hawking-the man with motor neurone disease

Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England, to Frank (1905–1986) and Isobel Hawking (née Walker; 1915–2013). His mother was Scottish. Despite their families' financial constraints, both parents attended the University of Oxford, where Frank studied medicine and Isobel, Philosophy, Politics and Economics. The two met shortly after the beginning of the Second World War at a medical research institute where she was working as a secretary and he as a medical researcher. They lived in Highgate, but as London was being bombed in those years, Isobel went to Oxford to give birth in greater safety. Hawking has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward.

In 1950, when his father became head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. In St Albans, the family were considered highly intelligent and somewhat eccentric; meals were often spent with each person silently reading a book. They lived a frugal existence in a large, cluttered, and poorly maintained house, and travelled in a converted London taxicab. During one of Hawking's father's frequent absences working in Africa, the rest of the family spent four months in Majorca visiting his mother's friend Beryl and her husband, the poet Robert Graves.

Hawking began his schooling at the Byron House School; he later blamed its "progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school. In St Albans, the eight-year-old Hawking attended St Albans High School for Girls for a few months; at that time, younger boys could attend one of the houses.

He attended Radlett School for a year and from September 1952, St Albans School. The family placed a high value on education. Hawking's father wanted his son to attend the well-regarded Westminster School, but the 13-year-old Hawking was ill on the day of the scholarship examination. His family could not afford the school fees without the financial aid of a scholarship, so Hawking remained at St Albans. A positive consequence was that Hawking remained with a close group of friends with whom he enjoyed board games, the manufacture of fireworks, model aeroplanes and boats, and long discussions about Christianity and extrasensory perception. From 1958, and with the help of the mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta, they built a computer from clock parts, an old telephone switchboard and other recycled components. Although at school he was known as "Einstein", Hawking was not initially successful academically.

Hawking began his university education at University College, Oxford in October 1959 at the age of 17. For the first 18 months, he was bored and lonely: he was younger than many other students, and found the academic work "ridiculously easy". His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said, "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it." A change occurred during his second and third year when, according to Berman, Hawking made more effort "to be one of the boys". He developed into a popular, lively and witty college member, interested in classical music and science fiction.

Hawking was concerned that he was viewed as a lazy and difficult student, so when asked at the oral to describe his future plans, he said, "If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First." He was held in higher regard than he believed: as Berman commented, the examiners "were intelligent enough to realise they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves". After receiving a first-class BA (Hons.) degree, and following a trip to Iran with a friend, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in October 1962.

When Hawking began his graduate studies, there was much debate in the physics community about the prevailing theories of the creation of the universe: the Big Bang and theSteady State theories. Inspired by Roger Penrose's theorem of a spacetime singularity in the centre of black holes, Hawking applied the same thinking to the entire universe, and during 1965 wrote his thesis on this topic.

Hawking has a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neurone disease or Lou Gehrig's disease,  that has gradually paralysed him over the decades.

Hawking had experienced increasing clumsiness during his final year at Oxford, including a fall on some stairs and difficulties when rowing. 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. The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21, in 1963. At the time, doctors gave him a life expectancy of two years.

When Hawking was a graduate student at Cambridge, his relationship with Jane Wilde, a friend of his sister, whom he had met shortly before his diagnosis with motor neurone disease, continued to develop. The couple became engaged in October 1964— Hawking later said that the engagement gave him "something to live for" — and the two were married on 14 July 1965.

During their first years of marriage, Jane lived in London during the week as she completed her degree, and they travelled to the United States several times for conferences and physics-related visits. The couple had difficulty finding housing that was within Hawking's walking distance to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical  Physics(DAMTP). Jane began a PhD programme, and a son, Robert, was born in May 1967. A daughter, Lucy, was born in 1970. A third child, Timothy, was born in April 1979.

In the late 1980s, Hawking had grown 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. Hawking told Jane that he was leaving her for Masonand departed the family home in February 1990. After  his divorce from Jane in 1995, Hawking married Mason in September, declaring "It's wonderful — I have married the woman I love."

In 2006, Hawking and Mason quietly divorced, and Hawking resumed closer relationships with Jane, his children, and grandchildren. Reflecting this happier period, a revised version of Jane's book called Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen appeared in 2007, and was made into a film, The Theory of Everything, in 2014.

In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theorem concepts first explored in his doctoral thesis. This included not only the existence of singularities but also the theory that the universe might have started as a singularity. Their joint essay was the runner-up in the 1968 Gravity Research Foundation competition. In 1970 they published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedmann, then it must have begun as a singularity. In 1969, Hawking accepted a specially created Fellowship for Distinction in Science to remain at Caius.

In 1970, Hawking postulated what became known as the second law of black hole dynamics,that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller. With James M. Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics

Beginning in 1973, Hawking moved into the study of quantum gravity and quantum mechanics. His work in this area was spurred by a visit to Moscow and discussions with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Alexei Starobinsky, whose work showed that according to the uncertainty principle, rotating black holes emit particles.

In 1975, he was awarded both the Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal, and in 1976 the Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Prize and the Hughes Medal Hawking was appointed a professor with a chair in gravitational physics in 1977.The following year he received the Albert Einstein Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford

Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The Universe in a Nutshell in 2001, and A Briefer History of Time which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works to make them accessible to a wider audience, and God Created the Integers, which appeared in 2006. In 2007 Hawking and his daughter Lucy published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book designed to explain theoretical physics in an accessible fashion and featuring characters similar to those in the Hawking family. The book was followed by sequels in 2009 and 2011.

In 2002, following a UK-wide vote, the BBC included Hawking in their list of the 100 Greatest Britons. He was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society (2006),  the Presidential Medal of Freedom which is America's highest civilian honour (2009), and the RussianSpecial Fundamental Physics Prize (2013)

On 20 July 2015, Hawking helped launch Breakthrough Initiatives, an effort to search for extraterrestrial life and attempt to answer the question: Are we alone?