Stephen Hawking
The Brilliant Mind That Unlocked the Secrets of the Universe
Stephen Hawking turned black holes into household ideas, showing they radiate and slowly evaporate. His cosmology married quantum mechanics and general relativity at the universe’s edges. Speaking through a synthesizer, he made science public with “A Brief History of Time.” His perseverance modeled curiosity unconfined by a failing body.
- 21 min listen
- Hawking radiation
- Cosmology
- A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking’s full 21 min audio biography, The Brilliant Mind That Unlocked the Secrets of the Universe, is available on Lyfestori for iOS. Listen to a free preview below.
A life in brief
The shape of a life.
Stephen Hawking was a bright but unremarkable student with terrible handwriting whose friends nicknamed him Einstein partly as a joke. At Oxford he reckoned he studied about an hour a day. At twenty-one, a year into his Cambridge doctorate, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and told he had two or three years. He lived fifty-five more, worked out that black holes leak radiation and slowly evaporate, lost his voice to a tracheostomy, and sold millions of copies of a book about time.
- 1942
Born in Oxford
Born 8 January, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo — a coincidence that amused him. His father Frank researched tropical diseases; his mother Isobel had read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, unusual for her generation.
- 1959
Oxford at seventeen
Wins a scholarship to University College to read natural science, focusing on physics. Being studious is unfashionable; he rows, socialises, rarely attends lectures, and later estimates he studied about an hour a day across three years.
- 1962
Cambridge
Arrives to begin doctoral work in cosmology under Dennis Sciama. During his first year he becomes clumsy, stumbling and slurring his words, and blames stress and drink.
- 1963
Two or three years to live
Tests find amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He is twenty-one. He meets Jane Wilde at a New Year's party on 1 January, weeks after the news; she stays with him anyway. That, and a boy dying of leukaemia in the same hospital, pull him out of his depression.
- 1965
Marriage
He and Jane marry. Robert follows in 1967, Lucy in 1970, Timothy in 1979. Jane becomes his caregiver and interpreter as well as his wife, while earning a PhD in medieval Spanish literature.
- 1974
Hawking radiation
Uses quantum theory to show black holes emit radiation and slowly evaporate — connecting general relativity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, and giving black holes temperature and entropy.
- 1985
Losing his voice
Pneumonia forces a tracheostomy that saves his life and ends his speech entirely. Walt Woltosz's Equalizer program lets him select words on a screen, first with a hand clicker, later with a sensor reading a cheek muscle.
- 1988
A Brief History of Time
Written to his editor's brief that it sell in airport bookshops. He includes one equation, E=mc². It stays on bestseller lists for years, sells millions, and makes him a household name.
- 1989
Companion of Honour
Made a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II. He never receives a Nobel Prize: the rules require direct observational evidence, and Hawking radiation has not yet been observed.
- 1995
Divorce and remarriage
His thirty-year marriage to Jane ends. He marries Elaine Mason, one of his nurses; they divorce in 2006, and he reconciles with Jane and their children.
- 2018
Death in Cambridge
Dies peacefully at home on 14 March, aged seventy-six — more than fifty years past his original prognosis.
Major achievements
What Stephen Hawking gave the world.
- 01
Hawking radiation
Showed in 1974 that quantum effects near a black hole's boundary make it emit radiation and evaporate over time, overturning the classical picture of an object that absorbs everything and emits nothing.
- 02
The singularity theorems
Building on Roger Penrose's 1965 theorem, he generalised the mathematics and, in joint papers with Penrose, showed that black holes and the Big Bang origin of the universe inevitably contain singularities — points where matter is crushed to infinite density and physics breaks down.
- 03
Connecting three physics
Hawking radiation tied general relativity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics together, giving black holes temperature and entropy — properties that had seemed impossible for such objects.
- 04
A Brief History of Time
His 1988 book explained the Big Bang, black holes and time travel to readers with no scientific background, sold millions of copies, and brought cosmology to a mass audience.
- 05
Fifty-five years past the prognosis
Diagnosed at twenty-one and given two or three years, he ran a research career from a wheelchair, performed complex calculations entirely in his head, and became an early advocate for assistive technology.
Turning points
The moments that decided it.
- 1963
Two or three years
The ALS diagnosis at twenty-one sent him into a depression he filled with classical music and drink. Two things pulled him out: a boy dying of leukaemia in the same hospital, which put his own case in perspective, and Jane Wilde, who knew the prognosis and stayed. He later said the engagement was the most important thing that happened to him — it gave him a reason to work.
- 1974
Black holes are not black
His calculation showed that quantum effects near the boundary make black holes emit radiation and eventually evaporate. It contradicted classical physics, joined three separate fields, and opened new ways of thinking about space, time and matter.
- 1985
The tracheostomy
Pneumonia cost him what was left of his speech. A programmer's word-selection software, driven first by hand and later by a cheek muscle, gave him a synthetic voice — and he grew so attached to it that he refused later offers of more natural-sounding systems. The robotic voice had become his identity.
- 1988
The airport bookshop brief
His editor challenged him to write cosmology for people with no science at all. A Brief History of Time sold millions, paid for better care and equipment, and turned a physicist into a celebrity — rewarding and exhausting at once for a man with a progressive disease.
What you’ll take away
Lessons that outlast the headlines.
- 01
A deadline can be a gift
Told he had two or three years, he stopped drifting and threw himself into research. The prognosis is what made him work — he had been a student who studied an hour a day.
- 02
Adapt the tool, not the ambition
As the disease took his hands and then his voice, he moved the work into his head and onto a screen. He kept the questions and changed everything else around them.
- 03
Explain it to everyone
He wrote the book his editor asked for — one that could sell in an airport — and reached millions who would never read a paper. Accessibility was not a compromise on the science; it was the point.
Did you know
Fun facts.
- 01
Did you know that Stephen Hawking was born on exactly the 300th anniversary of the death of astronomer Galileo Galilei, and died on the anniversary of Albert Einstein's birth?
- 02
Did you know that despite being completely paralyzed and using a speech synthesizer, he wrote the book 'A Brief History of Time', which stayed on the London Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks?
- 03
Did you know that he famously hosted a time traveler's party in 2009, complete with champagne and hors d'oeuvres, but he deliberately didn't send out the invitations until after the party had ended?
Questions
Good to know.
In 1974 Hawking showed that quantum effects near a black hole's boundary cause it to emit radiation, meaning black holes are not completely black and slowly evaporate over time. It implies they have temperature and entropy, and it connects general relativity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics.
Nobel rules require a discovery to be backed by direct observational evidence, and Hawking radiation has not yet been observed. He received many other honours, including being made a Companion of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II in 1989.
He was diagnosed at twenty-one and told he had two or three years to live. He died on 14 March 2018 at seventy-six — more than fifty years later, far exceeding every medical prediction.
A 1985 tracheostomy after pneumonia saved his life but left him unable to speak. A program called Equalizer, written by Walt Woltosz, let him select words from a screen — first with a hand clicker, later using cheek muscle movements read by a sensor. He refused upgrades to more natural-sounding voices because the robotic one had become his identity.
Not especially, early on. His handwriting was terrible and teachers sometimes found him lazy; friends nicknamed him Einstein partly as a joke about his average results. At Oxford he estimated he studied about an hour a day, and only worked hard at the end to secure the first-class degree he needed for Cambridge.
21 min · one sitting