STEPHEN HAWKING the scientist who never stops...

Early life and education:

Stephen William Hawking worlds surprise. Despite disability who works continuously.
He was born on 8 January 1942 to Frank and Isobel Hawking in Oxford, England. Despite family financial constraints, both parents had attended Oxford University, where Frank had studied medicine and Isobel Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The two met shortly after the beginning of the Second World War at a medical research institute where Isobel was working as a secretary and Frank as a medical researcher. Hawking's parents lived in Highgate but as London was under attack during the Second World War, his mother went to Oxford to give birth in greater safety. He has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward.

At the age of eleven, Stephen went to St. Albans School and then on to University College, Oxford; his father's old college. Stephen wanted to study Mathematics, although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he pursued Physics instead. After three years and not very much work, he was awarded a first  class honours degree in Natural Science. Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no one working in that area in Oxford at the time. His supervisor was Denis Sciama, although he had hoped to get Fred Hoyle who was working in Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. he became first a Research Fellow and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College.

CAREER:

After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973, Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1979, and held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1979 until 2009. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton.  Stephen is still an active part of Cambridge University and retains an office at the Department for Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics. His title is now Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

CONTRIBUTION :

Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated that it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but rather should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

ILLNESS :

In 1963(at the age of 21), Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Which is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a condition that has progressed over the years. As of 2013, he is almost completely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device. Hawking's illness has advanced more slowly than typical cases of ALS: survival for more than 10 years after diagnosis is uncommon. Symptoms of the disease include increasing inability to control physical movements, including vocal functions, and severe coughing spells. Hawking describes himself as lucky, as the slow progression of his disease has allowed him time to make influential discoveries and has not hindered him because, in his words, of "the help I have received from Jane, my children, and a large number of other people and organisations"

It was devastating news for Hawking and his family. A few events, however, prevented him from becoming completely despondent. The first of these came while Hawking was still in the hospital. There, he shared a room with a boy suffering from leukemia. Relative to what his roommate was going through, Hawking later reflected, his situation seemed more tolerable. Not long after he was released from the hospital, Hawking had a dream that he was going to be executed. He said this dream made him realize that there were still things to do with his life.

But the most significant change in his life was the fact that he was in love. At a New Year's party in 1963, shortly before he had been diagnosed with ALS, Hawking met a young languages undergraduate named Jane Wilde. They were married in 1965.

In a sense, Hawking's disease helped him become the noted scientist he is today. Before the diagnosis, Hawking hadn't always focused on his studies. "I was bored with life before my illness," he said. "There had not seemed to be anything worth doing." With the sudden realization that he might not even live long enough to earn his Ph.D., Hawking poured himself into his work and research.

Recognition :

On 19 December 2007, a statue of Hawking by artist Ian Walters was unveiled at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge. Buildings named after Hawking include the Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador, the Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge, and the Stephen Hawking Centre at Perimeter Institute in Canada. In 2002, following a UK-wide vote, the BBC included him in their list of the 100 Greatest Britons.

ACHIEVEMENT :
Hawking has been awarded the Copley (2006) Medals from the Royal Society. In 1999 he was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, and in 2003 the Michelson-Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University. In 2009 he received America's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, He has also been awarded Spain's Fonseca Prize (2008) and the Russian Fundamental Physics Prize (2012).

<sup>Publication :
Hawking's popular A Brief History of Time was followed by The Universe in a Nutshell (2001). He co-wrote A Briefer History of Time (2005) with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works to make them accessible to a wider audience. In 2007 Hawking and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book focusing on science that Lucy Hawking described as "a bit like Harry Potter but without the magic." 
To see all his publication go to this link: http://www.hawking.org.uk/publications.html

Stephen Hawking is still working with same enthusiasm. There is lot of things to learn from his life story. I wish he may lives more and more.   
I've found a short biography video on him, which is pretty good. You can see it here: http://www.biography.com/people/stephen-hawking-9331710/videos 

References:
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking 
2.http://www.biography.com/people/stephen-hawking-9331710?page=1
3.http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.html 
4.http://www.hawking.org.uk/about-stephen.html 
5.http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/physicists/10-cool-things-stephen-hawking.htm#page=0</sup>