle of Singapore
More in Science & technology
- 15 September 1917Launch of Forbes
- 11 January 1922Insulin is first used to treat diabetes
- 1927Hubble–Lemaître law
- 1936Alan Turing defines the universal machine
- from 1939 to 1946Manhattan Project
- from c. 1940s to 1960sGreen Revolution
The era
This moment belongs to the Modern era (1914 CE to 1945 CE), world wars and a changing world. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.