美联社援引史蒂芬•霍金(Stephen Hawking)家庭发言人的话报道称，这位英国理论物理学家已去世，享年76岁。
Hawking - who lived with motor neurone disease since his 20s, leaving him in a wheelchair and using a computer to speak and write - was a former professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge and author of international best-seller A Brief History of Time.
霍金从20岁多起患上运动神经元疾病，只能坐轮椅，借助电脑来讲话和写作。他曾是剑桥大学(University of Cambridge)数学教授，同也是国际畅销书《时间简史》(A Brief History of Time)的作者。
He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 and told he had two years to live.
1963年，他被诊断出患有运动神经元疾病，并被告知还能活两年。
Hawking’s self-proclaimed intellectual goal was strikingly ambitious: “Complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.” He made important contributions to many of the big issues in cosmology, particularly the unification of the two great theories of 20th-century physics: relativity and quantum mechanics.
霍金自称的学术目标非常有野心：“要完全理解宇宙，理解它为何是现在的样子，以及它为何会存在。”他对宇宙学的许多重大问题(尤其是20世纪物理学的两个伟大理论相对论和量子力学的统一)做出了重要贡献。
His most original research concerned black holes — concentrations of matter so dense that light cannot escape from their gravitational pull. He showed that black holes are not just a bizarre theoretical concept but play an important role in the development of the universe. Indeed, they are not even quite black; they can emit radiation — known as Hawking radiation — and eventually they can even evaporate and disappear.
霍金最具独创性的研究跟黑洞有关——物质密度达到很高程度，以至于光无法脱离其引力。他证明，黑洞不只是一个奇异的理论概念，而且在宇宙发展中扮演着重要角色。事实上，黑洞甚至不是很黑;黑洞会释放出辐射——被称为“霍金辐射”——最终黑洞甚至会蒸发消失。
In recent years Hawking had warned that artificial intelligence could “outsmart us all” but said he appreciated the benefits brought by the technology, such as the upgrades to communications devices that allowed him to write and speak twice as fast as before.
最近几年，霍金曾警告称，人工智能可能“比我们所有人都聪明”。但他表示，他很欣赏这种技术带来的好处，比如通讯设备的升级，让他能以比过去快一倍的速度写作和说话。
