Hawking’s children Lucy, Robert and Tim announced his death in a statement.
“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,”
The famous astrophysicist had been battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a debilitating neurological condition, for over half a century.
He was diagnosed with the slow-progressing disease at the age of 21, Hawking was given a mere two years to live. But beating all the odds, he built a remarkable career as a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, popularizing science with his best-selling book, ‘A Brief History of Time.’
Hawking believed in the colonization of Mars, arguing that the Earth is “becoming too small for us” and will soon be unable to sustain human life. He said people will eventually master space travel beyond the Solar System, and even this generation could manage to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth.
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