Stephen William Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. At the time of his death on March 14, 2018, he was the director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between 1979 and 2009, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world. During his lifetime, Hawking made revolutionary contributions to our understanding of the nature of the universe.