Star astrophysicist Stephen Hawking died on Wednesday at age 76. His age alone was a stellar feat--he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) as a 21-year-old Cambridge University student and given two years to live. Though the disease confined Hawking to a wheelchair, his formidable mind was left intact, and his text-to-speech communication system helped propel Hawking to an iconic perch in pop culture. In addition to his groundbreaking work on black holes, among other major contributions to his field, Hawking was a bestselling author of popular science books.
A Brief History of Time (1988) uses non-technical terms to explain, well, everything: where the universe came from, how it works and where it's going, from the smallest quarks to the greatest pulls of gravity. It sold 10 million copies within its first 20 years in print. Hawking's other books include The Grand Design (with Leonard Mlodinow), The Universe in a Nutshell, The Nature of Space and Time (with Roger Penrose), the George's Secret Key children's book series (with his daughter, Lucy Hawking), Black Holes and Baby Universes, An Illustrated Brief History of Time and A Briefer History of Time. His memoir, My Brief History (2013), is available from Bantam Books ($22, 9780345535283). --Tobias Mutter
