Stephen Hawking was born in 1942, he studied physics in Oxford and later went on to Cambridge for his postgraduate research in cosmology.
At the age of 22, he was diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease. Doctors predicted he did not have long to live. As he was preparing to marry his first wife Jane, They were married for 26 years with 3 kids.
He used a wheelchair and was largely unable to speak except through a voice synthesiser. Hawking shot to fame with his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which sold over 10 million copies.
The physicist appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1992 with Sue Lawley. His chosen luxury was crème brûlée
In 2004, Benedict Cumberbatch became the first actor to portray the physicist on screen. The BBC TV film, Hawking, was critically acclaimed.
In 2007 Hawking became the first quadriplegic to experience weightlessness on board a plane specially designed to simulate zero gravity. "I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space," he then said.
The world-famous physicist often delivered lectures at universities around the world, - George Washington University in 2008.
He won many awards in the fields of mathematics and science and in 2009, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-US President Barack Obama.
His life story was made into a 2014 film, The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne who is pictured here with Hawking.
See more photos below;
