Google Doodle Celebrates 80th Birthday of Physicist Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford, England on 8 January 1942.

Google Doodle for Stephen Hawking 80th birthday

(Photo: Google)

Google on Saturday, 8 January, is celebrating 80th birth anniversary of English cosmologist, author, and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. The American tech giant uploaded a video Doodle of Stephen Hawking on its search page to mark his birthday. It is illustrated by Doodler Matthew Cruickshank

Who was Stephen Hawking?

On 08 January 1942, Stephen William Hawking was born in Oxford, England. His interest towards functioning of universe from young age earned him the nickname 'Einstein'.

However, at a young age of 21, he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease. "The music of composer Richard Wagner and the loving support of his future wife Jane Wilde motivated Hawking to dedicate himself to physics, math, and cosmology," reads the official blog by Google.

Later, he went to defend his doctoral thesis “Properties of Expanding Universes” at the University of Cambridge. His thesis presented the key characteristic of black holes, arguing that space and time originated from a singularity, a point both infinitely small and dense.

Moreover, in 1974, he went on to discover that particles could escape black holes, which is widely considered his most important contribution to physics.

Cambridge University, in 1979, appointed Hawking as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position held by Isaac Newton in 1669. They also released his doctoral thesis to public on its website in the year 2017.