Physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking, 76, died earlier today at his home in Cambridge, England according to the New York Times.

The University of Cambridge, where Hawking was a physicist, confirmed his death on its website.

"Professor Hawking was a unique individual who will be remembered with warmth and affection not only in Cambridge but all over the world," Stephen Toope, vice -chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. 

Hawking grew up in London and attended Cambridge as a teenager. He was later diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS, that left him almost completely paralyzed.

According to the BBC, Hawking doctors gave Hawking "no more than two or three years" to live in 1964.

Hawking went on to publish best-selling books including A Brief History Of Time in 1988, which sold more than 10 million copies. The BBC described it as "a layman's guide to cosmology."

A retrospective of the book's publishing recently shared by The Guardian described it as "the quest for the holy grail of science - one theory that could unite two separate fields that worked individually but wholly independent of each other."

Hawking's marriage to his first wife, Jane Hawking, was detailed in the 2014 movie The Theory of Everything. Eddie Redmayne won best actor honors at the Oscars for his portrayal of Hawking in the movie.

"We have lost a truly beautiful mind," Redmayne said in a statement to Mashable following news of Hawking's death.

The cause of Hawking's death has not been released.

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