Physicist Stephen Hawking (76) died

cambridge - The British physicist Stephen Hawking died at the age of 76. That has been announced by a spokesman for the family. Hawking died Wednesday in his home in Cambridge.

In a statement the family lets it be deeply sad. 'He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years to come. His courage and perseverance with his genius and humor inspired people all over the world. '

The Oxford-born astrophysicist suffered from the neurological disease ALS. The scientist could only communicate with a speech computer and had been moving on a wheelchair for decades. The condition was diagnosed in 1963 when he was 21 years old. Doctors then gave him at most 2 years.

The scientist was concerned with black holes, the universe and cosmology. He published in 1988 the book A Brief History of Time, published in the Netherlands under the title Het Univers. In it Hawking explained in an accessible way the complete history of the entire universe, from the Big Bang. The book became a bestseller.

In The Universe Hawking still took into account the existence of God, but in The Grand Design (2010) it appears that he had come to different insights. Natural laws like gravity explain the Big Bang and the beginning of our universe. 'It is not necessary to point to God to put the universe into operation,' he wrote.

In 2014, the movie The Theory Of Everything was published about the life of Hawking. The scientist himself has also made a number of TV appearances, as he appeared several times in the popular comedy series The Big Bang Theory.