Stephen Hawking's quote of the day: Stephen Hawking spent much of his adult life unable to walk and eventually lost his natural speaking voice. Yet few people traveled further through the universe than he did. Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. His early life was characterized by an interest in the working mechanism of different things. This curiosity led him to study physics at the University of Oxford and cosmology at Cambridge University. However, at the age of 21, Hawking's fate changed for good when he developed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurological disease which makes moving, speaking and breathing difficult. Hawking had been told that he would not live long but ended up living for 76 years.
As he aged, his body deteriorated, but his dreams for science never faded away. Stephen Hawking became one of the most popular theoretical physicists in the world, asking some of the greatest questions that humankind could ever think of, such as how was the universe created, what goes on in a black hole, and what does physics have in store for our future? His greatest contribution came as a result of his study on black holes. Black holes were believed to absorb everything but let nothing out. However, Hawking proved that due to quantum mechanics, black holes could release radiation and shed mass. This process is called Hawking radiation.
