Stephen Hawking is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant physicists of the modern era. However, newly discovered diaries written by his father tell a different story. Frank Hawking, a specialist in tropical diseases, kept private journals for over sixty years. Many entries were written using Greek script to maintain privacy. These diaries have recently been uncovered and decoded by biographer Graham Farmelo.
In a diary entry from January 1961, Frank expressed concern about his nineteen-year-old son. He wrote that Stephen showed little initiative and did not study much. Stephen's mother, Isobel, reportedly believed her son had lost faith in physics at Oxford. She suggested he felt the subject was inferior to the arts. The diaries reveal that the future scientific icon had nearly abandoned his academic path.
The private documents were discovered at the home of Hawking's sister, Mary. Farmelo decoded more than two hundred thousand words from the encoded journals. The material will appear in the first authorized biography of Hawking, due in September. The biography, published by John Murray, has been supported by Hawking's children. Farmelo described the archive as a valuable source of insight into Hawking's formative years.
Despite his father's early concerns, Hawking earned a first-class degree in physics from Oxford. He then completed his doctorate at Cambridge University by the age of twenty-four. At twenty-one, he had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to live. Nevertheless, he defied all expectations and lived until 2018, reaching the age of seventy-six. His remarkable journey from a seemingly unmotivated student to a global scientific figure remains profoundly inspiring.
