In exploring the physics and geometry of the universe, Stephen Hawking became a world-renowned pioneer of black hole theory, writing the bestselling book A Brief History of Time (13 million copies and counting) and inspiring people to look up at the stars rather than their feet. But during his student years, his father Frank was deeply concerned about how his son would turn out. According to previously unknown diaries written partly in code, Frank lamented that Stephen “hangs round the house with little initiative and does not study much.”
Those diaries are among family papers and photographs to which Costa award-winning biographer and physicist Graham Farmelo has been given unprecedented access. In September, Farmelo will publish the first definitive biography authorised by the Stephen Hawking estate, via publisher John Murray. Farmelo has seen previously unknown material ranging from Frank’s diaries to the letters and journals of Stephen’s mother, Isobel, kept in the home of Hawking’s sister Mary.
Farmelo called it “a wonderful, completely unexpected bonus” and “a 24-carat source of information about Stephen Hawking’s life, especially his formative years and the harrowing months after his diagnosis of motor neurone disease when he was only 21.” He described the material as offering “a raw and honest insight” into Hawking’s upbringing and the devastating 1963 diagnosis of a fatal degenerative disease that would leave him almost completely paralysed.
Hawking defied medical expectations that he would die within two years, instead dying in 2018 at age 76 after groundbreaking work in cosmology and theoretical physics. He used a wheelchair and communicated through a computer and voice synthesiser, famously saying, “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny. My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”
But in 1961, Frank Hawking - a tropical disease expert - wrote: “We are a little worried at the way Stephen is turning out. He hangs round the house with little initiative and does not study much. [Isobel] says he has an inferiority complex to me (he has no need to) and he has lost faith in physics at Oxford, thinking it is inferior to arts. This is a great pity if so. At his age I had a burning ambition to get on, and if only I had had half his advantages, I should have done much better.”
Frank kept a diary for over 60 years, many entries in a secret code Farmelo cracked - translating more than 200,000 words relating to Stephen’s childhood, illness, two marriages, and career. Frank wrote the journal “in Greek script to form a simple secret code,” adapting Greek letters for H, V, QU, W, and J. The diaries also reveal Frank’s struggle with his son’s failing health. In 1967, he wrote: “I find it a slow and ghastly experience with [Stephen]. Everything is so dreadfully slow and long drawn out. And his speech is so slow and difficult to understand that conversation is very difficult. I am very sorry for him and will do all I can for him. But I don’t enjoy being with him.”
Farmelo’s biography, titled Hawking, publishes on 24 September via John Murray. Farmelo previously won the Costa biography prize for The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius - Dirac being a personal hero of Hawking’s. For this book, he interviewed Hawking’s sisters Mary and Philippa, first wife Jane, and three children, Robert, Lucy, and Tim.