Physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76. He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday, his family said. The Briton was known for his work with black holes and relativity and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time. 

At the age of 22 Prof Hawking was given only a few years to live after being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease.  The illness left him in a wheelchair and largely unable to speak except through a voice synthesiser. Hawking was an English theoretical physicist and mathematician. He was born in Oxford. In 1950, he moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. He was one of the world's leading theoretical physicists. Hawking has written many science books for people who are not scientists. Hawking was a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge (a position that Isaac Newton once had). He retired on 1 October 2009.

Hawking had a motor neurone disease related to his dyslexia, and because of that he could not move or talk very well. The illness worsened over the years and he was almost completely paralysed. He used a wheelchair to move, and an Intel computer to talk for him. He died on 14 March 2018.