Physicist Stephen Hawking Has Died at 76

Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist whose work on black holes and cosmology vastly expanded and complicated our understanding of the universe, died at his home in Cambridge, England early Wednesday, the New York Times reports. Hawking was perhaps the most famous living scientist, known as much for his work bringing complicated ideas about the universe to laypeople as for his breakthroughs in physics. His 1988 book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes offered a breezy, conversational overview of the current state of the field, covering topics as specific as "The Uncertainty Principle" (chapter four) and as broad as "The Origin and Fate of the Universe" (chapter eight). Hawking gave his own biggest discovery--that black holes can emit radiation--a grand total of fourteen pages, in a chapter entitled "Black Holes Ain't So Black," which seems modest to the point of being glib--but then the 1974 paper in which Hawking announced his findings was titled "Black Hole Explosions?", question mark very much included, so not really out of character. A Brief History of Time became a bestseller, made Hawking a household name, and introduced the search for a grand unified theory into the popular imagination.