Stephen Hawking — in pictures

Stephen Hawking, who has died aged 76, was one of the most brilliant scientists of his age and exemplified the ability to rise above severe physical disability

Coxing in 1961 in Oxford, where he was born

Graduation day at Oxford in 1962. A year later Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease

Hawking in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1979

The wedding of Stephen and Elaine Hawking in 1995

A guest appearance in The Simpsons episode ‘They Saved Lisa’s Brain’, which aired in 1999

Stephen and Elaine Hawking at San Lorenzo beach in the northern Spanish city of Gijón in April 2005

The British cosmologist experiences zero gravity during a flight over the Atlantic. ‘It was amazing . . . I could have gone on and on,’ he said

Pope Benedict blesses Hawking during a meeting of science academics at the Vatican in 2008

With Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, in Johannesburg in 2008

Lucy Hawking and her father during the 50 Years of Nasa lecture series at George Washington University

Awarded the Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House in 2009

Eddie Redmayne, who played the physicist in the 2014 film ‘The Theory Of Everything’

At the New Space Exploration Initiative’s ‘Breakthrough Starshot’ announcement at One World Observatory in New York in 2016

Letter in response to this article:

As a physician, I wonder whether Hawking had polio rather than ALS / From Christopher B Cooper, University of California, Los Angeles, US