Stephen Hawking

Personal life

Marriages

Hawking met his future wife, Jane Wilde, at a party in 1962. The following year, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. In October 1964, the couple became engaged to marry, aware of the potential challenges that lay ahead due to Hawking's shortened life expectancy and physical limitations.[120][220] Hawking later said that the engagement gave him "something to live for".[221] The two were married on 14 July 1965 in their shared hometown of St Albans.[81]
The couple resided in Cambridge, within Hawking's walking distance to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). During their first years of marriage, Jane lived in London during the week as she completed her degree at Westfield College. They travelled to the United States several times for conferences and physics-related visits. Jane began a PhD programme through Westfield College in medieval Spanish poetry (completed in 1981). The couple had three children: Robert, born May 1967,[222][223] Lucy, born November 1970,[224] and Timothy, born April 1979.[116]
Hawking rarely discussed his illness and physical challenges—even, in a precedent set during their courtship, with Jane.[225] His disabilities meant that the responsibilities of home and family rested firmly on his wife's increasingly overwhelmed shoulders, leaving him more time to think about physics.[226] Upon his appointment in 1974 to a year-long position at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, Jane proposed that a graduate or post-doctoral student live with them and help with his care. Hawking accepted, and Bernard Carr travelled with them as the first of many students who fulfilled this role.[227][228] The family spent a generally happy and stimulating year in Pasadena.[229]
Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a new home and a new job, as reader. Don Page, with whom Hawking had begun a close friendship at Caltech, arrived to work as the live-in graduate student assistant. With Page's help and that of a secretary, Jane's responsibilities were reduced so she could return to her doctoral thesis and her new interest in singing.[230]
Around December 1977, Jane met organist Jonathan Hellyer Jones when singing in a church choir. Hellyer Jones became close to the Hawking family and, by the mid-1980s, he and Jane had developed romantic feelings for each other.[119][231][232] According to Jane, her husband was accepting of the situation, stating "he would not object so long as I continued to love him".[119][233][234] Jane and Hellyer Jones were determined not to break up the family, and their relationship remained platonic for a long period.[235]
By the 1980s, Hawking's marriage had been strained for many years. Jane felt overwhelmed by the intrusion into their family life of the required nurses and assistants.[236] The impact of his celebrity status was challenging for colleagues and family members, while the prospect of living up to a worldwide fairytale image was daunting for the couple.[237][181] Hawking's views of religion also contrasted with her strong Christian faith and resulted in tension.[181][238][239] After a tracheotomy in 1985, Hawking required a full-time nurse and nursing care was split across three shifts daily. In the late 1980s, Hawking grew close to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, to the dismay of some colleagues, caregivers, and family members, who were disturbed by her strength of personality and protectiveness.[240] In February 1990, Hawking told Jane that he was leaving her for Mason[241] and departed the family home.[143] After his divorce from Jane in 1995, Hawking married Mason in September,[143][242] declaring, "It's wonderful – I have married the woman I love."[243]
In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, describing her marriage to Hawking and its breakdown. Its revelations caused a sensation in the media but, as was his usual practice regarding his personal life, Hawking made no public comment except to say that he did not read biographies about himself.[244] After his second marriage, Hawking's family felt excluded and marginalised from his life.[239] For a period of about five years in the early 2000s, his family and staff became increasingly worried that he was being physically abused.[245] Police investigations took place, but were closed as Hawking refused to make a complaint.[246]
In 2006, Hawking and Mason quietly divorced,[247][248] and Hawking resumed closer relationships with Jane, his children, and his grandchildren.[181][248] Reflecting on this happier period, a revised version of Jane's book, re-titled Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, appeared in 2007,[246] and was made into a film, The Theory of Everything, in 2014.[249]

Disability

Hawking had a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease (MND; also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease), a fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects the motor neurones in the brain and spinal cord, which gradually paralysed him over decades.[21]
Hawking had experienced increasing clumsiness during his final year at Oxford, including a fall on some stairs and difficulties when rowing.[250][251] The problems worsened, and his speech became slightly slurred. His family noticed the changes when he returned home for Christmas, and medical investigations were begun.[252][253] The MND diagnosis came when Hawking was 21, in 1963. At the time, doctors gave him a life expectancy of two years.[254][255]
In the late 1960s, Hawking's physical abilities declined: he began to use crutches and could no longer give lectures regularly.[256] As he slowly lost the ability to write, he developed compensatory visual methods, including seeing equations in terms of geometry.[257][258] The physicist Werner Israel later compared the achievements to Mozart composing an entire symphony in his head.[259][260] Hawking was fiercely independent and unwilling to accept help or make concessions for his disabilities. He preferred to be regarded as "a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all the ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person."[261] His wife Jane later noted: "Some people would call it determination, some obstinacy. I've called it both at one time or another."[262] He required much persuasion to accept the use of a wheelchair at the end of the 1960s,[263] but ultimately became notorious for the wildness of his wheelchair driving.[264] Hawking was a popular and witty colleague, but his illness, as well as his reputation for brashness, distanced him from some.[262]
When Hawking first began using a wheelchair he was using standard motorised models. The earliest surviving example of these chairs was made by BEC Mobility and sold by Christie's in November 2018 for £296,750.[265] Hawking continued to use this type of chair until the early 1990s, at which time his ability to use his hands to drive a wheelchair deteriorated. Hawking used a variety of different chairs from that time, including a DragonMobility Dragon elevating powerchair from 2007, as shown in the April 2008 photo of Hawking attending NASA's 50th anniversary;[266] a Permobil C350 from 2014; and then a Permobil F3 from 2016.[267]
Hawking's speech deteriorated, and by the late 1970s he could be understood by only his family and closest friends. To communicate with others, someone who knew him well would interpret his speech into intelligible speech.[268] Spurred by a dispute with the university over who would pay for the ramp needed for him to enter his workplace, Hawking and his wife campaigned for improved access and support for those with disabilities in Cambridge,[269][270] including adapted student housing at the university.[271] In general, Hawking had ambivalent feelings about his role as a disability rights champion: while wanting to help others, he also sought to detach himself from his illness and its challenges.[272] His lack of engagement in this area led to some criticism.[273]
During a visit to CERN on the border of France and Switzerland in mid-1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening; he was so ill that Jane was asked if life support should be terminated. She refused, but the consequence was a tracheotomy, which required round-the-clock nursing care and caused the loss of what remained of his speech.[274][275] The National Health Service was ready to pay for a nursing home, but Jane was determined that he would live at home. The cost of the care was funded by an American foundation.[276][277] Nurses were hired for the three shifts required to provide the round-the-clock support he required. One of those employed was Elaine Mason, who was to become Hawking's second wife.[278]
For his communication, Hawking initially raised his eyebrows to choose letters on a spelling card,[279] but in 1986 he received a computer program called the "Equalizer" from Walter Woltosz, CEO of Words Plus, who had developed an earlier version of the software to help his mother-in-law, who also had ALS and had lost her ability to speak and write.[280] In a method he used for the rest of his life, Hawking could now simply press a switch to select phrases, words or letters from a bank of about 2,500–3,000 that were scanned.[281][282] The program was originally run on a desktop computer. Elaine Mason's husband, David, a computer engineer, adapted a small computer and attached it to his wheelchair.[283]
Released from the need to use somebody to interpret his speech, Hawking commented that "I can communicate better now than before I lost my voice."[284] The voice he used had an American accent and is no longer produced.[285][286] Despite the later availability of other voices, Hawking retained this original voice, saying that he preferred it and identified with it.[287] Originally, Hawking activated a switch using his hand and could produce up to 15 words per minute.[151] Lectures were prepared in advance and were sent to the speech synthesiser in short sections to be delivered.[285]
Hawking gradually lost the use of his hand, and in 2005 he began to control his communication device with movements of his cheek muscles,[288][289][290] with a rate of about one word per minute.[289] With this decline there was a risk of him developing locked-in syndrome, so Hawking collaborated with Intel Corporation researchers on systems that could translate his brain patterns or facial expressions into switch activations. After several prototypes that did not perform as planned, they settled on an adaptive word predictor made by the London-based startup SwiftKey, which used a system similar to his original technology. Hawking had an easier time adapting to the new system, which was further developed after inputting large amounts of Hawking's papers and other written materials and uses predictive software similar to other smartphone keyboards.[181][280][290][291]
By 2009, he could no longer drive his wheelchair independently, but the same people who created his new typing mechanics were working on a method to drive his chair using movements made by his chin. This proved difficult, since Hawking could not move his neck, and trials showed that while he could indeed drive the chair, the movement was sporadic and jumpy.[280][292] Near the end of his life, Hawking experienced increased breathing difficulties, often resulting in his requiring the usage of a ventilator, and being regularly hospitalised.[181]

Disability outreach

Starting in the 1990s, Hawking accepted the mantle of role model for disabled people, lecturing and participating in fundraising activities.[293] At the turn of the century, he and eleven other humanitarians signed the Charter for the Third Millennium on Disability, which called on governments to prevent disability and protect the rights of disabled people.[294][295] In 1999, Hawking was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society.[296]
In August 2012, Hawking narrated the "Enlightenment" segment of the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony in London.[297] In 2013, the biographical documentary film Hawking, in which Hawking himself is featured, was released.[298] In September 2013, he expressed support for the legalisation of assisted suicide for the terminally ill.[299] In August 2014, Hawking accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge to promote ALS/MND awareness and raise contributions for research. As he had pneumonia in 2013, he was advised not to have ice poured over him, but his children volunteered to accept the challenge on his behalf.[300]

Plans for a trip to space

Hawking taking a zero-gravity flight in a reduced-gravity aircraft, April 2007
In late 2006, Hawking revealed in a BBC interview that one of his greatest unfulfilled desires was to travel to space;[301] on hearing this, Richard Branson offered a free flight into space with Virgin Galactic, which Hawking immediately accepted. Besides personal ambition, he was motivated by the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential of people with disabilities.[302] On 26 April 2007, Hawking flew aboard a specially-modified Boeing 727–200 jet operated by Zero-G Corp off the coast of Florida to experience weightlessness.[303] Fears that the manoeuvres would cause him undue discomfort proved incorrect, and the flight was extended to eight parabolic arcs.[301] It was described as a successful test to see if he could withstand the g-forces involved in space flight.[304] At the time, the date of Hawking's trip to space was projected to be as early as 2009, but commercial flights to space did not commence before his death.[305]

Death

Hawking died at his home in Cambridge on 14 March 2018, at the age of 76.[306][307][308] His family stated that he "died peacefully".[309][310] He was eulogised by figures in science, entertainment, politics, and other areas.[311][312][313][314] The Gonville and Caius College flag flew at half-mast and a book of condolences was signed by students and visitors.[315][316][317] A tribute was made to Hawking in the closing speech by IPC President Andrew Parsons at the closing ceremony of the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.[318]
His private funeral took place on 31 March 2018,[319] at Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge.[319][320] Guests at the funeral included The Theory of Everything actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, and model Lily Cole.[321][322] In addition, actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Stephen Hawking in Hawking, astronaut Tim Peake, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees and physicist Kip Thorne provided readings at the service.[323] Although Hawking was an atheist, the funeral took place with a traditional Anglican service.[324][325] Following the cremation, a service of thanksgiving was held at Westminster Abbey on 15 June 2018, after which his ashes were interred in the Abbey's nave, between the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.[16][321][326][327]
Stephen Hawking's memorial stone in Westminster Abbey
Inscribed on his memorial stone are the words "Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking 1942–2018" and his most famed equation.[328] He directed, at least fifteen years before his death, that the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy equation be his epitaph.[329][330][note 1] In June 2018, it was announced that Hawking's words, set to music by Greek composer Vangelis, would be beamed into space from a European space agency satellite dish in Spain with the aim of reaching the nearest black hole, 1A 0620-00.[335]
Hawking's final broadcast interview, about the detection of gravitational waves resulting from the collision of two neutron stars, occurred in October 2017.[336] His final words to the world appeared posthumously, in April 2018, in the form of a Smithsonian TV Channel documentary entitled, Leaving Earth: Or How to Colonize a Planet.[337][338] One of his final research studies, entitled A smooth exit from eternal inflation?, about the origin of the universe, was published in the Journal of High Energy Physics in May 2018.[339][218][340] Later, in October 2018, another of his final research studies, entitled Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair,[341] was published, and dealt with the "mystery of what happens to the information held by objects once they disappear into a black hole".[342][343] Also in October 2018, Hawking's last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, a popular science book presenting his final comments on the most important questions facing humankind, was published.[344][345][346]
On 8 November 2018, an auction of 22 personal possessions of Stephen Hawking, including his doctoral thesis ("Properties of Expanding Universes", PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 1965) and wheelchair, took place, and fetched about £1.8 m.[347][348] Proceeds from the auction sale of the wheelchair went to two charities, the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Stephen Hawking Foundation;[349] proceeds from Hawking's other items went to his estate.[348]
In March 2019, it was announced that the Royal Mint would issue a commemorative 50p coin, only available as a commemorative edition,[350] in honour of Hawking.[351] The same month, Hawking's nurse, Patricia Dowdy, was struck off the nursing register for "failures over his care and financial misconduct."[352]
In May 2021 it was announced that an Acceptance-in-Lieu agreement between HMRC, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Cambridge University Library, Science Museum Group, and the Hawking Estate, would see around 10,000 pages of Hawking's scientific and other papers remain in Cambridge, while objects including his wheelchairs, speech synthesisers, and personal memorabilia from his former Cambridge office would be housed at the Science Museum.[353] In February 2022 the "Stephen Hawking at Work" display opened at the Science Museum, London as the start of a two-year nationwide tour.[354]

Personal views

Philosophy is unnecessary

At Google's Zeitgeist Conference in 2011, Stephen Hawking said that "philosophy is dead". He believed that philosophers "have not kept up with modern developments in science", "have not taken science sufficiently seriously and so Philosophy is no longer relevant to knowledge claims", "their art is dead" and that scientists "have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge". He said that philosophical problems can be answered by science, particularly new scientific theories which "lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it".[355] His view was both praised and criticized.[356]

Future of humanity

President Barack Obama talks with Hawking in the White House before a ceremony presenting him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 12 August 2009.
In 2006, Hawking posed an open question on the Internet: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?", later clarifying: "I don't know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face."[357]
Hawking expressed concern that life on Earth is at risk from a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, global warming, or other dangers humans have not yet thought of.[302][358] Hawking stated: "I regard it as almost inevitable that either a nuclear confrontation or environmental catastrophe will cripple the Earth at some point in the next 1,000 years", and considered an "asteroid collision" to be the biggest threat to the planet.[344] Such a planet-wide disaster need not result in human extinction if the human race were to be able to colonise additional planets before the disaster.[358] Hawking viewed spaceflight and the colonisation of space as necessary for the future of humanity.[302][359]
Hawking stated that, given the vastness of the universe, aliens likely exist, but that contact with them should be avoided.[360][361] He warned that aliens might pillage Earth for resources. In 2010 he said, "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."[361]
Hawking warned that superintelligent artificial intelligence could be pivotal in steering humanity's fate, stating that "the potential benefits are huge... Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. It might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."[362][363] He feared that "an extremely intelligent future AI will probably develop a drive to survive and acquire more resources as a step toward accomplishing whatever goal it has", and that "The real risk with AI isn't malice but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we're in trouble".[364] He also considered that the enormous wealth generated by machines needs to be redistributed to prevent exacerbated economic inequality.[364]
Hawking was concerned about the future emergence of a race of "superhumans" that would be able to design their own evolution[344] and, as well, argued that computer viruses in today's world should be considered a new form of life, stating that "maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image."[365]

Religion and atheism

Hawking was an atheist.[366][367] In an interview published in The Guardian, Hawking regarded "the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail", and the concept of an afterlife as a "fairy story for people afraid of the dark".[307][138] In 2011, narrating the first episode of the American television series Curiosity on the Discovery Channel, Hawking declared:

We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.[368][369]

Hawking's association with atheism and freethinking was in evidence from his university years onwards, when he had been a member of Oxford University's humanist group. He was later scheduled to appear as the keynote speaker at a 2017 Humanists UK conference.[370] In an interview with El Mundo, he said:

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn't. I'm an atheist.[366]

In addition, Hawking stated:

If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God', but it wouldn't be a personal God that you would meet and put questions to.[344]

Politics

Hawking was a longstanding Labour Party supporter.[371][372] He recorded a tribute for the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore,[373] called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a "war crime",[372][374] campaigned for nuclear disarmament,[371][372] and supported stem cell research,[372][375] universal health care,[376] and action to prevent climate change.[377] In August 2014, Hawking was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[378] Hawking believed a United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) would damage the UK's contribution to science as modern research needs international collaboration, and that free movement of people in Europe encourages the spread of ideas.[379] Hawking said to Theresa May, "I deal with tough mathematical questions every day, but please don't ask me to help with Brexit."[380] Hawking was disappointed by Brexit and warned against envy and isolationism.[381]
Hawking was greatly concerned over health care, and maintained that without the UK National Health Service, he could not have survived into his 70s.[382] Hawking especially feared privatisation. He stated, "The more profit is extracted from the system, the more private monopolies grow and the more expensive healthcare becomes. The NHS must be preserved from commercial interests and protected from those who want to privatise it."[383] Hawking blamed the Conservatives for cutting funding to the NHS, weakening it by privatisation, lowering staff morale through holding pay back and reducing social care.[384] Hawking accused Jeremy Hunt of cherry picking evidence which Hawking maintained debased science.[382] Hawking also stated, "There is overwhelming evidence that NHS funding and the numbers of doctors and nurses are inadequate, and it is getting worse."[385] In June 2017, Hawking endorsed the Labour Party in the 2017 UK general election, citing the Conservatives' proposed cuts to the NHS. But he was also critical of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, expressing scepticism over whether the party could win a general election under him.[386]
Hawking feared Donald Trump's policies on global warming could endanger the planet and make global warming irreversible. He said, "Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children."[387] Hawking further stated that this could lead Earth "to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid".[388]
Hawking was also a supporter of a universal basic income.[389] He was critical of the Israeli government's position on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, stating that their policy "is likely to lead to disaster."[390]

Appearances in popular media

Further information: Stephen Hawking in popular culture
Hawking in Monty Python's "Galaxy Song" video at the comedy troupe's 2014 reunion show, Monty Python Live (Mostly)
In 1988, Hawking, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan were interviewed in God, the Universe and Everything Else. They discussed the Big Bang theory, God and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.[391]
At the release party for the home video version of the A Brief History of Time, Leonard Nimoy, who had played Spock on Star Trek, learned that Hawking was interested in appearing on the show. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993.[392][393] The same year, his synthesiser voice was recorded for the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking",[394][175] and in 1999 for an appearance on The Simpsons.[395] Hawking appeared in documentaries titled The Real Stephen Hawking (2001),[295] Stephen Hawking: Profile (2002)[396] and Hawking (2013), and the documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe (2008).[397] Hawking also guest-starred in Futurama[181] and had a recurring role in The Big Bang Theory.[398]
Hawking allowed the use of his copyrighted voice[399][400] in the biographical 2014 film The Theory of Everything, in which he was portrayed by Eddie Redmayne in an Academy Award-winning role.[401] Hawking was featured at the Monty Python Live (Mostly) show in 2014. He was shown to sing an extended version of the "Galaxy Song", after running down Brian Cox with his wheelchair, in a pre-recorded video.[402][403]
Hawking used his fame to advertise products, including a wheelchair,[295] National Savings,[404] British Telecom, Specsavers, Egg Banking,[405] and Go Compare.[406] In 2015, he applied to trademark his name.[407]
Broadcast in March 2018 just a week or two before his death, Hawking was the voice of The Book Mark II on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and he was the guest of Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk.[408]
The 2021 animated sitcom The Freak Brothers features a recurring character, Mayor Pimco, who is apparently modeled after Stephen Hawking.[409]
On 8 January 2022, Google featured Hawking in a Google Doodle on the occasion of his 80th birth anniversary.[410]