Stephen Hawking was born on this day January 8th in 1942 – 300 years to the day after the death of his scientific hero, Galileo.

Stephen Hawking is a British theoretical physicist.

After scraping a first degree at Oxford, Hawking moved to Cambridge for his PhD.

He was diagnosed with ALS (a form of motor neurone disease) in 1963, when he was 21 – he was given 2.5 years to live.

Stephen Hawking has written nearly 100 scientific papers and books, the first appearing in 1965.

His most famous paper was published in 1970 with Roger Penrose. It's on singularities in black holes and the big bangtheory.

Stephen Hawking has been unable to speak since a tracheotomy in 1985, hence his famous synthesized voice.

In 2007 he went on a zero-gravity flight, achieving weightlessness 8 times, for a total of 4 minutes.

He has met three popes, most recently Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.

Helped by the success of his book ‘A Brief History of Time’, Hawking has released other books aimed at making his work accessible to a wide range of people, these include ‘The Universe in a Nutshell’, ‘A Briefer History of Time’ and ‘George's Secret Key to the Universe’, a children’s book with a strong focus on science.

Some of the awards Hawking has received for his work include the 1979 Albert Einstein Medal, the Order of the British Empire (Commander) in 1982 and the 1988 Wolf Prize in Physics.

Famous Stephen Hawking quotes include:

“There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary?”

“I don't believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can't predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already!”

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.”

“It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.”

“I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”

Happy birthday to Stephen Hawking.