60 Fun Facts About Stephen Hawking

Hawking was born in Oxford in 1942 into a family of what profession?

His mother came from a family of doctors in Glasgow and his father was a medical researcher; he found medicine 'too inexact' and chose physics.

Which prestigious Cambridge chair did Hawking occupy from 1979 to 2009?

University rules obliged him to retire from it at 67; he stayed on as director of research.

At the age of 21 Hawking was diagnosed with what condition?

It was a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form that paralysed him gradually over five decades.

How long did doctors initially expect Hawking to live after his 1963 diagnosis?

He lived another 55 years, dying in 2018 at 76.

The eccentric Hawking family travelled around their Hertfordshire town in what unusual vehicle?

Meals at home were often spent with everyone silently reading a book.

As a boy Hawking spent four months in Mallorca at the home of which poet, a friend of his mother's?

The trip happened during one of his father's long research absences in Africa.

What was Hawking's nickname at school?

He was not initially a strong student, and only later showed his aptitude for science.

Hawking and his school friends built a computer from an old telephone switchboard and what?

The teacher, Dikran Tahta, inspired him to study mathematics at university.

Hawking's father Frank was a medical researcher specialising in what?

His frequent research trips to Africa left the rest of the family free for adventures such as four months in Mallorca.

Which sport did Hawking take up at Oxford, as a cox with a daredevil reputation?

His coach recalled him steering crews on risky courses that led to damaged boats.

Roughly how many hours did Hawking estimate he studied over his three years at Oxford?

He found the work 'ridiculously easy' and answered only theoretical physics questions in his finals.

At his Oxford viva, Hawking told the examiners that if awarded a Second he would do what?

The examiners, he was told later, realised they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves, and gave him the First.

Which cosmologist was Hawking disappointed to be assigned as his PhD supervisor instead of Fred Hoyle?

It was Sciama's encouragement that pulled him back to work after the depression that followed his diagnosis.

At which Cambridge college did Hawking begin his graduate work in October 1962?

He first got there after a trip to Iran with a friend to celebrate his Oxford First.

Hawking held a fellowship from 1966 for the rest of his life at which Cambridge college?

The college flew its flag at half-mast when he died in 2018.

Hawking's 1966 PhD thesis was titled 'Properties of' what?

When Cambridge put it online in 2017 it instantly became the most requested item in the university's repository.

With which mathematician did Hawking prove the singularity theorems and later share the 1988 Wolf Prize?

In 1970 they showed that a universe obeying general relativity must have begun as a singularity.

Per the 'no-hair theorem' Hawking supported, a black hole has only mass, electric charge and what?

The theorem, named by John Archibald Wheeler, says how the hole formed leaves no other trace.

In 1974 Hawking proposed that black holes emit radiation and may eventually do what?

The idea was controversial at first but accepted as a major breakthrough by the late 1970s.

Which physicist dismissed Hawking radiation as 'absolute rubbish' after hearing him lecture on it?

Experimental teams have since claimed to detect the effect in acoustic and optical analogues of black holes.

Hawking bet Kip Thorne that Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole, describing the wager as what?

If black holes turned out not to exist, at least he would win the bet; he conceded in 1990.

From 1974 onwards, Hawking spent about a month almost every year at which institution in California?

His first stint there was a year-long visiting professorship, with a live-in graduate student to help with his care.

Hawking's 1979 inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor asked whether the end was in sight for what?

He tipped N = 8 supergravity as the theory that might finish the job.

Hawking's 1981 black-hole information claim started a 'war' with Gerard 't Hooft and which physicist?

By 2014 Hawking was calling the information-loss idea his 'biggest blunder'.

The Hartle-Hawking 'no-boundary' proposal likened the beginning of the universe to which point on Earth?

One cannot go north of it, yet there is no edge there, just the place where all north-running lines meet.

Which mass-market publisher did Hawking choose for A Brief History of Time?

He wanted the advance to pay for his children's education and household costs.

For a record-breaking how many weeks did A Brief History of Time sit on the Sunday Times bestseller list?

Published in 1988, it had sold an estimated 9 million copies by 2009.

Who directed the 1991 documentary film A Brief History of Time?

Hawking had wanted a purely scientific film but was persuaded to let it be biographical too; it was a critical success but not widely released.

In 2009 Hawking threw a party for whom, sending out the invitations only after it was over?

As he expected, nobody turned up, which he took as light-hearted support for his conjecture that travel into the past is impossible.

Hawking lost a long-running bet in 2012 when which particle was discovered at CERN?

He promptly said Peter Higgs deserved the Nobel Prize, which Higgs won in 2013.

Hawking co-wrote the children's book George's Secret Key to the Universe with which of his children?

Four sequels followed between 2009 and 2016.

How many PhD students did Hawking supervise to completion during his career?

He retired from the Lucasian chair in 2009 but kept working as director of research.

In 2015 Hawking helped launch Breakthrough Initiatives, a project searching for what?

He thought aliens probably exist but warned that contact might go the way of Columbus and the Native Americans.

Hawking's final book, published after his death in 2018, was titled Brief Answers to the what?

It gathered his final thoughts on the most important issues facing humankind.

At a 2011 Google conference, Hawking declared which discipline 'dead'?

He argued its practitioners had not kept up with science, though he conceded that love, faith and morality lie outside physics.

Which UK political party did Hawking support throughout his life?

He said that without the NHS he would not have survived into his 70s.

Hawking supported which interpretation of quantum mechanics?

His later 'top-down cosmology' had the present selecting its past from a superposition of many possible histories.

Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1965 in which town, their shared hometown?

He said the prospect of an early death made him realise life was really worth living.

Jane Hawking completed a PhD in what subject in 1981?

She later wrote the memoir that became the film The Theory of Everything.

Hawking's second wife, Elaine Mason, had been employed as his what?

They married in 1995 and quietly divorced in 2006, after which he grew close to Jane and his children again.

Jane Hawking's memoir Travelling to Infinity was adapted into which 2014 film?

It was a revised version of her earlier, more bitter memoir Music to Move the Stars.

Which actor won an Academy Award for playing Hawking in the 2014 biopic?

Hawking let the film use his real synthesised voice, which he had copyrighted.

Who played Hawking in the 2004 BBC television film Hawking?

He later gave a reading at Hawking's funeral in Cambridge.

The 1985 bout of pneumonia that led to Hawking's tracheotomy struck during a visit to which laboratory?

Doctors asked Jane whether life support should be switched off; she refused, and he lost what remained of his speech instead.

What was the name of the computer program that first gave Hawking a synthesised voice in 1986?

It came from Walter Woltosz, who had written an earlier version for his mother-in-law, who also had ALS.

Hawking's famous synthesised voice, which he refused to change, had what accent?

He said he preferred it and identified with it, even after more natural voices became available.

From 2005 Hawking controlled his communication device using movements of what?

By then he was down to about one word per minute, and Intel researchers worked on ways to keep him from becoming locked in.

Which London startup made the predictive-text system Hawking adopted late in life?

It was trained on large amounts of his own papers and writings.

Which entrepreneur offered Hawking a free flight into space, one of his greatest unfulfilled desires?

He got as far as a 2007 zero-gravity flight over Florida, extended to eight parabolic arcs because he coped so well.

Hawking's ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey between the graves of Charles Darwin and whom?

The stone reads 'Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking 1942-2018'.

What equation is inscribed on Hawking's memorial stone in Westminster Abbey?

He had specified it as his epitaph at least fifteen years before he died.

Which composer's setting of a Hawking speech was beamed toward a black hole from Spain?

The target, A0620-00, is one of the nearest known black holes to Earth.

Hawking's earliest surviving motorised wheelchair sold at Christie's in 2018 for roughly how much?

The proceeds went to the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Stephen Hawking Foundation.

Hawking's synthesiser voice was recorded in 1993 for which Pink Floyd song?

The same year he played a hologram of himself on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

On Desert Island Discs in 1992, which novel did Hawking choose to take to the island?

His records ranged from Mozart's Requiem to The Beatles' 'Please Please Me'.

At Monty Python Live (Mostly) in 2014, Hawking appeared on video singing which Python number?

The clip also showed him running down Brian Cox with his wheelchair.

Hawking reportedly declined a knighthood in the late 1990s in protest at what?

He did accept a CBE in 1982 and became a Companion of Honour in 1989.

Which honour, America's highest for a civilian, did Hawking receive in 2009?

Three years earlier he had received the Royal Society's Copley Medal.

In 2008 Hawking unveiled the 'Chronophage', a time-eating mechanical clock at which Cambridge college?

The honour was a nod to his long association with the physics of time.

In 2019 the Royal Mint issued a commemorative coin of what denomination in Hawking's honour?

It was available only as a commemorative edition, not for circulation.