Courtesy: News and Protagonists: Stephen and Jane Wilde Hawking at their wedding
The Man Who Beat All The Odds
It is a sad day as the world mourns the loss of one of the greatest minds of this age.
The man who beat the odds in every way possible passed away at his home in Cambridge, England. Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, and cosmologist made some of the greatest contributions to science we have seen. His theories in the 1970s on how the universe began and black holes was what initially won him acclaim.
However, it was his book A Brief History of Time, that really made him famous across the globe. At the young age of 22, he was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ) a motor neuron disease. He was initially given two years to live, but went on to fight the disease for 54 years, never once giving up on his work or letting the condition get the better of him.
Despite having lost his motor skills through the illness, he never lost his sense of humour, making him the iconic, robotic-voiced, wheelchair-bound scientist, who was revered across the world.
The legacy he has left is not just through his work or because he had one of the greatest minds of the 21st century. It is in how he lived his life, perhaps the best gift he gave us, is to have shown us that love truly has no bounds and embracing it can help you overcome all odds.
His love story with his first wife Jane Wilde was captured in the 2014 Oscar-nominated film The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones for which, Redmayne won the Academy Award for best actor in a leading role.
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Jane and Stephen met in the 1960s while at university and it was shortly after their courtship that Hawking was diagnosed with ALS. Yet their love was no match for this illness and the couple went on to tie the knot in 1965, and subsequently had three children, Robert, Lucy, and Tim.
The happy marriage and family life for this couple sadly did not last. Stephen went on to fall in love with his nurse Elaine Mason and Jane with Jonathan Jones, a musician. In 1995 Stephen married Mason and Jane went on to marry Jones in 1997.
Courtesy: Cordon Press: Elaine Mason and Stephen Hawking On Their Wedding
First Love, Greatest Love
For Stephen, his second marriage to Mason also ended in divorce and though Stephen and Jane had a strained relationship— particularly during their divorce—over the years they mended their relationship, even living down the street from one another at one point and ended up remaining great friends!
They were seen affectionately together on the red carpet for the premiere of The Theory of Everything.
