Stephen Hawking

# Stephen Hawking Diagnosed with motor neuron disease at twenty-one and given two years to live, Stephen Hawking went on to occupy the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge — Newton's chair — and transform our understanding of black holes, cosmology, and the origin of the universe. A Brief History of Time sold more than ten million copies. He communicated through a speech synthesizer, traveled the world, and appeared on The Simpsons. He died on Einstein's birthday, seventy-six years after his diagnosis. He was not supposed to make it past twenty-three.