Stephen Hawking (b. Jan. 8, 1942 - d. Mar. 14, 2018) was a renowned English physicist whose research on black holes, general relativity, and quantum mechanics revolutionized human understanding of the cosmos. He held Isaac Newton's chair as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and authored several books including Black Holes and Baby Universes, The Grand Design, and the ground-breaking bestseller A Brief History of Time. A film adaptation of his life story, The Theory of Everything, was released in 2014 based on the memoir Travelling to Infinity by his first wife Jane Hawking.