Stephen William Hawking was born 8 January 1942 in Oxford, the eldest child of Frank Hawking, a medical researcher specializing in tropical medicine, and Eileen Isobel Hawking, nee Walker. He spent his early childhood in Highgate, North London, until his family moved to St Albans when he was 8 years old. He attended St Albans School prior to reading Natural Science (Physics) at University College, University of Oxford. He then undertook postgraduate study in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Dennis Sciama, and while a member of Trinity Hall. He remained at Cambridge after being awarded his Ph.D., having in 1965 been elected to a Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College; he would later become a Fellow for Distinction in Science and remain associated with Caius for the rest of his life. He was a Member of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy from 1968, and then Research Assistant in the Institute of Astronomy, before becoming a Research Assistant in DAMTP in 1973. During the 1974-1975 academic year he was a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech); he would return to Caltech for extended periods later during his career. Upon his return to Cambridge in 1975 he was appointed a Reader in Gravitational Physics in DAMTP, then Professor in 1977. In 1979 he was elected the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a post he held until 2009. He founded the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge University in 2007.

Hawking made a number of important contributions to the study of gravitation, black holes and cosmology such as his work on singularity theorems, classical black hole physics including the area theorem, primordial black holes, black hole radiation (now referred to as Hawking radiation), black hole evaporation and the information paradox, the no boundary wave function, and cosmic inflation. He published over 200 academic research articles, many with collaborators, including Roger Penrose and Jim Hartle. His first book was The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time co-authored with George Ellis, and he subsequently co-edited several academic conference proceedings and compilations. He gained widespread attention from his efforts to communicate science to a general audience, beginning to write articles for popular magazines in the late 1970s. His record setting best seller A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes was published in 1988, and he published several additional works for a general audience. In addition to educational film and television projects, he appeared in several popular television series including The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Hawking was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, and received numerous other awards and honours including, but not limited to, a CBE (1982) and CH (1989) within the UK Honours system, the Dannie Heinemann Prize (1976), the Albert Einstein Award (1978), the Dirac Medal (1987), the Wolf Prize (1989), the Prince of Asturias Award (1989), the Albert Medal (1999), the Royal Society Copley Medal (2006), the Fonseca Prize (2008), the US Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009), the Special Fundamental Physics Prize (2013) and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2015). He was an honorary member or fellow of numerous scientific institutions and received honorary doctorates from several universities, including both Oxford and Cambridge.

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), at the age of 21. He lived with MND for 55 years and was an outspoken proponent of disability rights and accessibility. He was also a patron of charities related to this aim, including the Motor Neuron Disease Association (UK).

Hawking married firstly in 1965 Jane Wilde, with whom he had three children. They separated in 1990 and divorced in 1995. He subsequently married Elaine Mason in 1995, and they divorced in 2006. Stephen Hawking died in Cambridge on 14 March 2018, and was interred in Westminster Abbey in June of the same year.

Hawking is the subject of numerous biographical works, including a biographical memoir written by several of his closest academic colleagues that outlines some of his most significant contributions to and collaborations within their field, see: Carr B.J., Ellis G.F.R., Gibbons G.W., Hartle J.B., Hertog T., Penrose R., Perry M.J. And Thorne K.S. (2019) Stephen William Hawking CH CBE. 8 January 1942—14 March 2018. Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 66: 267–308.