From running over Prince Charles’ toes to strip clubs: A brief history of Stephen Hawking’s triumph over adversity

On the same day that Albert Einstein was born, his intellectual heir Stephen Hawking left us. He has a way of picking days. Even his birth date was a red-letter day; Hawking was born on 8th January, exactly 300 years after the death of another giant - Galileo.

Perhaps the world’s most well-known scientist, Hawking died peacefully in his sleep, according to his family’s statement. 

Hawking’s life is a reminder for all of us mere mortals, particularly us millennials who seem to have evolved into a constantly whiny bunch of procrastinators, that there’s always a way to overcome adversity.

Sure, we all don’t have the towering intellect to try and reconcile Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with Planck’s Quantum mechanics to create the Theory of Everything, but that doesn’t mean that we let our shortcomings define us.

 In fact, even if we don’t understand how Hawking helped us comprehend the physical world, his life is a testament to the indomitable human spirit with the simple message - it's never too late. 

A young man becomes almost completely physically debilitated & confined to a wheelchair, so what does he do? He decides to take on the entire universe. And in doing so, he ends up inspiring much of the planet.

RIP Prof. Stephen Hawking pic.twitter.com/1VfXmyX2b8

— Cormac Bride (@CormacBride) March 14, 2018

As a young man, Hawking was a non-directional youth and at his boys’ boarding school, his friends had bet that Stephen would ‘never amount to anything’.

Despite being diagnosed with ALS in his early 20s – a disease that has existed long before people started pouring ice-cold water over their heads – Hawking led a full-life which included winning every major award other than the Nobel, writing one of the most sold science books of all time and becoming pop culture icon which included roles in popular shows like The Big Bang Theory and the Simpsons. 

Hawking’s work showed that singularities – points where space-time was infinitely curved – were allowed by Einstein’s theory of gravity and that it showed a singularity in our distant past i.e. the Big Bang. He also worked on blackhole mechanics, showed how blackholes can vanish, how galaxies arose and postulated the ‘wave function of the universe’

Other than trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe, he was also one of the world’s most popular science authors, trying to make physics comprehensible to the layman. His works include A Brief History of Times Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, the Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design and My Brief History.

His awards include thirteen Honorary degrees, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and only two major gongs eluded him in his lifetime – the Nobel Prize in Physics and a knighthood.

Despite the motor-neurone disease that was diagnosed after his 21st birthday, Hawking lived a life richer than most mortals. When he was diagnosed with the ailment, he was driven to despair and depression like any of us would, drinking a lot and playing Wanger and didn’t think anything was worth doing. However, he outlived the initial death sentence of two years by well-over half a century. 

This photo of Stephen Hawking in zero gravity brings me immense joy. #RIP pic.twitter.com/0r3wZfKc5L

— Meredith Frost (@MeredithFrost) March 14, 2018

Famously described by Peter Guzzardi, editor of The Brief History of Time as ‘Darth Vader with a head cold’, the book would set up the Stephen Hawking Pop Culture Industry, netting over $ 6 million. Along the way he would experience zero gravity, make regular audiences with the high and mighty, become an action figure, delight with a recurring role in the Simpsons and more recently as an acquaintance of fictional genius Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. His life would become the subject of an Oscar-winning movie. 

He had two marriages, survived what can only be considered domestic abuse from his second wife and was according to those near him quite obsessed with his own celebrity. Like Cooper he was no angel but a self-centred man who believed in his own genius.

His wit was self-evident at a meeting with John Oliver when he wryly observed that the existence of multiple universes would mean that at least the comedian would be ‘funny in one of them’.

Quite interestingly, he had no qualms about belittling those that irritated him and even ran his wheelchair over the toes of Prince Charles and one of his life’s greater regrets was not being able to mete out the same treatment for former British Premier Margaret Thatcher.

He survived the alleged domestic abuses of his second wife and his former nurse Elaine Mason which included a broken femur, a fractured wrist and once being left out in the sun which gave him sunburn. He however denied all charges, furiously guarding his private life.

(Stephen Hawking at the Stringfellows 2003)

Despite his debilitating condition, he was a man who didn't shy away from life. Proprieter Peter Stringfellow had described him as the ‘man lives within his brain and still manages to feel the overwhelming power of sex’. 

He remembers: “I went and introduced myself and said, ‘Mr. Hawking, it’s an honour to meet you. If you could spare a minute or two, I’d love to chat with you about the universe. “Then I paused for a bit and joked, ‘Or would you rather look at the girls?’ “There was silence for a moment, and then he answered, ‘The Girls.’”

One report even described him at California strip club Devore lying on a bed ‘fully clothed with two naked women gyrating on top’, even though the Cambridge University Press has called the incident ‘greatly exaggerated’.

Commenting on his own motor-neuro disease, he had observed that hadn’t stopped him from having a family and being successful noting: “It shows that one need not lose hope."

Even on death, the Master of the Universe was famously no-nonsense approach calling the notion that afterlife existed a ‘fairy story for people afraid of dark’. He had said: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

But he was in no hurry to die, saying: “I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.”  So, when you are feeling down, when you feel you've dealt a bad card. Remember there was a man trapped in his own body was trying to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe. And all he had to do that with was a single cheek muscle. It didn't stop him from having a full life, to having led for better and worse. So, all of us can ask ourselves, what's our excuse?