Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born in England, and was a middling student as a youngster before revolutionizing physics and cosmology - the study of the universe's origin and development.

However, Hawking accomplished something much more difficult: he introduced such in-depth thought about how the world originated and where it is headed to the general public with his influential work, A Brief History of Time, which has been subsequently adapted into a documentary. Hawking established a presence in popular culture with cameos on The Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In 1915, Albert Einstein's general relativity theory proposed the possibility of black holes - objects whose gravitational forces are so strong that anything passing through a zone known as the singularity cannot escape. Over time, the hypothesis of black holes grew in popularity as further studies established their existence. Stephen Hawking stunned the physics world in 1974 when he proposed that some objects may flee a black hole as they pass the event horizon. When particle pairs — for example, photon and neutrino — approach that tipping point, one particle may be expelled. This was dubbed Hawking radiation.

Years: 1942 - 2018

Achievements:

• Hawking radiation
• Theory of everything