Hourly History - Stephen Hawking: A Life From Beginning to End

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As a young man, Stephen Hawkings future looked bright. In 1963, Hawking was an Oxford physics graduate about to go to Cambridge to pursue his Ph.D., and he had recently met his future wife. Then came the diagnosisHawking had motor neurone disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and was given two years to live. Hawking would defy this diagnosis and went on to live for another five decades. He set himself a simple goal: to gain a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is, and why it exists at all. Over the course of achieving this goal, Stephen Hawking became the worlds mostrenowned physicist, gaining international fame and recognition.

Hawkings first major scientific discovery came in 1970. He applied the mathematics of black holes to the whole universe and showed that a singularity, a region of infinite curvature in spacetime, lay in our distant past. The Big Bang exploded from a singularity. Hawkings radical research into information loss in black holes and cosmic inflation made himone of the most exciting physicists of the twentieth century.

Following the publication of A Brief History of Time (1988), Hawking started on a new journey, that of international stardom. By the last decades of the twentieth century, he was a pop culture icon. Appearing in The Simpsons and Star Trek as well as producing his own documentaries on the nature of the universe, Stephen Hawking became a household name.

Stephen Hawking became known as the Master of the Universe, but more importantly, he was the master of his own life, with the determination, curiosity, and spirit to make it remarkable.

Born on January 8, 1942, Stephen William Hawking was a child of the Second World War. The winter of 1942 was not a fortuitous year to be born into a cash-strapped home in Oxford, United Kingdom. Frank and Isobel Eileen Hawking were not wealthy. Isobel was the second oldest of a brood of seven children, originally from Glasgow, Scotland. Isobels father was a family doctor, a position that gave him standing in the community but little money to raise a family of seven. Franks family had been wealthy once but lost everything in the great agricultural depression of the early twentieth century. Stephens great-great-grandparents survived by turning their home into a school. This is the same measure Marie Curies parents were forced to take in late nineteenth-century Warsaw.

Despite their financial status, Frank and Isobel Hawking both attended Oxford University. That Isobel attended Oxford in the 1930s, only a decade after Oxford began granting degrees to women, is particularly unusual. Isobel read philosophy, politics, and economics, then took on a series of basic secretarial jobs. Eventually, she found a position as a secretary in a medical research institute in Hampstead. It is here that Isobel met Frank. Frank had studied medical science, specializing in tropical medicine. His research took him to East Africa, where he was conducting field research when World War II broke out.

During the war, the Hawkings relocated from London to Oxford where Isobel hoped she would be able to give birth in relative safety. Soon after Stephens birth, the Hawkings returned to their home in Highgate, London. Their home had survived the Blitz, but a V2 rocket that landed a few doors down had blown out their back windows. The young family cleaned the glass shards from their home and settled back into life in London. Isobel and Frank had two more children, Mary (born in 1943) and Philippa (born in 1946). A little boy, Edward Frank David, joined the Hawking family in 1955 through adoption.

Neighbors and friends saw the Hawking family as intelligent and eccentric. The Hawkings followed their own rules. Even during dinner, each family member could be found absorbed in a book. Isobel and Frank encouraged their children to learn about all manner of subjects outside of school. Frank taught the children astronomy and surveying. Isobel left the children for hours at a time at notable British museums around South Kensington. Unsurprisingly, Stephens favorite museum was the Science Museum.

Franks career was going well, and by 1950 he was head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research. The Institute was located in St Albans, Hertfordshire so the Hawking family relocated. In St Albans, the familys reputation for eccentricity intensified. At a time when few families could afford a car, the Hawking family drove a converted London black cab with a table installed in the back for playing cards.

The Hawking house in St Albans is the stuff of legends. In need of renovation when the Hawkings moved in, the house became more derelict-looking as the years wore on. In the post-war years, most families, even those who were once wealthy, lived frugally. The Hawkings took this to the extreme. In the place of central heating, bookshelves stacked with books lined the walls. There was no carpet, broken windows, few electric lights, and an overall atmosphere of Dickensian gloom.

Bizarrely, Stephen attended the St Albans High School for Girls for a few months when he first arrived. Next, he attended Radlett School before moving to the more exclusive St Albans School in 1952. Up to now, Stephens teachers had never considered him to be exceptional. At the Byron House School in Highgate, London, Stephen struggled to learn to read. His handwriting was awful, and his poor coordination made him an undesirable pick for team sports. Although Stephen passed his eleven-plus exam one year early, his performance continued to be below average. His teachers soon recognized this poor academic performance as the result of a lack of effort not a lack of intelligence. Stephen had no desire to prove that he already understood what they were trying to teach him.

Friends of Stephen dubbed him Einstein. Initially, this was due more to his eccentric and sometimes arrogant nature than his aptitude for science. Yet since the age of eight or nine, Stephen had been a self-learner. In his mothers words, he was like a bit of blotting paper, soaking it all up. Frank wanted his son to go to the prestigious Westminster School but couldnt afford the fees. On the day of the scholarship examination, Stephen was ill. Franks hopes for his sons education were dashed, but Stephen was unperturbed. In later years, Stephen said his education at St Albans was as good as the one he would have had at Westminster School. At St Albans Stephen also stayed close to his tight group of friends.

It was with this group of friends that Hawking constructed a computer. Stephen and his friends had always liked to build things. Model airplanes, complex board games, and hazardous fireworks were the norms. Using recycled electrical objects, the friends built LUCE (Logical Uniselector Computing Engine). LUCE was an incredible achievement and could perform simple mathematical functions. With the pressure of a university education looming, LUCE was a happy distraction for Hawking during his last years as a child.

Hawking wanted to study mathematics at university, but job prospects concerned his father. Frank wanted Stephen to go to University College, Oxford, his own alma mater, to study physics and chemistry. Stephen relented. No-one seemed confident that Hawking would do well in his scholarship examinations for Oxford. The head teacher at St Albans tried to convince Stephen to wait a year, and Frank intended to pull some strings to get Stephen in.