Google Doodle celebrates legendary scientist Stephen Hawking's achievements on birth anniversary

To mark Stephen Hawking’s 80th birth anniversary, Google introduced an animated video on its homepage depicting the inspiring journey of Hawking’s life and his work. It includes a narration by the great personality himself that was generated with permission from his kin.

Stephen Hawking was a great theoretical physicist who spoke about a limited union between two very different fields: Albert Einstein’s ‘General Theory of Relativity’ and ‘Quantum Theory’. He was born in Oxford during World War II in 1942 and was quite fascinated by the universe from the early years of his life.

Unfortunately, life hit hard when he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease that gradually confined him to a wheelchair.

Despite consistent efforts by his family members, he could not recover and lost his speech. However, he hit life even harder as he started communicating via a speech-generating device.

Google’s video describes him as “one of history’s most influential scientific minds”.

Hawking’s college life

Hawking’s contribution to science is well-known. His education played a major role in his discoveries. He graduated from Oxford with a BA degree in Physics and completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge. His sheer obsession with black holes became the foundation of his studies and research. It was due to this interest and discovery that the world got to know that particles could escape black holes. This discovery, made in 1974, is considered as his “most crucial contribution to physics”.

As Google’s animated video states, Hawking spent his life travelling across the universe with his mind and his goal was simple – “To get complete understanding of the universe”.

“From colliding black holes to the Big Bang, his theories on the origins and mechanics of the universe revolutionised modern physics while his best-selling books made the field widely accessible to millions of readers worldwide,” Google adds.