CNN News:英国物理学家霍金去世 享年76岁

Staying in England for our next story: world renowned physicist Stephen Hawking died at his home in Cambridge yesterday. He was born on January 8th, 1942, the 300th anniversary of the death of the astronomer Galileo. Hawking was also a cosmologist, a mathematician and an author.
And while several of his theories met with skepticism or cause controversy in the scientific community, many people considered Hawking the world's greatest modern day scientist.
MATTHEW CHANCE, cnn SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: By any measure, Stephen Hawking's life was incredible, even more so because in the 1960s, he was diagnosed with ALS or motor neurone disease, and given just a few years to live.
This rare form of motor neurone disease left him virtually paralyzed, unable to express his profound vision of humanity and science without a voice synthesizer.
STEPHEN HAWKING, PHYSICIST: At one point, I thought I would see the end of physics as we know it. But now I think the wonder of discovery will continue long after I am gone.
CHANCE: But this was never a man bound by his own physical limitations. He reveled in zero gravity flight freeing him, he said, from the confines of his wheelchair.
He also wrote a series of children's books about space with his daughter Lucy. He had two other children and three grandchildren.
For more than three decades he was a professor at Cambridge University's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics specializing in the study of black holes and revered as a member of the academic elite.

But Professor Hawking also did much to popularize science playing himself in "Star Trek".
HAWKING: Recessed in the opposite direction.
CHANCE: And "The Simpsons".
In 2014, his life and romance with wife Jane Wilde was depicted on the big screen in the acclaimed film "The Theory of Everything".
EDDIE REDMAYNE, ACTOR: The universe getting smaller and smaller, getting denser and denser, hotter and hotter.
FELICITY JONES, ACTRESS: And you rewind back the clock?
REDMAYNE: Exactly. Wind back the clock.
CHANCE: Hawking consulted on the bio-drama which earned five Academy Award nominations and a Best Actor win for Eddie Redmayne for his portrayal of the physicist. Hawking's most famous work, "A Brief History of Time" remains ones of the bestselling science books ever written. And he was deeply concerned with humanity's survival.
HAWKING: I see great danger for the human race. There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully. But I'm an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe as we spread into space.
CHANCE: He was, as ever, looking firmly to the future