• “It’s going to be the first chance for senators to have someone intimately involved in the program in front of them to answer questions,” a former C.I.A. lawyer said. “I think they’ll take full advantage of that opportunity.”

A mind that roamed the cosmos

• Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist who pondered the origin of the universe from a wheelchair, died today at his home in England. He was 76.

“Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” said a physics professor at the City University of New York.

In 1963, Dr. Hawking learned that he had Lou Gehrig’s disease and was given a few years to live, but he went on to become a world expert in gravity and the properties of black holes. Here are some of his best quotes.

• His 1988 book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes” sold more than 10 million copies and, according to the Times review, made the Big Bang “almost understandable.”