The greatest mind of our time: Stephen Hawking dies aged 76

Reknowned scientist Stephen Hawking died at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The theoretical physicist, whose work profoundly informs modern cosmology today was 76, and was beloved by a worldwide audience who were inspired by his scientific work, witticisms, and candid struggle with Motor Neurone Disease, or ASL.

Hawking had three children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, who announced the news in a statement on Wednesday. They said: "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world. He once said: 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him for ever."

Hawking studied his undergraduate at Oxford University and PhD at Cambridge, where he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease at the age of 21. Determined to complete his research despite being told not to expect a long life, his first major breakthrough came in 1970 when he and colleague Roger Penrose applied the mathematics of black holes to the universe and proved a singularity – the Big Bang Theory.

"My goal is simple," Hawking said at the time. "It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all." Hawking continued to shake up the scientific community with his research into black holes, and his assertion that they should give off heat – which in itself became a heated debate that shook up the scientific community before he made a U-turn in his thinking – and later with his theory of cosmic inflation.

Hawking's life was memorialised in award-winning film The Theory of Everything in 2015, starring Eddie Redmayne as the cosmologist and Felicity Jones as his first wife, Jane Wilde, whom he married in 1965. Redmayne led celebrity tributes to the scientist, writing: "We have lost a truly beautiful mind, an astonishing scientist and the funniest man I have ever had the pleasure to meet. My love and thoughts are with his extraordinary family."

Hawking himself said: "Seeing the film has given me the opportunity to reflect on my life. Although I’m severely disabled, I have been successful in my scientific work. I travel widely and have been to Antarctica and Easter Island, down in a submarine and up on a zero gravity flight. One day I hope to go into space." >>

Sadly, that dream was not to be. He had planned to join Sir Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic's first space flight, which was pushed back and will hopefully be completed later this year. In 1974 he was inducted into the Royal Society before being appointed the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge at aged 38. The chair is one of the most distinguished appointments in the field, and a post that he shared with predecessors Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Paul Dirac.

Hawking's 1988 A Brief History of Time was the groundbreaking book that brought Hawking to a public audiences, making the Guiness Book of Records for remaining on the bestseller list of 237 weeks. He said: "My original aim was to write a book that would sell on airport bookstalls. In order to make sure it was understandable I tried the book out on my nurses. I think they understood most of it."

Other tributes came from the scientific community, with a NASA spokesperson tweeting: "Remembering Stephen Hawking, a renowned physicist and ambassador of science. His theories unlocked a universe of possibilities that we & the world are exploring. May you keep flying like superman in microgravity, as you said to astronauts on @Space_Station in 2014 [sic]."

Fellow scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote in tribute: "His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP."

Hawking is survived by his first wife Jane Wilde and their children and grandchildren, and his second wife Elaine Mason. In 2015 he said: "I've been privileged to gain some understanding of the way the universe operates through my work. But it would be an empty universe indeed without the people that I love."