Stephen Hawking

There are few things more ominous or captivating in the known universe than black holes, objects with masses so dense and gravitational fields so strong that even light cannot escape. And there are few scientists who have broadened our understandings of black holes more than Stephen Hawking. Hawking is the Lucasian professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge and one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists. In the 1970s, Hawking found that black holes emit a type of thermal radiation, now known as Hawking radiation, until they exhaust their energy reserves and explode. The discovery was the first significant insight into a possible theory of quantum gravity, of which string theory is one contender. Hawking is also the author of a number of best-selling books, including the popular “A Brief History of Time.”