Timeline of Stephen Hawking's life

Professor Stephen Hawking poses beside a lamp titled 'black hole light' by inventor Mark Champkins, presented to him during his visit to the Science Museum in London on Feb. 25, 2012. (Anthony Devlin/PA via AP)

LONDON -- Key events in the life of celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking, who died Wednesday at 76.

Jan. 8, 1942 -- Born in Oxford, England, the eldest of four children of Frank Hawking, a biologist, and Isobel Hawking, a medical research secretary.

1952 -- Attends St. Albans School.

1959 -- Receives a scholarship to attend University College, Oxford, from which he graduates with a degree in natural science.

1962 -- Begins graduate research in cosmology at Cambridge University.

1963 -- Diagnosed with the degenerative nerve disorder ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, at the age of 21. He is given two years to live.

1965 -- Marries his first wife, Jane Wilde, a modern languages student he met at Cambridge.

1967 -- The couple's first son, Robert, is born.

1970 -- Jane gives birth to a daughter, Lucy.

1974 -- Elected as a fellow of the Royal Society at age 32, one of the youngest people to receive the honour.

1979 -- Becomes Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a prestigious position once held by Isaac Newton. Hawking holds the post until 2009. Jane gives birth to a third child, Timothy.

1985 -- Admitted to a hospital in Geneva with pneumonia. He survives after an operation, but loses what remained of his speech. The next year he begins communicating through an electronic voice synthesizer that gives him his trademark robotic "voice."

1988 -- Publishes "A Brief History of Time," a book on cosmology aimed at the general public that becomes an instant bestseller.

1989 -- Made a Companion of Honor by Queen Elizabeth II.

1995 -- Marries his nurse, Elaine Mason.

2007 -- Divorces Elaine Mason.

2014 -- His life is celebrated in the Oscar-winning biopic "The Theory of Everything," based on the memoir "Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen," by Jane Hawking.

March 14, 2018 -- Stephen Hawking dies.