Stephen William Hawking2

Despite serious illness, he leads an active life. In 2007 he took flight in zero gravity (on a special plane). Hawking said that, as a Professor of mathematics, he had not received any mathematical education since middle school. In his first year of teaching at Oxford Hawking had read the textbook ahead of their own students for two weeks. (Perhaps "Hawking read the textbook only two weeks before his own students" but not quite sure what you're trying to say)
The main research area of the Hawking — cosmology and quantum gravity. His main achievements:
- application of thermodynamics to the description of black holes;
- development in 1975 the theory that black holes "evaporate" due to the phenomenon called Hawking radiation;
Stephen Hawking did what to him could not be anyone. ("Stephen Hawking did what no on else could" -perhaps? This sentence doesn't quite make sense) In their studies of cosmology, namely the big Bang theory and black holes, he joined the quantum theory of Planck and Einstein's theory of relativity.
For their research, Stephen Hawking was awarded a great number of awards such as: the Einstein Medal (1979), Order of the British Empire (1982), order of the Knights of Honor (1989), Prize in fundamental physics (2013) and many others.