Stephen Hawking's Birth Chart

The Moon began at 18°31′ Virgo and entered Libra at 8:48 PM on the wartime clock, so the first 20 hours 48 minutes give a Virgo Moon and the last 3 hours 11 minutes a Libra one. Such a change within the birth date touches about 44% of 1940s charts. From 6:27 AM the Moon was also conjunct Neptune, a contact modern astrologers tie to impressionable, imaginative feeling.

At Oxford's 51°45′ north, Libra and Virgo each held the horizon for 2 hours 50 minutes, over three times as long as Pisces or Aries at 51 minutes apiece. Daylight on the advanced clock ran from 9:10 AM to 5:13 PM, which leaves about 66% of the date's minutes to a night chart. The circulating 2:29 AM falls in Libra on that clock, in Scorpio on AstroSage's Greenwich setting.

The ranking blends how seldom 1940s births share a feature with its astrological weight, which puts Mars above the Moon's sign change. Mars sits at 28°04′ of Aries, its own sign, a dignity about one chart in 6 can claim; Jupiter's Gemini detriment holds for about one chart in 5. Venus in Saturn's Aquarius and Saturn in Venus's Taurus form a mutual reception, a swap some pair of planets makes in about 45% of those births; medieval authors let the two act for each other, though here they also square.

Venus covered just 0°10′ all day and turned retrograde inside a week, about one chart in 14 by the cohort's count; astrologers who track stations weight such a planet heavily. Jupiter through Pluto stayed retrograde end to end (see the retrograde calendar), with Neptune 0°07′ short of Libra and backing away from it. Swift Mercury was under the beams; Pluto, at 23°34′ north declination, was out of bounds all day.

Over the whole date nine aspects held. An earth grand trine links Mercury, Uranus and Neptune across Capricorn, Taurus and Virgo; grand trines of any element turn up in about one chart in 38 from the 1940s, and modern writers equate the earth kind with practical ease, prone to inertia. Mercury's square to Mars went exact during the day and never widened past 0°51′; traditional readings link it to a quick, combative turn of mind. The other eleven aspects, all but two lunar, wait on the hour.

No planet stood in a water sign, as in about one chart in 8 born in the 1940s. The Sun, Mercury, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune held earth signs all day, and the Moon made it six until it left Virgo, a weighting seen in about one chart in 9 from the decade; Uranus and Neptune held those signs for years, so the tilt is partly generational. The planets form a seesaw whose wider gap spans 107°40′.

Muhammad Ali, born in Louisville later that January, comes nearest: Venus turned retrograde between the two births while Jupiter and Saturn crawled backward, so all three sit within a degree of Hawking's, beside a shared Capricorn Sun. Salman Khan, Tiger Woods and Jeff Bezos follow, linked mainly by the Sun. No databank page shares the date.

Lahiri's correction for early 1942 was 23°02′, enough to put the Sun in Sagittarius and carry the Moon from Leo into Virgo during the morning. Pluto lands in Cancer, so this version of the chart does hold water, while Saturn in Aries and Venus in Capricorn no longer swap signs. Mars holds Aries in both.

Saturn moved only 0°01′ over the date, so its returns, timed here for Oxford noon, barely shift with the hour: the first needed three passes between August 5, 1970, and April 15, 1971, and the second fell on May 21, 2000. Jupiter returned six times before Hawking's death on March 14, 2018, starting on July 3, 1953.

Oxford's date began at 23:00 UTC on January 7, 1942, midnight on its wartime UTC+1 clock. Positions from precise astronomical calculations were taken at both edges and cut to the arc-minute, and aspects were tested every 10 minutes of the local date. Rates are shares of simulated 1940s births spread over the decade and over cities weighted by the square root of population; quoted readings describe a tradition, not the man.