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Rubber band kids: KidsMatter and resilience

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FKPDOpKzDo

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"Never give up." It's probably one of the most cliché phrases you'll hear as you're building your career. But there's a reason these sayings are clichés-you never know when success really does lie around the next corner.

We know believing that is easier said than done, so we collected the following stories of famous celebrities who definitely never gave up, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling, for starters.

All these folks are now household names, but they didn't become one easily. Some lived in their car, others suffered family abuse, and almost all encountered rejection after rejection professionally and personally-before finally landing a foot in the door. Read on and get inspired!

1. J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling had just gotten a divorce, was on government aid, and could barely afford to feed her baby in 1994, just three years before the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, was published. When she was shopping it out, she was so poor she couldn't afford a computer or even the cost of photocopying the 90,000-word novel, so she manually typed out each version to send to publishers. It was rejected dozens of times until finally Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, gave it a second chance after the CEO's eight year-old daughter fell in love with it.

2. Stephen King

King was broke and struggling when he was first trying to write. He lived in a trailer with his wife-also a writer-and they both worked multiple jobs to support their family while pursuing their craft. They were so poor they had to borrow clothes for their wedding and had gotten rid of the telephone because it was too expensive.

King received so many rejection letters for his works that he developed a system for collecting them. In his book On Writing, he recalls: "By the time I was 14...the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing." He received 60 rejections before selling his first short story, "The Glass Floor," for $35. Even his now best-selling book, Carrie, wasn't a hit at first. After dozens of rejections, he finally sold it for a meager advance to Doubleday Publishing, where the hardback sold only 13,000 copies-not great. Soon after, though, Signet Books signed on for the paperback rights for $400,000, $200,000 of which went to King. Success achieved!

3. Jim Carrey

When Carrey was 14 years old, his father lost his job, and his family hit rough times. They moved into a VW van on a relative's lawn, and the young aspiring comedian-who was so dedicated to his craft that he mailed his resume to The Carroll Burnett Show just a few years earlier, at age 10-took an eight-hours-per-day factory job after school to help make ends meet.

At age 15, Carrey performed his comedy routine onstage for the first time-in a suit his mom made him-and totally bombed, but he was undeterred. The next year, at 16, he quit school to focus on comedy full time. He moved to LA shortly after, where he would park on Mulholland Drive every night and visualize his success. One of these nights he wrote himself a check for $10,000,000 for "Acting Services Rendered," which he dated for Thanksgiving 1995. Just before that date, he hit his payday with Dumb and Dumber. He put the deteriorated check, which he'd kept in his wallet the whole time, in his father's casket.

4. Tyler Perry

Perry had a rough childhood. He was physically and sexually abused growing up, got kicked out of high school, and tried to commit suicide twice-once as a preteen and again at 22. At 23 he moved to Atlanta and took up odd jobs as he started working on his stage career.

In 1992 he wrote, produced, and starred in his first theater production, I Know I've Been Changed, somewhat informed by his difficult upbringing. Perry put all his savings into the show and it failed miserably; the run lasted just one weekend and only 30 people came to watch. He kept up with the production, working more odd jobs and often slept in his car to get by. Six years later, Perry finally broke through when, on its seventh run, the show became a success. He's since gone on to have an extremely successful career as a director, writer, and actor. In fact, Perry was named Forbes' highest paid man in entertainment in 2011.

5. Sarah Jessica Parker

Parker was born in a poor coal-mining town in rural Ohio, the youngest of four children. Her parents divorced when she was two, and her mother remarried shortly thereafter and had an additional four children. Parker's stepfather, a truck driver, was often out of work, so the future starlet took up singing and dancing at a very young age to help supplement her mom's teaching income and feed their 10-person family.

Despite hard times and occasionally being on welfare, Parker's mom continued to encourage her children's interest in the arts. The family moved to Cincinnati, where Parker was enrolled in a ballet, music, and theater school on scholarship. When she was 11 years old, the family took a trip to New York City so Parker could audition for a Broadway play. The trip was a success-she and her brother were both cast, and the family relocated to New York. Parker continued to work hard and land roles, eventually becoming the title character of TV juggernaut Sex and the City.

6. Colonel (Harland) Sanders

Colonel Harland Sanders was fired from a variety of jobs throughout his career before he first started cooking chicken in his roadside Shell Service Station in 1930, when he was 40 years old, during the Great Depression. His gas station didn't actually have a restaurant, so he served diners in his attached personal living quarters.

Over the next 10 years, he perfected his "Secret Recipe" and pressure fryer cooking method for his famous fried chicken and moved onto bigger locations. His chicken was even praised in the media by food critic Duncan Hines (yes, that Duncan Hines). However, as the interstate came through the Kentucky town where the Colonel's restaurant was located in the 1950s, it took away important road traffic, and the Colonel was forced to close his business and retire, essentially broke. Worried about how he was going to survive off his meager $105 monthly pension check, he set out to find restaurants who would franchise his secret recipe-he wanted a nickel for each piece of chicken sold. He drove around, sleeping in his car, and was rejected more than 1,000 times before finally finding his first partner.

Photo of courtesy of Wikimedia.

7. Shania Twain

Twain's career actually began more out of necessity than raw ambition. Her parents divorced when she was two, and she rarely saw her father. Her mom and stepfather, to whom she grew close, often couldn't make enough to get by, so Twain started singing in bars to make extra money when she was just eight years old.

She recalls her mother waking her up at all hours to get up and perform. Sadly, when she was 21, her mother and stepfather were killed in a head-on car accident with a logging truck on the highway. Twain put her career on hold to step in and take care of her three younger siblings (who were in their teens at the time). She sang in resorts and put off going after big-time stardom until her sister and brothers were old enough to care for themselves. Only once her youngest brother graduated high school did she feel OK heading down to Nashville to pursue her career.

8. Emily Blunt

Before Blunt was getting nominated for Golden Globes and landing leading roles on the stage and big screen, she could barely carry a conversation with her classmates: Between ages seven and 14, Emily had a major stutter. As she told W magazine, "I was a smart kid, and had a lot to say, but I just couldn't say it. It would just haunt me. I never thought I'd be able to sit and talk to someone like I'm talking to you right now."

But that all changed when one of her junior high teachers encouraged her to try out for the school play-a totally unappealing feat given the fact that she had such a hard time communicating. But the teacher kept gently pressing and suggested she try accents and character voices to help get the words out-and it worked. By the end of her teens, Blunt had overcome her stutter and went on to achieve the successful career she has now.

9. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah's dealt with a lot throughout her public life-criticism about her weight, racism, intrusive questions about her sexuality, just to name a few-but she never let it get in the way of her ambition and drive. When you look at her childhood, her personal triumphs are cast in an even more remarkable light.

Growing up, Oprah was reportedly a victim of sexual abuse and was repeatedly molested by her cousin, an uncle, and a family friend. Later, she became pregnant and gave birth to a child at age 14, who passed away just two weeks later. But Oprah persevered, going on to finish high school as an honors student, earning a full scholarship to college, and working her way up through the ranks of television, from a local network anchor in Nashville to an international superstar and creator of her OWN network (we couldn't help ourselves).

More From LearnVest

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9 Famous People Who Will Inspire You to Never Give Up

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"Never give up." It's probably one of the most cliché phrases you'll hear as you're building your career. But there's a reason these sayings are clichés-you never know when success really does lie around the next corner.

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Updated May 28, 2014 13:11:34

It's only natural that parents seek to protect their children by smothering them in cotton wool, but this leaves them unable to overcome failure and to deal with fear and uncertainty, writes Kevin Donnelly.
The fact, according to recent figures, that young Australians are more likely to kill themselves than die in a car accident is an indictment on contemporary society and a wake-up call for adults responsible for the care and well being of children.

That action needs to be taken is made more necessary by the release of the latest ABS data that reveals suicide is the leading cause of death among young Australians, especially men, aged 15 to 24 in 2012.

What needs to be done? There's no doubt that children, from a very early age, are surrounded by a materialistic, often shallow society where happiness and fulfilment are defined by what you consume and what you own.

Society's emphasis on a vacuous celebrity culture and the dehumanising impact of the new technologies, where face-to-face contact is replaced by a virtual world of cyber-bullying and self-promotion, only make matters worse.

Parents who surround their children in cotton wool and deny them the independence and risk associated with growing up also contribute to a lack of resilience and ability to overcome challenges.

There is an alternative and it has nothing to do with government. Parents are their children's primary carers and their children's first teachers. As such, they have a responsibility to teach their children how to deal with uncertainty and loss and how to overcome adversity.

Parents also need to teach their children that bullying and intimidating others are unacceptable, and that there is no pleasure or value in seeing others suffer.

And a good place to start, as noted by the American child psychologist and Holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim, is to introduce children to traditional fairy tales like those written by the Brothers Grimm.

Forget the push among some US academics that literary texts like Medea, the Great Gatsby and All Quiet on the Western Front, like cigarette packets, should have so-called "trigger warnings" in case they traumatise and upset unwary readers.

Classic fables and tales, while often dark and unsettling, introduce and help children deal with fears and anxieties, and build emotional and psychological confidence. Tales like the Iliad and the Odyssey also highlight how courage and bravery can turn the darkest hour of defeat into victory and success.

More recent stories like CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit also portray how those who are far from appearing brave and heroic can find the inner strength and resolve to conquer their doubts and fears.

Closeting children denies them the chance to be free range, to take risks, make mistakes and to build confidence and resilience.

Endless hours in front of computer screens and on social networking sites promote a narcissistic sense of self that lacks any awareness of the vulnerability of others and the need for civility and kindness.

The great religions and belief systems of the world provide a moral and spiritual dimension to life that teaches values like reciprocity and mutual obligation. The maxim "treat others as you have them treat you" is common to most religions and forms the basis for building social cohesion and respect for others.

While unpopular in what is an increasingly secular society, it is also vital that parents imbue their children with a sense of the sacred and the transcendent nature of the human condition.

Great art and great music deal with the sublime and provide a reference point that anchors one's sense of self in a world that often lacks cohesion or a deeper sense of meaning.

It's only natural, at a time when every week there are stories about street violence, paedophilia and children being at risk, that parents seek to protect their children by smothering them in cotton wool.

Unfortunately, closeting children denies them the chance to be free range, to take risks, make mistakes and to build confidence and resilience by learning how to overcome failure and to deal with fear and uncertainty.

One of Australia's legendary sporting coaches Percy Cerutty made famous the statement "no pain, no gain". What we most want to achieve often requires determination, stamina and the ability to overcome what might appear, at first, impossible.

Continually praising children and making them the centre of attention also fosters a sense of importance that can soon lead to an inflated sense of self-worth and the inability to consider others.

Judging by the increasing prevalence of wellness and meditation classes in schools around Australia, it's clear that many children are going to school lacking an inner sense of confidence and the ability to be assured and centred.

While schools have a role to play, parents have the prime responsibility and it is their duty to ensure children learn how to be resilient and how to overcome adversity.
Dr Kevin Donnelly is director of the Education Standards Institute and a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University. He is co-chairing the review of the national curriculum for the Commonwealth Government. His book, Taming the black dog (Connor Court Publishing), deals with depression and building resilience. View his full profile here.
First posted May 27, 2014 15:03:12

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Our children need resilience, not cotton wool

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Updated May 28, 2014 13:11:34 It's only natural that parents seek to protect their children by smothering them in cotton wool, but this leaves them unable to overcome failure and to deal with fear and uncertainty, writes Kevin Donnelly.

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Youth Communication helps marginalized youth develop their full potential through reading and writing, so that they can succeed in school and at work and contribute to their communities.

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Children are more resilient at 10 rather than 15

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Children are more resilient at 10 rather than 15

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https://www.biography.com/people/sarah-jessica-parker-9542042

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Ten-year-olds are at the top of their game, it's the time in their lives they are most likely to feel happy, confident and ready to take on the world. But by age 15, that resilience has plummeted. So what happens on the way to those mid-teen years?

Take Nina, 10 years old and in year 5, she worries about terrorists and getting things wrong at school. Or Lottie, also 10, who sometimes lies awake worrying about dying. But both have tools to tackle their worries. Nina says if you don't get something right the first time you shouldn't feel bad, just keep having a go. And Lottie's mum has taught her to think of happy things, because "it's not very healthy to worry too much".
READ MORE:
* Scientific report identifies health and behaviour risks for kids in care
* Childcare workers slam 'factory farming children'
* Early childhood complaints on the rise
* Toddlers spend up to 11 hours in daycare
Ten-year-olds have been found to be the age group most likely to feel that they have an adult who really listens to them, to feel encouraged and safe at school and to feel "very hopeful".

So what makes kids feel able to deal well with life's challenges, to bounce back from the tough times and have a go?

Researchers behind a massive study on young people and resilience have been asking around 78,000 Australian children and teens this question. The study found clear-cut differences between 10-year-olds and those five years older: 59 per cent of 10-year-olds were found to have good or excellent levels of resilience, versus just 32 per cent of 15-year-olds.

The 15-year-olds, usually in year 9, are far less likely to feel encouraged at school, to feel safe at school, to have an adult who listens to them or to feel "very hopeful". And in one clue to why there is such a marked difference between the older and younger children, 15-year-olds were more than twice as likely to have been bullied online in the past year.

The study, by not-for-profit research collaboration Resilient Youth Australia, began in 2013 and is ongoing. It asked questions based on 40 key predictors of good outcomes for young people, as well as questions on general health and questions designed to measure hopefulness.

But is resilience more than a psychological buzz word, and what happens when children score poorly on this marker?

The study's lead researcher, psychologist Andrew Fuller, said resilience is critical to predicting which children are likely to have generally good outcomes later in life, and that means avoiding alcohol and drug problems, being generally satisfied with life, successful academically and likely to be in stable relationships.

Fuller said children with lower levels of resilience are "likely to feel disconnected, disempowered, and angry". The opportunities for success and happiness also lessen with low levels of resilience.

He said the key factors that build resilience include:

- a sense of being connected to adults;

- a sense of belonging;

- feeling empowered enough to make differences in your life and the lives
of others;

- feeling that people have high expectations for you; and,

- feeling engaged at school.

As to why there is such a drop in confidence towards the mid-teen years, Fuller says parents often feel less close to their kids during adolescence and involvement in community activities and groups typically drops off around this age.

"We want young people to be capable, innovative problem solvers but as a nation we don't ask young people to actively contribute to solving the challenges faced by our society. Implicitly, we indicate that we don't value the contribution of young people."

Fuller says we also tend to highlight stories of risk-taking by a minority of teens, rather than focusing on and celebrating "the amazing undertakings of young people".

The study also found that teenage girls were more likely to suffer anxiety than boys and while girls scored higher in resilience, they were less likely to feel that they could make a difference and make changes.

Victorian schools are increasingly homing in on resilience as a key measure of children's happiness and wellbeing, backed by the Victorian Education Department which has identified improving children's resilience as one of its top 10 priorities.

The Education Department is encouraging schools to measure resilience and set themselves the goal of improving that measure. The department's target is to increase the number of students reporting high resilience by 20 per cent over the next decade.

A department spokeswoman said there was sound research to show that resilience is fundamental to a student's success at school. "It is important that a child's ability to bounce back from a setback is monitored. Schools can promote resilience through programs which build positive social behaviour and generate a sense of being connected to teachers, peers and the academic goals of the school."

The spokeswoman said there was funding for programs aimed at building resilience. The department's Framework for Improving Student Outcomes helps schools engage with students to give them a voice in the learning process and implement shared approaches to supporting the health, wellbeing, inclusion and engagement of all students.

At Brighton Beach Primary School in Victoria, Australia, there are many tell-tale signs that the school is working to boost resilience, such as the grade sixers in the yard during lunch time wearing coloured safety vests to show they are one of the "peace makers" younger kids can come to, to help sort out a problem. Or the anonymous problem box: student representative councillors read about the issues and perform skits about likely solutions in front of assembly.

Deputy principal Bev May says resilience is one of the school's five key values. She says since the school began developing programs to build social and emotional intelligence, there has been a noticeable improvement in measures such as how safe students feel at school. "Our kids are really capable now of talking about the big issues that sit behind things such as bullying.

"It's never just one thing, we tackle it from a lot of different approaches. We understand that with knowledge children are able to make decisions for their own resilience and mental health."

- The Age

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Children are more resilient at 10 years old than 15, study finds

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Ten-year-olds are at the top of their game, it's the time in their lives they are most likely to feel happy, confident and ready to take on the world. But by age 15, that resilience has plummeted. So what happens on the way to those mid-teen years?

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My son is NOT sunburnt!

In 2003, she was trapped under a burning car that had ploughed into her daycare. Three years later she was hit by a car at a pedestrian crossing.

Today, Sophie Delezio is a resilient, happy and passionate 15-year-old.

It's hard to believe it's been 13 years since the whole country held their breath when hearing of the tragic news that a car had ploughed into a daycare centre, with two-year-old Sophie Delezio trapped underneath the burning vehicle.
*Watch the incredible young woman on The Morning Show. Post continues...

She suffered horrific injuries, including burns to 85 per cent of her body, the loss of both feet, one hand and one ear.

Australia watched as she kept fighting but in 2006, another tragedy struck the family.

Sophie was hit by a car at a pedestrian crossing, and thrown 18m. This time she suffered a broken jaw and collarbone, nine broken ribs, punctured lungs, two fractured vertebrae and a brain injury.

Read this next

Defying the odds, she continued her recovery. Young Sophie is now 15 years old and more beautiful than ever!

Her injuries aren't getting in the way of her dream of becoming a Paralympian. She hopes to represent Australia in 2020 for rowing.

Sophie's mum, Carolyn Martin, is constantly amazed at Sophie's strong will and determination.

Speaking to The Morning Show, she said, "On one level it's very normal in terms of living life. Sophie just gets on with it just like any other child, she just has more time and planning involved."

"One of her great strengths is that she gives it a go. We facilitate that as parents to give her the best opportunities to achieve her dreams."

Sophie has always been humbled at the support she's been given over 13 years - by family and even strangers.

"I now only have one operation a year and go to hospital 15-20 times a year, sometimes even less."

"It is weird to look back when I used to go every second day," she quipped.

Today, the Delezio family are continuing their work with their Day of Difference foundation.

Created in 2004, it's aimed at raising much-needed funds for equipment that will help reduce children's injuries and the impact of children's life-changing injuries on families in Australia.

This comes as Carolyn says more kids are killed by accidents than anything else (even medical issues), up to the age of 15.

Bravo Sophie, for being such a strong little go-getter and continuing to inspire us all.
This story originally appeared on Australian Women's Weekly

read more from

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My son is NOT sunburnt! In 2003, she was trapped under a burning car that had ploughed into her daycare. Three years later she was hit by a car at a pedestrian crossing. Today, Sophie Delezio is a resilient, happy and passionate 15-year-old.

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Researchers behind a massive study on young people and resilience have been asking around 78,000 Australian children and teens this question. The study found clear-cut differences between 10-year-olds and those five years older: 59 per cent of 10-year-olds were found to have good or excellent levels of resilience, versus just 32 per cent of 15-year-olds.

The 15-year-olds, usually in year 9, are far less likely to feel encouraged at school, to feel safe at school, to have an adult who listens to them or to feel "very hopeful". And in one clue to why there is such a marked difference between the older and younger children, 15-year-olds were more than twice as likely to have been bullied online in the past year.

The study, by not-for-profit research collaboration Resilient Youth Australia, began in 2013 and is ongoing. It asked questions based on 40 key predictors of good outcomes for young people, as well as questions on general health and questions designed to measure hopefulness.

But is resilience more than a psychological buzz word, and what happens when children score poorly on this marker?

Nina, 10, worries about terrorists and getting things wrong at school.

The study's lead researcher, psychologist Andrew Fuller, said resilience is critical to predicting which children are likely to have generally good outcomes later in life, and that means avoiding alcohol and drug problems, being generally satisfied with life, successful academically and likely to be in stable relationships.

Mr Fuller said children with lower levels of resilience are "likely to feel disconnected, disempowered, and angry". The opportunities for success and happiness also lessen with low levels of resilience.

He said the key factors that build resilience include:

- a sense of being connected to adults;

Our kids are really capable now of talking about the big issues that sit behind things such as bullying.
Bev May

- a sense of belonging;

- feeling empowered enough to make differences in your life and the lives
of others;

- feeling that people have high expectations for you; and,

- feeling engaged at school.

As to why there is such a drop in confidence towards the mid-teen years, Fuller says parents often feel less close to their kids during adolescence and involvement in community activities and groups typically drops off around this age.

"We want young people to be capable, innovative problem solvers but as a nation we don't ask young people to actively contribute to solving the challenges faced by our society. Implicitly, we indicate that we don't value the contribution of young people."

Fuller says we also tend to highlight stories of risk-taking by a minority of teens, rather than focusing on and celebrating "the amazing undertakings of young people".

The study also found that teenage girls were more likely to suffer anxiety than boys and while girls scored higher in resilience, they were less likely to feel that they could make a difference and make changes.

Victorian schools are increasingly homing in on resilience as a key measure of children's happiness and wellbeing, backed by the Victorian Education Department which has identified improving children's resilience as one of its top 10 priorities.

The Education Department is encouraging schools to measure resilience and set themselves the goal of improving that measure. The department's target is to increase the number of students reporting high resilience by 20 per cent over the next decade.

A department spokeswoman said there was sound research to show that resilience is fundamental to a student's success at school. "It is important that a child's ability to bounce back from a setback is monitored. Schools can promote resilience through programs which build positive social behaviour and generate a sense of being connected to teachers, peers and the academic goals of the school."

The spokeswoman said there was funding for programs aimed at building resilience. The department'sFramework for Improving Student Outcomes helps schools engage with students to give them a voice in the learning process and implement shared approaches to supporting the health, wellbeing, inclusion and engagement of all students.

At Brighton Beach Primary School there are many tell-tale signs that the school is working to boost resilience, such as the grade sixers in the yard during lunch time wearing coloured safety vests to show they are one of the "peace makers" younger kids can come to, to help sort out a problem. Or the anonymous problem box: student representative councillors read about the issues and perform skits about likely solutions in front of assembly.

Deputy principal Bev May says resilience is one of the school's five key values. She says since the school began developing programs to build social and emotional intelligence, there has been a noticeable improvement in measures such as how safe students feel at school. "Our kids are really capable now of talking about the big issues that sit behind things such as bullying.

"It's never just one thing, we tackle it from a lot of different approaches. We understand that with knowledge children are able to make decisions for their own resilience and mental health."

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Children are more resilient at 10 years old than 15, study finds

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Researchers behind a massive study on young people and resilience have been asking around 78,000 Australian children and teens this question. The study found clear-cut differences between 10-year-olds and those five years older: 59 per cent of 10-year-olds were found to have good or excellent levels of resilience, versus just 32 per cent of 15-year-olds.

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How kids stay resilient through tough times

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How kids stay resilient through tough times

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http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s4067152.htm

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tYto5PrSOI

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Bethany Hamilton Exclusive Interview right after shark attack

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Go behind the scenes with XLTV and surfer girl, Bethany Hamilton right after the shark attack to see what kept her going.

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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was a critical success, but the Tuohys' decisions were met with much criticism. When this white family adopted a black teenager, friends, family members and strangers started talking.

"We got nasty letters and nasty phone calls. Nasty innuendos," Leigh Anne says. "It was endless, but we just decided early on that you can't let those people interfere with your life or ruin your life. If you did, you'd just be crazy with trying to ward off all the naysayers."

For the most part, the Tuohys ignored the negativity, but a few people got phone calls from Leigh Anne, a fiercely protective mother with a commanding presence and charming Southern drawl. "I thought, 'I'm just going to bully them back,'" she says.

In college, Michael excelled on and off the football field, and in 2009, he was drafted by the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. "It was a great day," Leigh Anne says.

Around this time, another young man's life was about to change thanks to Michael and the Tuohys. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was being adapted into a feature film, The Blind Side, and movie producers were scouring the country for a young man to play Michael.

When Quinton Aaron, a 25-year-old from the Bronx who stands 6'8'', walked into an open call, Quinton says the casting agent started to cry. "She said, 'Oh my god. We found Michael,'" he says. "It was crazy."

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blind side michael oher oar leigh anne touhy leanne leigh ann leann quinton aaron football movie michael lewis baltimore ravens nfl ole miss mississippi memphis

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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was a critical success, but the Tuohys' decisions were met with much criticism. When this white family adopted a black teenager, friends, family members and strangers started talking. "We got nasty letters and nasty phone calls. Nasty innuendos," Leigh Anne says.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlY0PkWxCW8

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https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/ufc/656744/Conor-McGregor-Notorious-UFC-ACL-injury-Mendes-video-documentary-release-date-UK-stream

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utTyz7UDnM8

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Stephen William Hawking (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between 1979 and 2009, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world.

Hawking was born in Oxford into a family of physicians. In October 1959, at the age of 17, he began his university education at University College, Oxford, where he received a first-class BA degree in physics. In October 1962, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where, in March 1966, he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specialising in general relativity and cosmology. In 1963, at age 21, Hawking was diagnosed with an early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease that gradually, over decades, paralysed him. After the loss of his speech, he communicated through a speech-generating device initially through use of a handheld switch, and eventually by using a single cheek muscle.

Hawking's scientific works included a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial. By the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a major breakthrough in theoretical physics. Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Hawking achieved commercial success with several works of popular science in which he discussed his theories and cosmology in general. His book A Brief History of Time appeared on the Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. Hawking was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He died in 2018 at the age of 76, having lived more than 50 years following his diagnosis of motor neurone disease.

Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford to Frank and Isobel Eileen Hawking ( née Walker). Hawking's mother was born into a family of doctors in Glasgow, Scotland. His wealthy paternal great-grandfather, from Yorkshire, over-extended himself buying farm land and then went bankrupt in the great agricultural depression during the early 20th century. His paternal great-grandmother saved the family from financial ruin by opening a school in their home. Despite their families' financial constraints, both parents attended the University of Oxford, where Frank read medicine and Isobel read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Isobel worked as a secretary for a medical research institute, and Frank was a medical researcher. Hawking had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward Frank David (1955-2003).

In 1950, when Hawking's father became head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research, the family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire. In St Albans, the family was considered highly intelligent and somewhat eccentric; meals were often spent with each person silently reading a book. They lived a frugal existence in a large, cluttered, and poorly maintained house and travelled in a converted London taxicab. During one of Hawking's father's frequent absences working in Africa, the rest of the family spent four months in Mallorca visiting his mother's friend Beryl and her husband, the poet Robert Graves.

Primary and secondary school years

Hawking began his schooling at the Byron House School in Highgate, London. He later blamed its " progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school. In St Albans, the eight-year-old Hawking attended St Albans High School for Girls for a few months. At that time, younger boys could attend one of the houses.

Hawking attended two private (i.e. fee-paying) schools, first Radlett School and from September 1952, St Albans School, Hertfordshire, after passing the eleven-plus a year early. The family placed a high value on education. Hawking's father wanted his son to attend Westminster School, but the 13-year-old Hawking was ill on the day of the scholarship examination. His family could not afford the school fees without the financial aid of a scholarship, so Hawking remained at St Albans. A positive consequence was that Hawking remained close to a group of friends with whom he enjoyed board games, the manufacture of fireworks, model aeroplanes and boats, and long discussions about Christianity and extrasensory perception. From 1958 on, with the help of the mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta, they built a computer from clock parts, an old telephone switchboard and other recycled components.

Although known at school as "Einstein", Hawking was not initially successful academically. With time, he began to show considerable aptitude for scientific subjects and, inspired by Tahta, decided to read mathematics at university. Hawking's father advised him to study medicine, concerned that there were few jobs for mathematics graduates. He also wanted his son to attend University College, Oxford, his own alma mater. As it was not possible to read mathematics there at the time, Hawking decided to study physics and chemistry. Despite his headmaster's advice to wait until the next year, Hawking was awarded a scholarship after taking the examinations in March 1959.

Undergraduate years

Hawking began his university education at University College, Oxford, in October 1959 at the age of 17. For the first eighteen months, he was bored and lonely - he found the academic work "ridiculously easy". His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said, "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it." A change occurred during his second and third years when, according to Berman, Hawking made more of an effort "to be one of the boys". He developed into a popular, lively and witty college-member, interested in classical music and science fiction. Part of the transformation resulted from his decision to join the college boat-club, the University College Boat Club, where he coxed a rowing-crew. The rowing-coach at the time noted that Hawking cultivated a daredevil image, steering his crew on risky courses that led to damaged boats. Hawking estimated that he studied about 1,000 hours during his three years at Oxford. These unimpressive study habits made sitting his finals a challenge, and he decided to answer only theoretical physics questions rather than those requiring factual knowledge. A first-class degree was a condition of acceptance for his planned graduate study in cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Anxious, he slept poorly the night before the examinations, and the result was on the borderline between first- and second-class honours, making a (oral examination) with the Oxford examiners necessary.

Hawking was concerned that he was viewed as a lazy and difficult student. So, when asked at the viva to describe his plans, he said, "If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First." He was held in higher regard than he believed; as Berman commented, the examiners "were intelligent enough to realise they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves". After receiving a first-class BA degree in physics and completing a trip to Iran with a friend, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in October 1962.

Post-graduate years

Hawking's first year as a doctoral student was difficult. He was initially disappointed to find that he had been assigned Dennis William Sciama, one of the founders of modern cosmology, as a supervisor rather than the noted astronomer Fred Hoyle, and he found his training in mathematics inadequate for work in general relativity and cosmology. After being diagnosed with motor neurone disease, Hawking fell into a depression - though his doctors advised that he continue with his studies, he felt there was little point. His disease progressed more slowly than doctors had predicted. Although Hawking had difficulty walking unsupported, and his speech was almost unintelligible, an initial diagnosis that he had only two years to live proved unfounded. With Sciama's encouragement, he returned to his work. Hawking started developing a reputation for brilliance and brashness when he publicly challenged the work of Hoyle and his student Jayant Narlikar at a lecture in June 1964.

When Hawking began his doctoral studies, there was much debate in the physics community about the prevailing theories of the creation of the universe: the Big Bang and Steady State theories. Inspired by Roger Penrose's theorem of a spacetime singularity in the centre of black holes, Hawking applied the same thinking to the entire universe; and, during 1965, he wrote his thesis on this topic. Hawking's thesis was approved in 1966. There were other positive developments: Hawking received a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge; he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specialising in general relativity and cosmology, in March 1966; and his essay "Singularities and the Geometry of Space-Time" shared top honours with one by Penrose to win that year's prestigious Adams Prize.

In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theorem concepts first explored in his doctoral thesis. This included not only the existence of singularities but also the theory that the universe might have started as a singularity. Their joint essay was the runner-up in the 1968 Gravity Research Foundation competition. In 1970, they published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedmann, then it must have begun as a singularity. In 1969, Hawking accepted a specially created Fellowship for Distinction in Science to remain at Caius.

In 1970, Hawking postulated what became known as the second law of black hole dynamics, that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller. With James M. Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. To Hawking's irritation, Jacob Bekenstein, a graduate student of John Wheeler, went further-and ultimately correctly-to apply thermodynamic concepts literally.

In the early 1970s, Hawking's work with Carter, Werner Israel, and David C. Robinson strongly supported Wheeler's no-hair theorem, one that states that no matter what the original material from which a black hole is created, it can be completely described by the properties of mass, electrical charge and rotation. His essay titled "Black Holes" won the Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971. Hawking's first book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, written with George Ellis, was published in 1973.

Beginning in 1973, Hawking moved into the study of quantum gravity and quantum mechanics. His work in this area was spurred by a visit to Moscow and discussions with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Alexei Starobinsky, whose work showed that according to the uncertainty principle, rotating black holes emit particles. To Hawking's annoyance, his much-checked calculations produced findings that contradicted his second law, which claimed black holes could never get smaller, and supported Bekenstein's reasoning about their entropy.

His results, which Hawking presented from 1974, showed that black holes emit radiation, known today as Hawking radiation, which may continue until they exhaust their energy and evaporate. Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial. By the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a significant breakthrough in theoretical physics. Hawking was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1974, a few weeks after the announcement of Hawking radiation. At the time, he was one of the youngest scientists to become a Fellow.

Hawking was appointed to the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1974. He worked with a friend on the faculty, Kip Thorne, and engaged him in a scientific wager about whether the X-ray source Cygnus X-1 was a black hole. The wager was an "insurance policy" against the proposition that black holes did not exist. Hawking acknowledged that he had lost the bet in 1990, a bet that was the first of several he was to make with Thorne and others. Hawking had maintained ties to Caltech, spending a month there almost every year since this first visit.

Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a more academically senior post, as reader in gravitational physics. The mid-to-late 1970s were a period of growing public interest in black holes and the physicists who were studying them. Hawking was regularly interviewed for print and television. He also received increasing academic recognition of his work. In 1975, he was awarded both the Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal, and in 1976 the Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Medal and Prize and the Hughes Medal. He was appointed a professor with a chair in gravitational physics in 1977. The following year he received the Albert Einstein Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.

In 1979, Hawking was elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. His inaugural lecture in this role was titled: "Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?" and proposed N = 8 supergravity as the leading theory to solve many of the outstanding problems physicists were studying. His promotion coincided with a health-crisis which led to his accepting, albeit reluctantly, some nursing services at home. At the same time, he was also making a transition in his approach to physics, becoming more intuitive and speculative rather than insisting on mathematical proofs. "I would rather be right than rigorous", he told Kip Thorne. In 1981, he proposed that information in a black hole is irretrievably lost when a black hole evaporates. This information paradox violates the fundamental tenet of quantum mechanics, and led to years of debate, including " the Black Hole War" with Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft.

Hawking at an ALS convention in San Francisco in the 1980s

Cosmological inflation - a theory proposing that following the Big Bang, the universe initially expanded incredibly rapidly before settling down to a slower expansion - was proposed by Alan Guth and also developed by Andrei Linde. Following a conference in Moscow in October 1981, Hawking and Gary Gibbons organised a three-week Nuffield Workshop in the summer of 1982 on "The Very Early Universe" at Cambridge University, a workshop that focused mainly on inflation theory. Hawking also began a new line of quantum-theory research into the origin of the universe. In 1981 at a Vatican conference, he presented work suggesting that there might be no boundary - or beginning or ending - to the universe.

Hawking subsequently developed the research in collaboration with Jim Hartle, and in 1983 they published a model, known as the Hartle-Hawking state. It proposed that prior to the Planck epoch, the universe had no boundary in space-time; before the Big Bang, time did not exist and the concept of the beginning of the universe is meaningless. The initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models was replaced with a region akin to the North Pole. One cannot travel north of the North Pole, but there is no boundary there - it is simply the point where all north-running lines meet and end. Initially, the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, which had implications about the existence of God. As Hawking explained, "If the universe has no boundaries but is self-contained... then God would not have had any freedom to choose how the universe began."

Hawking did not rule out the existence of a Creator, asking in A Brief History of Time "Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?", also stating "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God"; in his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense. In the same book he suggested that the existence of God was not necessary to explain the origin of the universe. Later discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the existence of God was also compatible with an open universe.

Further work by Hawking in the area of arrows of time led to the 1985 publication of a paper theorising that if the no-boundary proposition were correct, then when the universe stopped expanding and eventually collapsed, time would run backwards. A paper by Don Page and independent calculations by Raymond Laflamme led Hawking to withdraw this concept. Honours continued to be awarded: in 1981 he was awarded the American Franklin Medal, and in the 1982 New Year Honours appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). These awards did not significantly change Hawking's financial status, and motivated by the need to finance his children's education and home-expenses, he decided in 1982 to write a popular book about the universe that would be accessible to the general public. Instead of publishing with an academic press, he signed a contract with Bantam Books, a mass-market publisher, and received a large advance for his book. A first draft of the book, called A Brief History of Time, was completed in 1984.

One of the first messages Hawking produced with his speech-generating device was a request for his assistant to help him finish writing A Brief History of Time. Peter Guzzardi, his editor at Bantam, pushed him to explain his ideas clearly in non-technical language, a process that required many revisions from an increasingly irritated Hawking. The book was published in April 1988 in the US and in June in the UK, and it proved to be an extraordinary success, rising quickly to the top of best-seller lists in both countries and remaining there for months. The book was translated into many languages, and as of 2009, has sold an estimated 9million copies.

Media attention was intense, and a Newsweek magazine-cover and a television special both described him as "Master of the Universe". Success led to significant financial rewards, but also the challenges of celebrity status. Hawking travelled extensively to promote his work, and enjoyed partying and dancing into the small hours. A difficulty refusing the invitations and visitors left him limited time for work and his students. Some colleagues were resentful of the attention Hawking received, feeling it was due to his disability.

He received further academic recognition, including five more honorary degrees, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985), the Paul Dirac Medal (1987) and, jointly with Penrose, the prestigious Wolf Prize (1988). In the 1989 Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH). He reportedly declined a knighthood in the late 1990s in objection to the UK's science funding policy.

Hawking with string theorists David Gross and Edward Witten at the Strings Conference in January 2001, TIFR, India

Hawking pursued his work in physics: in 1993 he co-edited a book on Euclidean quantum gravity with Gary Gibbons and published a collected edition of his own articles on black holes and the Big Bang. In 1994, at Cambridge's Newton Institute, Hawking and Penrose delivered a series of six lectures that were published in 1996 as "The Nature of Space and Time". In 1997, he conceded a 1991 public scientific wager made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Hawking had bet that Penrose's proposal of a "cosmic censorship conjecture" - that there could be no "naked singularities" unclothed within a horizon - was correct.

After discovering his concession might have been premature, a new and more refined wager was made. This one specified that such singularities would occur without extra conditions. The same year, Thorne, Hawking and Preskill made another bet, this time concerning the black hole information paradox. Thorne and Hawking argued that since general relativity made it impossible for black holes to radiate and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking radiation must be "new", and not from inside the black hole event horizon. Since this contradicted the quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics theory would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the concept of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way.

Hawking also maintained his public profile, including bringing science to a wider audience. A film version of A Brief History of Time, directed by Errol Morris and produced by Steven Spielberg, premiered in 1992. Hawking had wanted the film to be scientific rather than biographical, but he was persuaded otherwise. The film, while a critical success, was not widely released. A popular-level collection of essays, interviews, and talks titled Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays was published in 1993, and a six-part television series Stephen Hawking's Universe and a companion book appeared in 1997. As Hawking insisted, this time the focus was entirely on science.

Hawking at the Bibliothèque nationale de France to inaugurate the Laboratory of Astronomy and Particles in Paris, and the French release of his work God Created the Integers, 5 May 2006

Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The Universe in a Nutshell in 2001, and A Briefer History of Time, which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works with the aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, and God Created the Integers, which appeared in 2006. Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN and Jim Hartle, from 2006 on Hawking developed a theory of top-down cosmology, which says that the universe had not one unique initial state but many different ones, and therefore that it is inappropriate to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state. Top-down cosmology posits that the present "selects" the past from a superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the fine-tuning question.

Hawking continued to travel widely, including trips to Chile, Easter Island, South Africa, Spain (to receive the Fonseca Prize in 2008), Canada, and numerous trips to the United States. For practical reasons related to his disability, Hawking increasingly travelled by private jet, and by 2011 that had become his only mode of international travel.

By 2003, consensus among physicists was growing that Hawking was wrong about the loss of information in a black hole. In a 2004 lecture in Dublin, he conceded his 1997 bet with Preskill, but described his own, somewhat controversial solution to the information paradox problem, involving the possibility that black holes have more than one topology. In the 2005 paper he published on the subject, he argued that the information paradox was explained by examining all the alternative histories of universes, with the information loss in those with black holes being cancelled out by those without such loss. In January 2014, he called the alleged loss of information in black holes his "biggest blunder".

As part of another longstanding scientific dispute, Hawking had emphatically argued, and bet, that the Higgs boson would never be found. The particle was proposed to exist as part of the Higgs field theory by Peter Higgs in 1964. Hawking and Higgs engaged in a heated and public debate over the matter in 2002 and again in 2008, with Higgs criticising Hawking's work and complaining that Hawking's "celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have." The particle was discovered in July 2012 at CERN following construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Hawking quickly conceded that he had lost his bet and said that Higgs should win the Nobel Prize for Physics, which he did in 2013.

Hawking holding a public lecture at the Stockholm Waterfront congress centre, 24 August 2015

In 2007, Hawking and his daughter Lucy published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book designed to explain theoretical physics in an accessible fashion and featuring characters similar to those in the Hawking family. The book was followed by sequels in 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2016.

In 2002, following a UK-wide vote, the BBC included Hawking in their list of the 100 Greatest Britons. He was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society (2006), the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is America's highest civilian honour (2009), and the Russian Special Fundamental Physics Prize (2013).

Several buildings have been named after him, including the Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, ElSalvador, the Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge, and the Stephen Hawking Centre at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. Appropriately, given Hawking's association with time, he unveiled the mechanical "Chronophage" (or time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in September 2008.

During his career, Hawking supervised 39 successful PhD students. One doctoral student did not successfully complete the PhD.[better source needed ] As required by Cambridge University policy, Hawking retired as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 2009. Despite suggestions that he might leave the United Kingdom as a protest against public funding cuts to basic scientific research, Hawking worked as director of research at the Cambridge University Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

On 28 June 2009, as a tongue-in-cheek test of his 1992 conjecture that travel into the past is effectively impossible, Hawking held a party open to all, complete with hors d'oeuvres and iced champagne, but publicised the party only after it was over so that only time-travellers would know to attend; as expected, nobody showed up to the party.

On 20 July 2015, Hawking helped launch Breakthrough Initiatives, an effort to search for extraterrestrial life. Hawking created Stephen Hawking: Expedition New Earth, a documentary on space colonisation, as a 2017 episode of Tomorrow's World.

In August 2015, Hawking said that not all information is lost when something enters a black hole and there might be a possibility to retrieve information from a black hole according to his theory. In July 2017, Hawking was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Imperial College London.

Hawking's final paper - A smooth exit from eternal inflation? - was posthumously published in the Journal of High Energy Physics on 27 April 2018.

Personal life

Hawking met his future wife, Jane Wilde, at a party in 1962. The following year, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. In October 1964, the couple became engaged to marry, aware of the potential challenges that lay ahead due to Hawking's shortened life expectancy and physical limitations. Hawking later said that the engagement gave him "something to live for". The two were married on 14 July 1965 in their shared hometown of St Albans.

The couple resided in Cambridge, within Hawking's walking distance to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP). During their first years of marriage, Jane lived in London during the week as she completed her degree at Westfield College. They travelled to the United States several times for conferences and physics-related visits. Jane began a PhD programme through Westfield College in medieval Spanish poetry (completed in 1981). The couple had three children: Robert, born May 1967, Lucy, born November 1970, and Timothy, born April 1979.

Hawking rarely discussed his illness and physical challenges-even, in a precedent set during their courtship, with Jane. His disabilities meant that the responsibilities of home and family rested firmly on his wife's increasingly overwhelmed shoulders, leaving him more time to think about physics. Upon his appointment in 1974 to a year-long position at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, Jane proposed that a graduate or post-doctoral student live with them and help with his care. Hawking accepted, and Bernard Carr travelled with them as the first of many students who fulfilled this role. The family spent a generally happy and stimulating year in Pasadena.

Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a new home and a new job, as reader. Don Page, with whom Hawking had begun a close friendship at Caltech, arrived to work as the live-in graduate student assistant. With Page's help and that of a secretary, Jane's responsibilities were reduced so she could return to her doctoral thesis and her new interest in singing.

Around December 1977, Jane met organist Jonathan Hellyer Jones when singing in a church choir. Hellyer Jones became close to the Hawking family and, by the mid-1980s, he and Jane had developed romantic feelings for each other. According to Jane, her husband was accepting of the situation, stating "he would not object so long as I continued to love him". Jane and Hellyer Jones were determined not to break up the family, and their relationship remained platonic for a long period.

By the 1980s, Hawking's marriage had been strained for many years. Jane felt overwhelmed by the intrusion into their family life of the required nurses and assistants. The impact of his celebrity status was challenging for colleagues and family members, while the prospect of living up to a worldwide fairytale image was daunting for the couple. Hawking's views of religion also contrasted with her strong Christian faith and resulted in tension. After a tracheotomy in 1985, Hawking required a full-time nurse and nursing care was split across three shifts daily. In the late 1980s, Hawking grew close to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, to the dismay of some colleagues, caregivers, and family members, who were disturbed by her strength of personality and protectiveness. In February 1990, Hawking told Jane that he was leaving her for Mason and departed the family home. After his divorce from Jane in 1995, Hawking married Mason in September, declaring, "It's wonderful - I have married the woman I love."

In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, describing her marriage to Hawking and its breakdown. Its revelations caused a sensation in the media but, as was his usual practice regarding his personal life, Hawking made no public comment except to say that he did not read biographies about himself. After his second marriage, Hawking's family felt excluded and marginalised from his life. For a period of about five years in the early 2000s, his family and staff became increasingly worried that he was being physically abused. Police investigations took place, but were closed as Hawking refused to make a complaint.

In 2006, Hawking and Mason quietly divorced, and Hawking resumed closer relationships with Jane, his children, and his grandchildren. Reflecting on this happier period, a revised version of Jane's book, re-titled Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, appeared in 2007, and was made into a film, The Theory of Everything, in 2014.

Disability

Hawking had a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease (MND; also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease), a fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects the motor neurones in the brain and spinal cord, which gradually paralysed him over decades.

Hawking had experienced increasing clumsiness during his final year at Oxford, including a fall on some stairs and difficulties when rowing. The problems worsened, and his speech became slightly slurred. His family noticed the changes when he returned home for Christmas, and medical investigations were begun. The MND diagnosis came when Hawking was 21, in 1963. At the time, doctors gave him a life expectancy of two years.

In the late 1960s, Hawking's physical abilities declined: he began to use crutches and could no longer give lectures regularly. As he slowly lost the ability to write, he developed compensatory visual methods, including seeing equations in terms of geometry. The physicist Werner Israel later compared the achievements to Mozart composing an entire symphony in his head. Hawking was fiercely independent and unwilling to accept help or make concessions for his disabilities. He preferred to be regarded as "a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all the ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person." His wife Jane later noted: "Some people would call it determination, some obstinacy. I've called it both at one time or another." He required much persuasion to accept the use of a wheelchair at the end of the 1960s, but ultimately became notorious for the wildness of his wheelchair driving. Hawking was a popular and witty colleague, but his illness, as well as his reputation for brashness, distanced him from some.

When Hawking first began using a wheelchair he was using standard motorised models. The earliest surviving example of these chairs was made by BEC Mobility and sold by Christie's in November 2018 for £296,750. Hawking continued to use this type of chair until the early 1990s, at which time his ability to use his hands to drive a wheelchair deteriorated. Hawking used a variety of different chairs from that time, including a DragonMobility Dragon elevating powerchair from 2007, as shown in the April 2008 photo of Hawking attending NASA's 50th anniversary; a Permobil C350 from 2014; and then a Permobil F3 from 2016.

Hawking's speech deteriorated, and by the late 1970s he could be understood by only his family and closest friends. To communicate with others, someone who knew him well would interpret his speech into intelligible speech. Spurred by a dispute with the university over who would pay for the ramp needed for him to enter his workplace, Hawking and his wife campaigned for improved access and support for those with disabilities in Cambridge, including adapted student housing at the university. In general, Hawking had ambivalent feelings about his role as a disability rights champion: while wanting to help others, he also sought to detach himself from his illness and its challenges. His lack of engagement in this area led to some criticism.

During a visit to CERN on the border of France and Switzerland in mid-1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening; he was so ill that Jane was asked if life support should be terminated. She refused, but the consequence was a tracheotomy, which required round-the-clock nursing care and caused the loss of what remained of his speech. The National Health Service was ready to pay for a nursing home, but Jane was determined that he would live at home. The cost of the care was funded by an American foundation. Nurses were hired for the three shifts required to provide the round-the-clock support he required. One of those employed was Elaine Mason, who was to become Hawking's second wife.

For his communication, Hawking initially raised his eyebrows to choose letters on a spelling card, but in 1986 he received a computer program called the "Equalizer" from Walter Woltosz, CEO of Words Plus, who had developed an earlier version of the software to help his mother-in-law, who also had ALS and had lost her ability to speak and write. In a method he used for the rest of his life, Hawking could now simply press a switch to select phrases, words or letters from a bank of about 2,500-3,000 that were scanned. The program was originally run on a desktop computer. Elaine Mason's husband, David, a computer engineer, adapted a small computer and attached it to his wheelchair.

Released from the need to use somebody to interpret his speech, Hawking commented that "I can communicate better now than before I lost my voice." The voice he used had an American accent and is no longer produced. Despite the later availability of other voices, Hawking retained this original voice, saying that he preferred it and identified with it. Originally, Hawking activated a switch using his hand and could produce up to 15 words per minute. Lectures were prepared in advance and were sent to the speech synthesiser in short sections to be delivered.

Hawking gradually lost the use of his hand, and in 2005 he began to control his communication device with movements of his cheek muscles, with a rate of about one word per minute. With this decline there was a risk of him developing locked-in syndrome, so Hawking collaborated with Intel Corporation researchers on systems that could translate his brain patterns or facial expressions into switch activations. After several prototypes that did not perform as planned, they settled on an adaptive word predictor made by the London-based startup SwiftKey, which used a system similar to his original technology. Hawking had an easier time adapting to the new system, which was further developed after inputting large amounts of Hawking's papers and other written materials and uses predictive software similar to other smartphone keyboards.

By 2009, he could no longer drive his wheelchair independently, but the same people who created his new typing mechanics were working on a method to drive his chair using movements made by his chin. This proved difficult, since Hawking could not move his neck, and trials showed that while he could indeed drive the chair, the movement was sporadic and jumpy. Near the end of his life, Hawking experienced increased breathing difficulties, often resulting in his requiring the usage of a ventilator, and being regularly hospitalised.

Disability outreach

Starting in the 1990s, Hawking accepted the mantle of role model for disabled people, lecturing and participating in fundraising activities. At the turn of the century, he and eleven other humanitarians signed the Charter for the Third Millennium on Disability, which called on governments to prevent disability and protect the rights of disabled people. In 1999, Hawking was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society.

In August 2012, Hawking narrated the "Enlightenment" segment of the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony in London. In 2013, the biographical documentary film , in which Hawking himself is featured, was released. In September 2013, he expressed support for the legalisation of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. In August 2014, Hawking accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge to promote ALS/MND awareness and raise contributions for research. As he had pneumonia in 2013, he was advised not to have ice poured over him, but his children volunteered to accept the challenge on his behalf.

Plans for a trip to space

Hawking taking a zero-gravity flight in a reduced-gravity aircraft, April 2007

In late 2006, Hawking revealed in a BBC interview that one of his greatest unfulfilled desires was to travel to space; on hearing this, Richard Branson offered a free flight into space with Virgin Galactic, which Hawking immediately accepted. Besides personal ambition, he was motivated by the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential of people with disabilities. On 26 April 2007, Hawking flew aboard a specially-modified Boeing 727-200 jet operated by Zero-G Corp off the coast of Florida to experience weightlessness. Fears that the manoeuvres would cause him undue discomfort proved incorrect, and the flight was extended to eight parabolic arcs. It was described as a successful test to see if he could withstand the g-forces involved in space flight. At the time, the date of Hawking's trip to space was projected to be as early as 2009, but commercial flights to space did not commence before his death.

Hawking died at his home in Cambridge on 14 March 2018, at the age of 76. His family stated that he "died peacefully". He was eulogised by figures in science, entertainment, politics, and other areas. The Gonville and Caius College flag flew at half-mast and a book of condolences was signed by students and visitors. A tribute was made to Hawking in the closing speech by IPC President Andrew Parsons at the closing ceremony of the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

His private funeral took place on 31 March 2018, at Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge. Guests at the funeral included The Theory of Everything actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, and model Lily Cole. In addition, actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Stephen Hawking in , astronaut Tim Peake, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees and physicist Kip Thorne provided readings at the service. Although Hawking was an atheist, the funeral took place with a traditional Anglican service. Following the cremation, a service of thanksgiving was held at Westminster Abbey on 15 June 2018, after which his ashes were interred in the Abbey's nave, between the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

Stephen Hawking's memorial stone in Westminster Abbey

Inscribed on his memorial stone are the words "Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking 1942-2018" and his most famed equation. He directed, at least fifteen years before his death, that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy equation be his epitaph. In June 2018, it was announced that Hawking's words, set to music by Greek composer Vangelis, would be beamed into space from a European space agency satellite dish in Spain with the aim of reaching the nearest black hole, 1A 0620-00.

Hawking's final broadcast interview, about the detection of gravitational waves resulting from the collision of two neutron stars, occurred in October 2017. His final words to the world appeared posthumously, in April 2018, in the form of a Smithsonian TV Channel documentary entitled, Leaving Earth: Or How to Colonize a Planet. One of his final research studies, entitled A smooth exit from eternal inflation?, about the origin of the universe, was published in the Journal of High Energy Physics in May 2018. Later, in October 2018, another of his final research studies, entitled Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair, was published, and dealt with the "mystery of what happens to the information held by objects once they disappear into a black hole". Also in October 2018, Hawking's last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, a popular science book presenting his final comments on the most important questions facing humankind, was published.

On 8 November 2018, an auction of 22 personal possessions of Stephen Hawking, including his doctoral thesis ("Properties of Expanding Universes", PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 1965) and wheelchair, took place, and fetched about £1.8 m. Proceeds from the auction sale of the wheelchair went to two charities, the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Stephen Hawking Foundation; proceeds from Hawking's other items went to his estate.

In March 2019, it was announced that the Royal Mint would issue a commemorative 50p coin, only available as a commemorative edition, in honour of Hawking. The same month, Hawking's nurse, Patricia Dowdy, was struck off the nursing register for "failures over his care and financial misconduct."

In May 2021 it was announced that an Acceptance-in-Lieu agreement between HMRC, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Cambridge University Library, Science Museum Group, and the Hawking Estate, would see around 10,000 pages of Hawking's scientific and other papers remain in Cambridge, while objects including his wheelchairs, speech synthesisers, and personal memorabilia from his former Cambridge office would be housed at the Science Museum. In February 2022 the "Stephen Hawking at Work" display opened at the Science Museum, London as the start of a two-year nationwide tour.

Personal views

Philosophy is unnecessary

At Google's Zeitgeist Conference in 2011, Stephen Hawking said that "philosophy is dead". He believed that philosophers "have not kept up with modern developments in science", "have not taken science sufficiently seriously and so Philosophy is no longer relevant to knowledge claims", "their art is dead" and that scientists "have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge". He said that philosophical problems can be answered by science, particularly new scientific theories which "lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it". His view was both praised and criticized.

Future of humanity

President Barack Obama talks with Hawking in the White House before a ceremony presenting him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 12 August 2009.

In 2006, Hawking posed an open question on the Internet: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?", later clarifying: "I don't know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face."

Hawking expressed concern that life on Earth is at risk from a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, global warming, or other dangers humans have not yet thought of. Hawking stated: "I regard it as almost inevitable that either a nuclear confrontation or environmental catastrophe will cripple the Earth at some point in the next 1,000 years", and considered an " asteroid collision" to be the biggest threat to the planet. Such a planet-wide disaster need not result in human extinction if the human race were to be able to colonise additional planets before the disaster. Hawking viewed spaceflight and the colonisation of space as necessary for the future of humanity.

Hawking stated that, given the vastness of the universe, aliens likely exist, but that contact with them should be avoided. He warned that aliens might pillage Earth for resources. In 2010 he said, "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

Hawking warned that superintelligent artificial intelligence could be pivotal in steering humanity's fate, stating that "the potential benefits are huge... Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. It might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks." He feared that "an extremely intelligent future AI will probably develop a drive to survive and acquire more resources as a step toward accomplishing whatever goal it has", and that "The real risk with AI isn't malice but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we're in trouble". He also considered that the enormous wealth generated by machines needs to be redistributed to prevent exacerbated economic inequality.

Hawking was concerned about the future emergence of a race of "superhumans" that would be able to design their own evolution and, as well, argued that computer viruses in today's world should be considered a new form of life, stating that "maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image."

Religion and atheism

Hawking was an atheist. In an interview published in The Guardian, Hawking regarded "the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail", and the concept of an afterlife as a "fairy story for people afraid of the dark". In 2011, narrating the first episode of the American television series on the Discovery Channel, Hawking declared:

We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation. 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.

Hawking's association with atheism and freethinking was in evidence from his university years onwards, when he had been a member of Oxford University's humanist group. He was later scheduled to appear as the keynote speaker at a 2017 Humanists UK conference. In an interview with , he said:

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn't. I'm an atheist.

In addition, Hawking stated:

If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God', but it wouldn't be a personal God that you would meet and put questions to.

Hawking was a longstanding Labour Party supporter. He recorded a tribute for the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a " war crime", campaigned for nuclear disarmament, and supported stem cell research, universal health care, and action to prevent climate change. In August 2014, Hawking was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue. Hawking believed a United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) would damage the UK's contribution to science as modern research needs international collaboration, and that free movement of people in Europe encourages the spread of ideas. Hawking said to Theresa May, "I deal with tough mathematical questions every day, but please don't ask me to help with Brexit." Hawking was disappointed by Brexit and warned against envy and isolationism.

Hawking was greatly concerned over health care, and maintained that without the UK National Health Service, he could not have survived into his 70s. Hawking especially feared privatisation. He stated, "The more profit is extracted from the system, the more private monopolies grow and the more expensive healthcare becomes. The NHS must be preserved from commercial interests and protected from those who want to privatise it." Hawking blamed the Conservatives for cutting funding to the NHS, weakening it by privatisation, lowering staff morale through holding pay back and reducing social care. Hawking accused Jeremy Hunt of cherry picking evidence which Hawking maintained debased science. Hawking also stated, "There is overwhelming evidence that NHS funding and the numbers of doctors and nurses are inadequate, and it is getting worse." In June 2017, Hawking endorsed the Labour Party in the 2017 UK general election, citing the Conservatives' proposed cuts to the NHS. But he was also critical of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, expressing scepticism over whether the party could win a general election under him.

Hawking feared Donald Trump's policies on global warming could endanger the planet and make global warming irreversible. He said, "Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change, and pulling out of the Paris Agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children." Hawking further stated that this could lead Earth "to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid".

Hawking was also a supporter of a universal basic income. He was critical of the Israeli government's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stating that their policy "is likely to lead to disaster."

Appearances in popular media

Hawking in Monty Python's "Galaxy Song" video at the comedy troupe's 2014 reunion show, Monty Python Live (Mostly)

In 1988, Hawking, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan were interviewed in God, the Universe and Everything Else. They discussed the Big Bang theory, God and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

At the release party for the home video version of the A Brief History of Time, Leonard Nimoy, who had played Spock on , learned that Hawking was interested in appearing on the show. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993. The same year, his synthesiser voice was recorded for the Pink Floyd song " Keep Talking", and in 1999 for an appearance on The Simpsons. Hawking appeared in documentaries titled The Real Stephen Hawking (2001), Stephen Hawking: Profile (2002) and (2013), and the documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe (2008). Hawking also guest-starred in and had a recurring role in The Big Bang Theory.

Hawking allowed the use of his copyrighted voice in the biographical 2014 film The Theory of Everything, in which he was portrayed by Eddie Redmayne in an Academy Award-winning role. Hawking was featured at the Monty Python Live (Mostly) show in 2014. He was shown to sing an extended version of the " Galaxy Song", after running down Brian Cox with his wheelchair, in a pre-recorded video.

Hawking used his fame to advertise products, including a wheelchair, National Savings, British Telecom, Specsavers, Egg Banking, and Go Compare. In 2015, he applied to trademark his name.

Broadcast in March 2018 just a week or two before his death, Hawking was the voice of The Book Mark II on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, and he was the guest of Neil deGrasse Tyson on .

The 2021 animated sitcom The Freak Brothers features a recurring character, Mayor Pimco, who is apparently modeled after Stephen Hawking.

On 8 January 2022, Google featured Hawking in a Google Doodle on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

Awards and honours

Hawking received numerous awards and honours. Already early in the list, in 1974 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). At that time, his nomination read:

Hawking has made major contributions to the field of general relativity. These derive from a deep understanding of what is relevant to physics and astronomy, and especially from a mastery of wholly new mathematical techniques. Following the pioneering work of Penrose he established, partly alone and partly in collaboration with Penrose, a series of successively stronger theorems establishing the fundamental result that all realistic cosmological models must possess singularities. Using similar techniques, Hawking has proved the basic theorems on the laws governing black holes: that stationary solutions of Einstein's equations with smooth event horizons must necessarily be axisymmetric; and that in the evolution and interaction of black holes, the total surface area of the event horizons must increase. In collaboration with G. Ellis, Hawking is the author of an impressive and original treatise on "Space-time in the Large".

The citation continues, "Other important work by Hawking relates to the interpretation of cosmological observations and to the design of gravitational wave detectors."

Hawking was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1984), the American Philosophical Society (1984), and the United States National Academy of Sciences (1992).

Hawking received the 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences shared with Viatcheslav Mukhanov for discovering that the galaxies were formed from quantum fluctuations in the early Universe. At the 2016 Pride of Britain Awards, Hawking received the lifetime achievement award "for his contribution to science and British culture". After receiving the award from Prime Minister Theresa May, Hawking humorously requested that she not seek his help with Brexit.

The Hawking Fellowship

In 2017, the Cambridge Union Society, in conjunction with Hawking, established the Professor Stephen Hawking Fellowship. The fellowship is awarded annually to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the STEM fields and social discourse, with a particular focus on impacts affecting the younger generations. Each fellow delivers a lecture on a topic of their choosing, known as the 'Hawking Lecture'.

Hawking himself accepted the inaugural fellowship, and he delivered the first Hawking Lecture in his last public appearance before his passing.

Medal for Science Communication

Hawking was a member of the advisory board of the Starmus Festival, and had a major role in acknowledging and promoting science communication. The Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication is an annual award initiated in 2016 to honour members of the arts community for contributions that help build awareness of science. Recipients receive a medal bearing a portrait of Hawking by Alexei Leonov, and the other side represents an image of Leonov himself performing the first spacewalk along with an image of the " Red Special", the guitar of Queen musician and astrophysicist Brian May (with music being another major component of the Starmus Festival).

The Starmus III Festival in 2016 was a tribute to Stephen Hawking and the book of all Starmus III lectures, "Beyond the Horizon", was also dedicated to him. The first recipients of the medals, which were awarded at the festival, were chosen by Hawking himself. They were composer Hans Zimmer, physicist Jim Al-Khalili, and the science documentary Particle Fever.

Publications

Popular books

Co-authored

Children's fiction

Co-written with his daughter Lucy.

Films and series

Selected academic works

By considering the effect of a black hole's ^ event horizon on virtual particle production, Hawking found in 1974, much to his surprise, that black holes emit black-body radiation associated with a temperature that can be expressed (in the nonspinning case) as:

where is black hole temperature, is the reduced Planck constant, is the speed of light, is the Newtonian constant of gravitation, is the mass of the black hole, and is the Boltzmann constant. This relationship between concepts from the disparate fields of general relativity, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics implies the existence of deep connections between them and may presage their unification. It is inscribed on Hawking's memorial stone.[331] The equation's most fundamental implication can be obtained as follows. According to thermodynamics, this temperature is associated with anentropy, , such that where is the energy of a (nonspinning) black hole as expressed with Einstein's formula.[332] Combining equations then gives:

Now, theradius of a nonspinning black hole is given by and since its surface area is just can be expressed in terms of surface area as:[329][333]

where the subscript BH stands for either "black hole" or "Bekenstein-Hawking". This can be expressed more simply as a proportionality between twodimensionless ratios:

where is the Planck length.Jacob Bekenstein had conjectured the proportionality; Hawking confirmed it and established the constant of proportionality at .[308][103] Calculations based on string theory, first carried out in 1995, have been found to yield the same result.[334] This relationship is conjectured to be valid not just for black holes, but also (sinceentropy is proportional to information) as an upper bound on the amount of information that can be contained in any volume of space, which has in turn spawned deeper reflections on the possible nature of reality.

References

1. ^ Stephen Hawking at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

2. Bernard Carr; George F. R. Ellis; Gary Gibbons; James Hartle; Thomas Hertog; Roger Penrose; Malcolm Perry; Kip S. Thorne (July 2019). "Stephen William Hawking CH CBE. 8 January 1942-14 March 2018". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 66: 267-308. arXiv:. doi:10.1098/RSBM.2019.0001. ISSN 0080-4606. S2CID 131986323. Wikidata Q63347107.

3. ^ Taylor-Robinson, Marika Maxine (1998). Problems in M theory. lib.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC 894603647. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.625075. Archived from the original on 1 May 2018.

4. Stephen Hawking: An inspirational story of willpower and strength. Swagatham Canada ^ https://www.swagathamcanada.com/inspirational/stephen-hawking-an-inspirational-story-of-willpower-and-strength/ Archived 6 November 2021 at the Wayback Machine 26 October 2021

5. ^ Gardner, Martin (September/October 2001). "Multiverses and Blackberries" Archived 28 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine. "Notes of a Fringe-Watcher". Skeptical Inquirer. Volume 25, No. 5.

6. Price, Michael Clive (February 1995). ^ "THE EVERETT FAQ" Archived 20 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis. Retrieved 17 December 2014.

7. ^ "UPI Almanac for Monday, 8 Jan 2018". United Press International. 8 January 2018. Archived from the original on 8 January 2018. ...British physicist and author Stephen Hawking 1942 (age 76)

8. ^ R.D. Blandford (30 March 1989). "Astrophysical Black Holes". In Hawking, S.W.; Israel, W. (eds.). Three Hundred Years of Gravitation. Cambridge University Press. p. 278. ISBN 978-0-521-37976-2.

9. Stephen Hawking (August 1975). "Particle creation by black holes". Communications in Mathematical Physics. 43 (3): 199-220. Bibcode:1975CMaPh..43..199H. doi:10.1007/BF02345020. ISSN 0010-3616. S2CID 55539246. Zbl 1378.83040. Wikidata Q55869076.

10. ^ Susskind, Leonard (7 July 2008). The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. Hachette Digital, Inc. pp. 9, 18. ISBN 978-0-316-01640-7. Archived from the original on 18 January 2017.

11. See Guth (1997) for a popular description of the workshop, or ^ The Very Early Universe, ISBN 0-521-31677-4 eds Gibbons, Hawking & Siklos for a detailed report.

12. ^ Stephen Hawking (September 1982). "The development of irregularities in a single bubble inflationary universe". Physics Letters B. 115 (4): 295-297. Bibcode:1982PhLB..115..295H. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(82)90373-2. ISSN 0370-2693. Wikidata Q29398982.

13. ^ Komar, Oliver; Buechner, Linda (October 2000). "The Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador Central America Honours the Fortitude of a Great Living Scientist". Journal of College Science Teaching. XXX (2). Archived from the original on 30 July 2009.

14. ^ Billings, Lee (2 September 2014). "Time Travel Simulation Resolves 'Grandfather Paradox'". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 4 September 2016.

15. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1994). Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. Random House. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-553-37411-7. Archived from the original on 18 January 2017.

16. ^ "Paralympics: Games opening promises 'journey of discovery'". BBC. 29 August 2012. Archived from the original on 29 August 2012.

17. ^ Brown, Benjamin. "'We lost a great one today': World reacts to Stephen Hawking's death on social media". Fox News Channel. Archived from the original on 14 March 2018.

18. Prof Stephen Hawking funeral: Legacy 'will live forever' Archived 18 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine. BBC News. Published 31 March 2018. Retrieved 31 March 2018.

19. ^ Castle, Stephen (15 June 2018). "Stephen Hawking Enters 'Britain's Valhalla,' Where Space Is Tight". The New York Times. when Stephen Hawking's ashes were interred there on Friday, they were placed between the remains of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin

20. ^ Haco, Sasha; Hawking, Stephen W.; Perry, Malcolm J.; Strominger, Andrew (2018). "Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2018 (12). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 98. arXiv:1810.01847v2. Bibcode:2018JHEP...12..098H. doi:10.1007/jhep12(2018)098. ISSN 1029-8479.

21. ^ "Celebrating the Life of Stephen Hawking 2019 UK 50p Brilliant Uncirculated Coin." The Royal Mint. Retrieved 3 December 2022.

22. ^ Scott, Callum D. (2012). "The death of Philosophy: a response to Stephen Hawking". South African Journal of Philosophy. 31 (2): 384-404. doi:10.1080/02580136.2012.10751783. S2CID 144498480.

23. ^ Brooks, Libby (25 December 2017). "Scotland united in curiosity as councils trial universal basic income". The Guardian. Universal basic income is, according to its many and various supporters, an idea whose time has come. The deceptively simple notion of offering every citizen a regular payment without means testing or requiring them to work for it has backers as disparate as Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking, Caroline Lucas and Richard Branson.

24. ^ Mialet, Hélène (28 June 2012). Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing Subject. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. p. 211. ISBN 978-0-226-52226-5.

25. ^ McAfee, Melonyce (14 April 2015). "Stephen Hawking sings Monty Python's 'Galaxy Song'". CNN. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017.

26. ^ "Certificate of election: Hawking, Stephen, EC/1974/12". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 4 February 2014.

27. ^ "Stephen Hawking medal" Archived 5 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Starmus. Retrieved 19 August 2019

External links

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Stephen William Hawking (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between 1979 and 2009, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world.

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Turia Pitt, badly burned in marathon fire, talks mental resilience

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Oprah Winfrey gave birth at age 14 and lost her child.

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Oprah Winfrey gave birth at age 14 and lost her child.

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/successful-people-obstacles_n_3964459

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The top 3 times Lebron's legacy was on the line...and he responded

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By Matthew Bass on July 12, 2013

Albert Einstein didn't speak until three years of age and it took him several more years after that before he could speak fluently. He couldn't read

until he was seven years of age in elementary school was a struggle for him which led to many people suspecting him of being retarded. It's been told that when his school teachers asked him a question he took forever to answer even silently mouthing the words to himself before slowly speaking them out loud. In fact, many people believed Einstein would never succeed at anything.

Einstein didn't give it on his higher education, but continued to face difficulties at every turn. He applied to the Swiss Federal Institute of technology but failed the entrance exam and had to take it a second time for he was admitted to the school. The school even rejected his doctoral dissertation and called it irrelevant and fanciful, which I would suspect came back to haunt them years later when his brilliance was evident to the entire world.

After he finally graduated from college, he got a job as a clerk in a patent office. He said that he liked that job because it was mostly mindless and allowed him free time study and research scientific theories he was working on time. He stated in this job for a while but continued being very absent-minded. It is said that he often forgot simple things such as making sure he put on his socks before shoes, and it is also told that he wants misplaced day payroll check because he use it as a bookmark in his research.

Regardless of all of Einstein's setbacks and rejection by the general public and education, he continued his studies experimentation and work on his theories. In fact, it was not until after one of Einstein's first theories the special theory of relativity was published that the scientific community and the world truly recognized his great talents. However, even then many scientists throughout the world ridiculed him and attacked his theories calling them worthless and useless, and even going as far as saying that Einstein does not have a logical mind.

In true Einstein fashion he went on to become a professor at the University in Zürich and later, a professor of theoretical physics at Prague. He then went on to prove to all of the doubting, ridiculing scientists throughout the world that he did have a brilliant mind by winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921.

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Albert Einstein didn't speak until three years of age and it took him several more years after that before he could speak fluently. He couldn't read until he was seven years of age in elementary school was a struggle for him which led to many people suspecting him of being retarded.

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This film displays hardships people can come across in their lives. I wanted to capture moments and decisions that can make us who we are. Thanksss so much to everyone who was a part of this. It was only because of you guys that this movie came to life!

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Jan 19, 2018

Brett OkamotoESPN Staff Writer

Close

MMA columnist for ESPN.com

Analyst for "MMA Live"

Covered MMA for Las Vegas Sun

Saturday's UFC 220 event in Boston will feature one of the company's best heavyweight title matchups in years, with defending champion Stipe Miocic taking on Francis Ngannou. It's a shot at history for Miocic, as he tries to become the first heavyweight titleholder to ever defend the belt three consecutive times. And he'll do so against Ngannou, one of the fastest-rising title challengers in recent memory. In the co-main event, Daniel Cormier faces first-time title challenger Volkan Oezdemir. It's the first light heavyweight title fight since Jon Jones was stripped of his belt for the third time -- in this case, due to a failed drug test. More on that fight here.
Stipe Miocic (17-2) vs. Francis Ngannou (11-1), heavyweight championship
Odds: Ngannou -180; Miocic +160
An "underdog champion" meets the UFC's "shiny new toy."

Shortly after making a successful title defense against Junior dos Santos in May, Stipe Miocic addressed the media at a postfight press conference.

Despite a brilliant first-round knockout that night, Miocic's demeanor was not overly joyful. When asked about his immediate plans, Miocic sternly responded, "There are a lot of things that need looking into. Let's leave it at that."

It was no secret Miocic, 35, was talking about his UFC contract.

In late 2016, Miocic defended the title against Alistair Overeem at UFC 203, in his hometown of Cleveland. Per commission records, Miocic's purse was $200,000 less than Overeem's for that event, even though Miocic held the role of champion. He said later he wanted that situation rectified.

Stipe Miocic is considered the "baddest man on the planet" as the UFC's heavyweight champion. He also helps save lives -- and cleans toilets -- as a member of the Valley View Fire Department.

Which fighter in the UFC 220 main event has the statistical advantage? FightMetric evaluates the offensive and defensive styles of heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic and challenger Francis Ngannou.

Since accepting the Ngannou fight, Miocic has been noncommittal regarding the outcome of any contract renegotiation. He recently told ESPN he feels disrespected, but added, "I'm here to fight and that's all I care about."

Ngannou, meanwhile, appears to have the UFC's full support. He moved to Las Vegas last year and trains at the promotion's Performance Institute, which is connected to its headquarters.

President Dana White has referred to him as "the next big thing," and it's easy to see why. His vicious knockout against Overeem last month was one of 2017's best. He's finished his previous four opponents inside the first round, and his backstory as a poor Cameroonian-Frenchman is extremely compelling.

Miocic has openly said he believes the UFC wants Ngannou to win, but has promised nothing will change in Boston.

"He's a shiny new toy to them -- that's pretty much what it is," Miocic said. "[The feeling of disrespect] has gotten more and more worse.

"Listen, the guy has hype behind him and he should, he hits hard. I see these things about how he's going to change the division. That's fine, he can change it after I'm done."

Fight breakdown

Francis Ngannou hits hard.

That seems to be the prevailing breakdown of this fight. There's still much we don't know about Ngannou, but those questions mean nothing because ... Have you seen the dude punch?

And heck, there might be a lot of truth to that. Maybe Ngannou's power has masked some deficiencies. If that's the case, the question is: Can Stipe Miocic survive long enough to show them?

Miocic poses several challenges we haven't seen Ngannou deal with before. Wrestling is a big one. Miocic is a former NCAA Division I national qualifier wrestler, with the endurance to keep it up over 25 minutes. That's not something Ngannou has faced yet.

Miocic is also very good at backing opponents to the fence and cornering them there. Ngannou hasn't spent a ton of time in that position. How he may handle extended periods of time there is worth wondering about, especially the longer a fight goes.

And that last point is potentially a big one in this five-rounder. There is prior evidence Ngannou slows down over time. It makes sense, considering his size and haymaker style of punches. Stamina is a key area Ngannou has focused on since moving to Las Vegas.

If Miocic can get into an early rhythm with his jab, walk Ngannou to the outside and fit in a takedown here and there, the endurance of Ngannou is something to monitor. Yes, he hits like a truck, but if the speed tapers off, he'll at least be a manageable foe on the feet.

Miocic has far more experience under these circumstances. He's gone five rounds with dos Santos and has headlined six UFC events. He's knocked out Fabricio Werdum in a Brazilian soccer stadium. At this point, it's reasonable to believe that experience, plus his style, gives him an edge late.

But Miocic's pressure leaves him vulnerable. He's taken his share of damage and been dropped in the first round before. One mistake could cost him everything here.
Prediction: Miocic via TKO, third round.

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UFC 220 Cheat Sheet: Stipe Miocic vs. Francis Ngannou

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Jan 19, 2018 Brett OkamotoESPN Staff Writer Close MMA columnist for ESPN.com Analyst for "MMA Live" Covered MMA for Las Vegas Sun Saturday's UFC 220 event in Boston will feature one of the company's best heavyweight title matchups in years, with defending champion Stipe Miocic taking on Francis Ngannou.

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cristiano ronaldo struggle story | life of a footballer

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He Could Be The Most Resilient Person You Will Ever Meet.

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Have you heard the life story of Colonel Sanders? It's taken root in the muddy internet backwater where only inspirational anecdotes tend to flourish.

In the past couple weeks, variations on the tale have materialized in an Osaka Craigslist posting, a YouTube clip designed like one of those Facebook videos you watch without sound while you're on the toilet, and the Facebook page of former candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Dr. Ben Carson. I came to it through LinkedIn, my personal junction with the web's dregs.

"At age 5 his Father died," begins the story. "At age 16 he quit school. At age 17 he had already lost four jobs. At age 18 he got married. He joined the army and washed out there. At age 20 his wife left him and took their baby. He became a cook in a small cafe and convinced his wife to return home. At age 65 he retired. He felt like a failure & decided to commit suicide. He sat writing his will, but instead, he wrote what he would have accomplished with his life & thought about how good of a cook he was. So he borrowed $87 fried up some chicken using his recipe, went door to door to sell. At age 88 Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Empire was a billionaire."
"Inspirational"
Beneath the LinkedIn item is a discolored photo of a smiling Colonel Sanders holding a bucket of chicken, his portrait emblazoned onto its red and white cardboard. And beneath the image are comments. "Sometimes you have to fail to figure out what works," responds one commenter. Says another, "Inspirational."

Each retelling differs, tweaked to appeal to a specific motivation-hungry audience. A longer version on Facebook, for instance, includes more provocative details like "At age 20 his wife left him and took their baby daughter [...] He failed in an attempt to kidnap his own daughter, and eventually he convinced his wife to return home." and "On the 1st day of retirement he received a cheque from the Government for $105. He felt that the Government was saying that he couldn't provide for himself."

What the retellings share is an indifference to the truth, a puzzling eagernesses to exchange unbelievable facts for mundane and simplified melodramatic plot. For example, much of the text appears to be a streamlined version of a story about Colonel Sander's plot to kidnap his daughter, found on a Jehovahs-witness.com, and attributed to a Los Angeles Times syndicated article - that oddly doesn't appear in the paper's online archive.

Many other avenues can be taken to learn the extravagant truth of the Colonel's life. In 1970, the New Yorker profiled Colonel Sanders - or as author William Whitworth describes him, "a perfectionist in an imperfect world" - still alive and approaching eighty. Whitworth recounts how Sanders became a cook as a child in his mother's regular absence, then shuffled between the life of a farmer, streetcar conductor, soldier, railroad fireman, lawyer, insurance salesman, steamboat operator, secretary, lighting manufacturer, and a number of other jobs, including hotel owner and restaurateur. Sanders didn't lose jobs, it would appear, so much as he bored of them.
"A Kentucky Renaissance man"
Sanders first built an identity on fried chicken while running a service station with his mistress, who following his divorce would become his second wife - a point made in one of Sanders' autobiographies. And depending on who you believe, he received his honorary Colonel title sometime in the 1930s or 1950s from the Kentucky governor.

Sanders didn't retire at the age of 65. That's when he sold his first restaurant, and began developing the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in earnest. Nearly 60-years-old, he would spend days at a restaurant, peddling his chicken technique, cooking for customers, and often sleeping in the back of his car. At 73, he sold KFC for $2 million. He was not a billionaire, but he lived in comfort for the remainder of his years.

The New Yorker piece, and much writing of the time on Sanders, never mentions a kidnapping plot. Though a variation of the event appears, oddly, in the Colonel's 1974 autobiography, Life as I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin' Good. According to a Thought Catalog synopsis of the book, Colonel Sanders was a servant of God, with a nasty mouth and a willingness to be pummel a man with a chair. He claimed the power of prayer healed his colon polyp. All of which is to say, Sanders' life begs to be described, like a Mark Twain character, with many pauses for comic detail - a leisurely style that doesn't mesh with an optimized social media post.
Sanders invited J. Edgar Hoover to his 80th birthday
Perhaps what's most disappointing about the boring, false inspirational life anecdotes, which aren't limited to this chef, is how readily available the real story often is. Between the profiles, biographies, and Sander's own writing, his life story is quite literally an open book. With one exception, that is.

In January 1968, the Colonel invited then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to celebrate his 80th birthday "I do believe us [old] folks can show those young people what celebratin's [sic] all about." Sanders had previously written to J. Edgar Hoover in 1960 to compliment his handling of the "San Francisco riots," presumably the "Black Friday" protests, a demonstration against the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities. He had expressed confidence the work of Hoover, who at this point was facing pushback from younger politicians, including presidential nominee Richard Nixon.

Included in FBI's file is background on the fast food mogul: "Colonel Harland F. Sanders has not been the subject of an FBI investigation," begins the report. The sentence is followed by two paragraphs of text redacted by long strips of black ink.

That's the story worth sharing.

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The real story of Colonel Sanders is far crazier than this bland inspirational meme

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Have you heard the life story of Colonel Sanders? It's taken root in the muddy internet backwater where only inspirational anecdotes tend to flourish. In the past couple weeks, variations on the tale have materialized in an Osaka Craigslist posting, a YouTube clip designed like one of those Facebook videos you watch without sound while you're on the toilet, and the Facebook page of former candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Dr. Ben Carson.

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She started competing when she was four-years-old and was sponsored at nine. At 13, Bethany lost her left arm in a shark attack. Incredibly, she was paddling back out one month later, and by 18, she'd turned pro. In Australia to promote her documentary Surfs Like A Girl, Bethany joined us in the Hack studio to tell her incredible story.
When I was a kid, everyone in my family surfed, and we spent all of my childhood growing up at the beach. Surfing naturally became a huge passion of mine; it's where I wanted to be every single day.

Once my real deep passion to compete started to flow, all I wanted to do was compete - and win. I'd been doing all the top ranked amateur surfing comps in Hawaii and the US, and I remember the summer of 2003 and I went to the nationals in the US and finished second in the 18 and under division, at 13 years old. It was clear that my future was looking real bright.

[In Hawaii] there's not a whole lot of attacks, they happen, they're a part of life. As surfers, we're entering the ocean and it's their home environment. It's not like they're out to get us, they're just hungry.

When I was attacked by a shark

I remember clearly when I realised my arm was gone, at that point it was just about surviving. It's so unthinkable that I was able to get through that day and continue life in a rather positive future and looking forward to my life ahead. Thankfully I had an amazing family and community supporting me, and even willing to cheer me on to try surfing with one arm.

For me, it just felt like my world had been turned upside down and my future felt uncertain. I was able to talk to a shark attack survivor named Mike Coots, who's still a good friend today, and he was still able to surf with one leg after losing his leg [in a shark attack].

I was like - lightbulb! I'm going to go surfing with one arm.

My first time surfing again, I was actually at the beach watching all my friends surf, and it was teasing me, so I called my family up and asked them to bring down a board for me to go out. It was a really special moment having all my friends there and my entire family there to cheer me on.

I also wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it, but I guess being young and resilient and willing to try kind of gave me the guts to get out there and do it.

I just surfed the inside, I had to figure out how to surf with one arm.

I went out on a longboard and caught some whitewash, the first few times I struggled to get up, I couldn't do it. And then my dad reminded me - 'hey, now you've got one arm you've got to do things a little differently.' So the third wave I put my hand in the centre of the board and popped right up and rode the wave all the way to the beach.

And from there, there was no turning back.

Looking back on my career

Around 17 or 18 I turned pro and just started competing a lot internationally. I look back on my career and feel really blessed and really proud of my successes.

For me, once I'm up on my board surfing, it's fine. It's all the stuff in between that is the challenge.

I've always been passionate about surfing the scarier and bigger waves. I think having two older brothers and living in Hawaii and kind of being a go getter, I just naturally gravitated towards them.

Shark nets could be part of the solution

We don't want to see anyone get hurt, but we also can't just kill sharks and hope that nets are going to solve the problem, because ultimately there's bigger issues at hand.

There needs to be more than just shark nets to address the situation. Sharks are getting more and more aggressive for a reason - because they're hungry, and because the fishing industry is not being sustainable. That's where I bring it to. Shark nets could be part of the solution, and it'll be interesting to see if it does work.

Listen to Bethany's story on Hack below.

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How I became a pro surfer after losing my arm in a shark attack

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She started competing when she was four-years-old and was sponsored at nine. At 13, Bethany lost her left arm in a shark attack. Incredibly, she was paddling back out one month later, and by 18, she'd turned pro. In Australia to promote her documentary Surfs Like A Girl, Bethany joined us in the Hack studio to tell her incredible story.

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http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2007/03/23/1879844.htm

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Bounce Back Stronger, Stories of Resilience

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Bounce Back Stronger, Stories of Resilience

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Bounce Back Stronger, Stories of Resilience

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Jim Carrey Mental ilnesses Jim Carrey went through depression. Depression is a condition that can affect anyone - regardless of socioeconomic status, intelligence, or talent. Early in Jim's career, nobody would have ever guessed that he had been severely depressed for many years of his life.

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True Story of Resilience and the American Dream

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True Story of Resilience and the American Dream

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Imagine being torn out of your loving mother's arms at age eight. Next thing you know, you're alone, crammed onto a train full of people headed for another city -- one you barely know. You think that at least your aunt and uncle, whom you've met a handful of times before, will be waiting for you upon your arrival.

But instead, you're greeted only by a couple of threatening teenagers in uniform who drop you off at a dormitory, where you join a ragtag group of other lost children. When you set foot in the small, dirty room that will be your home for the next ten years, you discover your four year-old sister lying on the bare concrete floor, sobbing. She desperately needs your tender care.

In one day, you've not only lost your mother, you've become one yourself.

This is no nightmare. It is just one small part of the true story of Ping Fu, told in her memoir, Bend, Not Break. You can watch the short video trailer (directed by my talented husband, Kiran Ramchandran) below.

Ping Fu's journey only grows more remarkable from that traumatic outset. She went on to face ten years of near-starvation, abuse, and child labor as a factory worker and soldier during the Cultural Revolution in China. She received no formal education during that time.

But Ping never let these bitter experiences defeat her. On the contrary, she found beauty in nature and kindness in small acts of generosity from friends and neighbors. She refused to grow hard, but instead opened herself to compassion for all humankind, living the philosophy, "Always err on the side of generosity."

After arriving in the U.S. at age 25 with only $80 and a few words of English, Ping Fu worked her way through school as a computer programmer. She has since triumphed as founder and CEO of Geomagic, a software company that is leading the 3D printing and imaging revolution. In 2005, Ping Fu was named Inc. magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year. Today, she sits on President Obama's Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Above all, Ping Fu is one of the most generous, compassionate, and wise people I've ever had the honor to know.

Photo credit: Arin Wiscomb

Ping and I love to tell people how we met -- at Burning Man in 2010. Dressed in a custom-printed silver mask and wearing purple streaks in her hair, I never would have suspected Ping's position as a high-tech leader. But then again, that's part of what makes Burning Man so great. You get away from identities and egos.

A few months later, our mutual friend Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre boutique hotels and author of Emotional Equations, mentioned to me that he really wanted Ping to write her life story. Would I be interested in helping her tell her tale?

I'm so glad that I said yes, because working with Ping to write Bend, Not Break has been the best experience of my entire publishing career. Ping is not only gracious and intelligent, but she has a wonderful ear for language -- especially considering the fact that she didn't begin learning English until she was in her mid-20s. Beyond that, I am awestruck by her ability to overcome adversity, to forgive and love, and to shine her bright light in the world. She is a living embodiment of my mantra, "Fear Less, Love More."

Bend, Not Break centers around eight of Ping Fu's life lessons, from her childhood in Mao's China, to finding her way as a poor American immigrant, to becoming a widely respected female executive and mother. Whether you're interested in learning more about China, gaining insight into the world of venture capital and high-tech start-ups, or simply reading a provocative, inspirational story of the power of resilience, I feel certain you will enjoy reading this book.

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An Inspirational True Story of Resilience and the American Dream

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Imagine being torn out of your loving mother's arms at age eight. Next thing you know, you're alone, crammed onto a train full of people headed for another city -- one you barely know. You think that at least your aunt and uncle, whom you've met a handful of times before, will be waiting for you upon your arrival.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_gcZLXPc54

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The heart-pounding, often harrowing tales of a young wizard and his friends battling the forces of evil have introduced a generation to reading. And with more than 400 million copies of the "Harry Potter" books sold around the world and earnings for the first five movies reaching $4 billion, Harry Potter has become a multi-billion dollar brand.

But before becoming a worldwide phenomenon, Harry Potter existed only in the mind of Joanne, better known to the world as author J.K. Rowling, who was a struggling, out-of-work single mom when she decided one day to write a book.

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Though the series has taken her 17 years to write, when Rowling began putting words to paper, it was magic.

Watch "J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life," Thursday, July 16 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

An epic saga of childhood confusion, danger and adventure, Harry Potter is more than just a children's story. Behind the witchcraft and the wizardry lie an intensely moral fable about good and evil, love and hatred, life and death. Yet Rowling, a slender, down-to-earth woman, still seems surprised at her success.

Like her orphaned hero, Joanne Rowling was brought up on suburban British streets like the one the Dursleys live on, in the books, in the south of England, outside Bristol. Her house even had a cupboard under the stairs; but unlike Potter, Rowling didn't have to sleep there.

Rowling and Potter share the same birthday -- July 31 -- and Rowling, with her sister Di, endured similar childhood traumas and massive disappointments, as the novels' protagonist.

At the impressionable age of nine, Rowling's family moved from the suburbs to the country, near the Forest of Dean -- a location that offered a range of imaginative possibilities: magical creatures, mystery and intrigue for Rowling.

"I'm very drawn to, to a forest and it's my favorite part of the Hogwarts grounds," Rowling said in a November 2006 interview with James Runcie, which has been obtained by ABC News. "The advantage of a forest is it can be so many things: it can be a place of enchantment, you never imagine a crowd in a forest, it's a solitary place. But there's just something, is it because it used to be a place of shelter and safety to us I suppose, so I think, I, I am very drawn to them, even though they can be spooky."

Mother's Illness Tests Rowling

Rowling delved into writing at an early age, but her thoughts about love, death, heaven and hell were tested when her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1980.

"She had a very virulent form of the illness and at that time there were no drug treatments at all," Rowling said. "And they said 'well you've got multiple sclerosis, see you.'"

The illness devastated Rowling and her sister, and strained her relationship with her father.

"I was very frightened of my father for a very long time," she said in the 2006 interview. "...I also tried desperately to get his approval and make him happy, I suppose, and then there came a point quite shamingly late in life where I couldn't do that anymore, and so, I haven't had any contact with my father now for a few years."

Rowling's far from ideal relationship with her father inspired idealized father figures, like Hagrid, Dumbledore, and Sirius Black, in the series. She says the absence of any meaningful relationship with her father and the loss of her mother have been the two of the most important influences on her writing.

"I had been writing for six months before she died and, the weird thing is, the essential plot didn't change after my mother died, but everything deepened and darkened," Rowling said. "Harry was always going to lose his parents. And it was always going to be a quest really to avenge them, but to avenge everyone against this, this creature -- this being who believes that he can make himself immortal by killing other people. So that's, that that's something I'd created before she died, but yes, its seeped into every part of the books. I think, in retrospect now I've finished I see just how much it informed everything."

After her mother's death, Rowling moved to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. There, she married television journalist Jorge Arantes, with whom she had daughter, Jessica. But the marriage failed after two years and Rowling succumbed to depression.

"I had had a short and really quite catastrophic marriage and I'm left with this baby and I've got to get this baby back to Britain and I've got to rebuild us a life," Rowling recalled. "...Adrenalin kept me going through that and it was only when I came to rest that it hit me what a complete mess I had made of my life and that hit me quite hard."

Her deep depression inspired the creation of dementors, "the foulest creatures that walk this earth," who prey on people's happiness and suck out their souls in the Harry Potter series.

"I was definitely clinically depressed. And that's just characterized for me by, a numbness, just a sort of coldness and an inability to believe that you will feel happy again or that you could feel light-hearted again," she said. "It's just all the color drained out of life really."

'Potter' Series' Moral Dilemmas Play Out in Life

The "Harry Potter" books may be located in an alternative fantasy world, but they address serious moral questions about the nature of trust, loyalty, integrity -- and the need to make a stand against evil.

Through the series, Harry Potter has to learn what it means to be a force for good against the dark arts of Lord Voldemort.

"I think we all understand what an act of evil is and Voldemort qualifies extravagantly for acts of evil," Rowling explained. "He has killed not out of self-defense, not to protect, not to do, not for any of the reasons that we might all be able to envisage. Most of could envisage ourselves killing in certain extreme situations if people we loved were threatened, or in war. He's killed cold-bloodedly, sometimes for enjoyment and for his own personal gain."

In November 2006, Rowling locked herself in the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh to work on the crucial final chapters of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" -- the final Harry Potter book. As the most anticipated new book of this century neared completion, it marked the end of a personal project for Rowling, who had been immersed in the magical world of Potter and her characters for seventeen years. With its completion, Rowling says it's time to focus on her family and her own well-being.

"I am happier now than I have ever been in my life, I am happier now than I was as a child, teenager, young adult and I think middle age is probably going to be my time," she said.

Watch "J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life," Thursday, July 16 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

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Inside the Magical World of J.K. Rowling

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Upon the release of the latest Harry Potter movie, Elizabeth Vargas takes viewers on a journey into the life of J.K. Rowling. From the one bedroom apartment in Scotland where "Harry Potter" began to a hotel room where viewers watch her type the last words of the Potter saga, Rowling lets millions of...

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http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/News/NewsAndFeatures/Pages/Oprah-Winfrey-Resilience-to-childhood-adversity.aspx

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