Stephen Hawking has passed away

British physicist Stephen Hawking died Wednesday morning at his home in Cambridge. He turned 76 years old. Hawking is best known for his work on black holes and the Hawking radiation that is named after him.

According to the BBC, Hawking passed away peacefully on Wednesday morning. Hawking was one of the most famous scientists of our time and he played a major role in applied mathematics, cosmology and theoretical physics.

Hawking did a lot of research on the big bang and black holes. In the 1960s, together with Roger Penrose, he developed the theory that Einstein’s general theory of relativity entails that an expanding universe must have arisen from a state of infinite density: a singularity. He further substantiated the theory that black holes emit radiation as a result of quantum effects, after which this radiation was named after him.

As early as the 1960s, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, and it was expected that the Brit would not grow old. However, even when he ended up in a wheelchair and in the eighties his vocal cords were cut during an operation, he continued to work. Hawking then communicated through a computer with an advanced speech system built into his wheelchair. Until his last years, Hawking remained involved in science, speaking out about the role of technology on our lives, the rise of artificial intelligence and the need to visit other planets, among other things.

The physicist wrote several bestsellers, including The Universe and The Universe. In addition, he appeared in various television series such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Big Bang Theory, as well as as a cartoon character in The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy, among others. In 2014, a film about Hawking’s life, The Theory of Everything, was released, which is based on Jane Hawking’s account of her life with him, captured in Traveling to Infinity: My life with Stephen.