Stephen Hawking diaries reveal father feared he was a lazy student

Frank Hawking’s private diary entries captured a version of Stephen Hawking far removed from the icon who later reshaped modern cosmology. In 1961, while Hawking was studying at the University of Oxford, his father worried that he showed “little initiative” and “does not study much,” a family view that complicates the familiar image of brilliance arriving fully formed.

The diaries were uncovered by biographer Graham Farmelo as he worked on the first authorized biography of Hawking for the Stephen Hawking estate. The book is due in September, and John Murray has announced the project with the backing of Hawking’s children, who have said they were delighted to help shape a definitive account of their father’s life.

The new material adds texture to Hawking’s early years in Oxford, England, where he was born on January 8, 1942, and later enrolled at University College, Oxford, in 1959. He went on to earn a first-class degree in physics, a reminder that the student Frank Hawking saw as insufficiently driven still developed into one of the most distinguished scientists of his era.

That arc became even more dramatic after Hawking moved to Cambridge in 1962 and was diagnosed with ALS the following year, at age 21. Doctors initially gave him about two years to live. Instead, Hawking lived until March 14, 2018, reaching age 76 and spending 30 years as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, one of the most prestigious chairs in science.

The diaries matter because they show how genius can emerge from contradiction: curiosity without polish, intelligence without conventional discipline, and ambition that was still taking shape. Hawking would later become a global public figure through A Brief History of Time, the bestseller that turned a theoretical physicist into a household name. But the family notes suggest a more human beginning, one in which a future scientific giant could still be seen at home as a young man who was not yet living up to his promise.