Excerpts from the upcoming biography Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work reveal that Frank Hawking considered his son a lazy child who “studied little” and lacked initiative. His mother, Isobel, also noted that Stephen suffered from an inferiority complex and temporarily lost faith in physics while at Oxford. Despite his family’s concerns and a devastating ALS diagnosis at age 21—with doctors giving him only two years to live—Hawking defied all expectations. He lived until 2018, passing away at age 76. During his lifetime, he became the world’s most famous astrophysicist. He authored the multi-million-copy bestseller A Brief History of Time and revolutionized our understanding of black holes.
Super-genius Stephen Hawking was a lazy child who “didn’t study much,” his father claimed in a new biography. “We are a little concerned about the sort of person Stephen is becoming. He wanders aimlessly about the house, showing little initiative, and studies very little,” Frank Hawking wrote in his diaries in 1961, according to the forthcoming book Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work.
Frank went on to write that his wife, Isobel (Stephen’s mother), had told him: “He has an inferiority complex about me (there is no need for that), and he has lost faith in physics at Oxford, considering it inferior to the humanities. It is a great pity if that is the case.” The book excerpt also states that Frank Hawking wrote this. Two years later, at the age of 21, Hawking was diagnosed with ALS and told he had two years to live. He defiantly defied the predictions of both his father and his doctors and lived to become the world’s most famous astrophysicist. He passed away in 2018 at the age of 76, the New York Post writes.
Hawking also wrote the book A Brief History of Time, published on September 1, 1988, which sold over 25 million copies worldwide. This earned him legendary status as one of the most celebrated minds of our time.
Perhaps most notably, Hawking was renowned for his groundbreaking work on black holes. He shared these words in the book’s closing paragraph: “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and think about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. No matter how difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. The important thing is simply not to give up.”