Here are 36 amazing Stephen Hawking Facts.
1. Stephen Hawkings turned down an offer of Knighthood by the British Monarchy and was kept off of the Queen’s Birthday Honours List ever since. – Source
2. Stephen Hawking is the only person who has portrayed himself in Star Trek. Specifically, in a poker game between Hawking, Albert Einstein, Newton, and Data. – Source
3. On June 28, 2009, Stephen Hawking threw a party for time-travelers. He announced the party the day after it happened, and according to Hawking, no one came. – Source
4. Vatican once invited Stephen Hawking to a conference where he had an audience with the Pope. Pope John Paul had trouble understanding Hawking and knelt down beside his wheelchair to hear him better, prompting one scientist to comment that “things certainly have changed since Galileo”. – Source
5. More than 1,000 experts, including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak, have signed an open letter urging a global ban on AI weapons systems. – Source
6. Stephen Hawking’s son once added swear words to his dad’s voice synthesizer as a prank. – Source
7. When asked what his IQ was, Stephen Hawking said “I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.” – Source
8. Stephen Hawking’s wife was given the option to take him off to life support after he was placed in a medically induced coma. She refused, and upon recovering he finished writing “A Brief History of Time”. – Source
9. Stephen Hawking once tried to end his life the time he had tracheostomy – an operation to fit a breathing tube by briefly trying to stop breathing, but found that his reflex to breathe was too strong. – Source
10. In his final year at Oxford, Stephen Hawking went to see a doctor after falling down some stairs and felt he was becoming clumsier, but the only advice he got was “lay off the beer.” – Source
11. Stephen Hawking once dined in the company of Edward Teller, pioneer of the hydrogen bomb, and typed “He is Stupid” in his speech synthesizer without bothering to lower the volume. – Source
12. MIT engineer Dennis Klatt synthesized Stephen Hawking’s voice. Hawking subsequently requested to keep that voice throughout every upgrade of his system. – Source
13. Pope John Paul II once told Stephen Hawking to not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God. – Source
14. Stephen Hawking married the ex-wife of the guy who first designed his speech synthesizer. – Source
15. Stephen Hawking was told he had two years to live by his doctors back in 1963. – Source
16. Stephen Hawking’s father was a medical researcher and encouraged his son to get into medicine. But Stephen turned down biology as it didn’t seem to explain things at a fundamental level. He got into mathematics which seemed highly impractical to his father. – Source
17. Leonard Susskind, a professor of Theoretical physics, sparked a debate with Stephen Hawking, who stated that the information inside a black hole is lost forever, but eventually after 28 years Susskind proved him wrong. – Source
18. Stephen Hawking provided the voice of his own head in a jar on Futurama. – Source
19. There is a memory device orbiting the Earth that contains the DNA of Stephen Hawking, Stephen Colbert, Lance Armstrong, among others, in a case of some worldwide catastrophe. It is called the “Immortality Drive.” – Source
20. Stephen Hawking claimed that the egg came before the chicken. – Source
21. Stephen Hawking bought his friend, Kip Thorne, a year of Penthouse Magazine after he lost a bet over the existence of black holes. – Source
22. Not only does Stephen Hawking consider that computer viruses should be classified as life, he believes that they are the first man-made life ever created. – Source
23. Jim Carrey explained the significance of detecting gravity waves in the cosmic microwave background 10+ years ago. The special guest star was Stephen Hawking. – Source
24. Stephen Hawking, during his “The Beginning of Time” lecture in Japan in 1996, he was asked to not mention the possible re-collapse of the universe, because it might affect the stock market. – Source
25. Stephen Hawking had to take an oral exam to determine whether he got 2:1 or a first class BA from Oxford, because of his “poor study habits”. It was only during an exam that examiners “realized they were talking to someone far more clever than most of themselves.” – Source
26. Neurosurgeon Robert J. White wanted to perform a head transplant surgery on physicist Stephen Hawking and actor Christopher Reeve. – Source
27. Stephen Hawking declared himself an atheist in 2014. – Source
28. Stephen Hawking helped Pink Floyd record their song “Keep Talking” in 1993. – Source
29. Stephen Hawking was a member of the Oxford rowing team. – Source
30. Elaine Mason, Stephen Hawking’s second wife was abusive to him. – Source
31. Stephen Hawking continued to father children for years after he lost the ability to walk or speak intelligibly. – Source
32. Stephen Hawking attended girls school until the age of 10. – Source
33. While filming a guest appearance on Star Trek TNG, Stephen Hawking was taken on a tour of the USS Enterprise set. When he saw the Warp Core, he paused, and said ‘I am working on that.’ – Source
34. In 2001 Stephen Hawking stated that not “re-engineering” humans may risk machine rule. – Source
35. Stephen Hawking was approached to play the scientist, Stephen Falken, in WarGames. He declined because he was afraid of his disability being exploited by the film. – Source
36. When 21-year-old Stephen Hawking drove Jane to Cambridge in his car, she found out that he was a fast and reckless driver despite his frail, limping physical condition. – Source
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