Stephen Hawking

It's the birthday of British physicist Stephen Hawking, born in Oxford, England (1942), who pursues what physicists call a Grand Unified Theory, or a "Theory of Everything." As Hawking puts it, "My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe." His most important work in physics has explored the nature of "singularities," anomalies in the space-time continuum commonly known as "black holes." In 1988, he published A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, a book that brought his work to a general audience. In the mid-1960s, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and given three months to live. When asked about living with the disease, he told an interviewer that he was "happier now" than before he became ill. "Before, I was very bored with life. I drank a fair bit, I guess; I didn't do any work . . .When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have."