Morning:
14°c
Hawking ‘very ill in hospital’
Mark Prigg, Science Correspondent20.04.09
Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world's most famous scientists, is “very ill” in hospital, Cambridge University said today.
The 67-year-old physicist was undergoing tests at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge. A university spokesman said Professor Hawking, who is best known for his book A Brief History of Time, was taken to Addenbrooke's by ambulance and had been unwell for “a couple of weeks”.
Professor Hawking, who suffers from motor neurone disease, is wheelchair-bound and speaks with the help of a voice synthesiser. He first developed symptoms of the disease in the Sixties and is one of the world's longest surviving sufferers.
He has worked at Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics for more than 30 years and since 1979 has been the university's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. He was made a CBE in 1982, became a Companion of Honour in 1989 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.
He lives in Cambridge and has three children and one grandchild.
Reader views (5)
Best wishes for a full recovery from this lung infection. You are a true hero and an inspiration to all of us.
- Yvonne Kirchler, Tulsa, OK USA
A great mind is one thing that all can agree upon. This man has been a model of patience, learned no doubt from his need for painstaking communication for all things - something we should all admire and to a degree emulate. He has amply demonstrated what can be done when time and thought go into problem solving.
He may not have the physical reserves that the rest us have, but I suspect he has strength of will and determination that would leave all but a few foundering in his wake.I wish him well.
- Rogan, Irving
God bless him. He's done fabulous innovative work to broaden our understanding of the universe, while being unwell his whole life. A giant.
- Phil Jones, London UK
The only time I have seen him is in a wheel chair, looking unwell.
- Dave Davies, Basingstoke
Hope you recover Stephen, you are an inspiration and I don't necssarily mean for disabled people.
- William Ear, Waltham Cross
