Physicist Stephen Hawking dead at 76
Stephen Hawking, whose insights shaped modern cosmology, has died at age 76.
His family released a statement Wednesday confirming his death at his home in Cambridge.
Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” The Guardian reports.
Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21. Doctors expected him to live for only two more years, but Hawking had a form of the disease that progressed more slowly than usual.
In 1979, Hawking became the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, formerly held by Isaac Newton.
His book, “A Brief History of Time,” published for the first time in 1988, stayed on the Sunday Times bestsellers list for 237 weeks. It sold 10 million copies and was translated into 40 languages.
