The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is dead. The 76-year-old died peacefully early Wednesday morning at his home in Cambridge, his PR agency Pagefield said, citing his family. His children Lucy, Robert and Tim said they were deeply sad. "We'll miss him forever, he was a great scientist and an extraordinary person."
Hawking suffered from the incurable muscle and nerve disease ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Already for decades he was almost completely unable to move, he was sitting in a wheelchair. For a long time he could communicate only with difficulty with the help of a computer. Recently, his strength decreased more and more.
Hawking is one of the greatest scientists of all time. The experts appreciated him for his theories of the origin of the cosmos and black holes. "I want to understand the universe completely," he once said. "I want to know why it's the way it is and why it exists." His 1988 book "A Short History of Time" also made him popular among common people.
Source: dpa, Reuters
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