British cosmologist Stephen William Hawking was born in England on Jan. 8, 1942 — 300 years to the day after the death of the astronomer Galileo Galilei. He attended University College, Oxford, where he studied physics, despite his father’s urging to focus on medicine.
Discovery 1: The Origins of The Universe
Discovery 2: The Big Bang Theory
Discovery 3: Time
Discovery 4: Black Hole Radiation
Discovery 5: The high Likelihood of the Existence of Extraterrestrial Life