Stephen Hawking started to experience increasing clumsiness during his final year at Oxford. The problem worsened, and his speech became slightly slurred.When his family noticed, they took him to many doctors.
When he was 21, he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. Doctors said he only had two years left to live, and that he would probably die at the age of about 23. Stephen understandably fell into a deep depression and lost interest in his studies.
After he fell in love with his first wife, Jane, he became positive again and put renewed energy into his work. In 1975, he received two awards: The Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal. In 1976, he received the Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Prize, and the Hughes Medal.
In 1977, he was appointed professor with a chair in gravitational physics, and in 1978 he received the Albert Einstein Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford. This was already 13 years after he should have died, according to the doctors who diagnosed him!
When narrating the first episode of the television series 'Curiosity,' Hawking declared, "There is probably no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful."
Stephen is still alive and has supervised 39 successful PhD students so far in his career.
