Stephen Hawking On God: The 1 Line That Still Divides Scientists
“I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.”— Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
That quote belongs to the late Dr. Stephen Hawking, and it goes to show that, despite the long history of antipathy between science and religion, the laws of science do not exclude the possibility of a supreme being.
Stephen Hawking overcame a debilitating illness to become a great cosmologist and arguably the most recognized scientist of modern times
Early Life
Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, to Frank and Isobel Eileen Hawking (née Walker), and raised in St. Albans.
As noted by his BBC mini-bio, “His father was a research biologist and his mother a medical research secretary, so it was not surprising that he was interested in science.
As a student he was drawn to physics and maths as he believed they offered the most fundamental insights into the world. But nothing marked him out as special from his classmates or in his first term at Oxford University.” During his stint at Oxford, Stephen was a member of the school’s boat club.
Doctoral Studes: Finding True Love and Fighting Terrible Adversity
After attaining a first-class BA degree (simply referred to as “first” in British shorthand), Stephen entered into a Ph.D program at Oxford’s chief rival, Cambridge University. It would not be much of an exaggeration to sum up Hawking’s Cambridge experience with the famous line from Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
To elaborate, turn to his Ducksters mini-bio: “While Hawking was working on his Ph.D at Cambridge University, he began to have health issues. His speech became slurred and he became very clumsy, often dropping items or falling for no reason. After going through a series of tests, doctors discovered that Hawking had a disease called ALS (also called Lou Gehrig’s disease). At the time, the doctors said he only had a few years to live.”
NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery. Image Taken by 19FortyFive.com on October 1, 2022.
NASA Space Shuttle Discovery. Image Credit: 19FortyFive.com taken on October 1, 2022.
Hawking, of course, ended up living much longer than that. Ducksters continues: “Although Hawking was initially depressed over his diagnosis, he decided that there were things he wanted to accomplish with his life. He began to study and work harder than ever before. He wanted to earn his PhD before he died. Around the same time, he met and fell in love with a girl named Jane Wilde. Between his work and Jane, Hawking had a reason to live.”
That determination paid off; although he was confined to a wheelchair and could not speak for the majority of his adult life, he was able to communicate using a touchpad computer and a voice synthesizer.
Jane Wilde Hawking, who was also from St. Albans, married Stephen in 1965 and bore him three children (Robert, Lucy, and Jane). She was no intellectual slouch either, earning a Ph.D of her own in medieval Spanish poetry. However, in her own words, “The truth was, there were four partners in our marriage. Stephen and me, motor neuron disease, and physics.”
In 1995, after 30 years of marriage, Stephen and Jane Hawking divorced. Within two years, both had remarried; Stephen to his nurse Elaine Mason (whom in turn he divorced in 2006) and Jane to widower Jonathan Hellyer Jones
Crowning Achievements
Dr. Hawking’s most famous theory—first published in 1974 and now known as Hawking Radiation—demonstrated that black holes emit some radiation. This challenged the longstanding paradigm that black holes could not get smaller, because nothing could escape their enormous gravity. In 1988, he published the book A Brief History of Time, which spent four years on the London Sunday Times bestseller list.
Death and Interment
Hawking died peacefully at his Cambridge home on March 14, 2018, at the age of 76. Although he was an atheist, he was accorded a funeral with a traditional Anglican service at Great St Mary’s Church, Cambridge. He was then cremated, with his ashes interred at the nave of Westminster Abbey, between the graves of two other iconic English scientists, Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
Lasting Legacy
A Brief History of Time was adapted into a 1991 documentary film directed by Errol Morris.
Unlike the book, which was solely an explanation of cosmology, the film is also a biography of Hawking himself that features interviews with some of his family members and colleagues. Stephen’s mother, Isobel, is the first person heard from in the movie After the film’s premiered, Dr. Hawking told Morris, “Thank you for making my mother a star.”
The film only had a limited release, ergo its modest box office gross of $2.3 million. (Among the individual contributors to that sales tally were Yours Truly and my dad, who was a big admirer of Stephen Hawking). However, the film garnered critical acclaim, and a 95 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Far more successful in terms of box office performance and official recognition alike was the 2014 biographical drama The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne as Hawking. This one grossed $123.7 million worldwide, and Redmayne won the best actor Oscar Award for the performance.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr, Defense Expert
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He is also the author of the newly published book “Five Decades of a Fabulous Firearm: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Beretta 92 Pistol Series.”