Robert Hawking

Robert was born in May 1967, as eldest son of Stephen Hawking and his first wife, Jane Wilde Hawking. He has one sister, Lucy, who is a journalist, educator, philanthropist, and novelist; and one brother, Timothy, who works with 'The Lego Group.' His parents divorced in 1995. The three siblings, along with their mother, Jane, did not attend wedding ceremony of Stephen with his nurse Elaine Mason in 1995. Jane later married Jonathan Jones in 1996. Robert and his siblings expressed their concern when they found injuries and wounds on their father’s body, including a wrist fracture. Although the Hawking siblings suspected Elaine for such incidents, their father rebuffed such accusations. Stephen divorced Elaine in 2006. The three siblings took the ALS ice bucket challenge, which supports an ALS charity, on behalf of their beloved father in 2014.

Robert is married and is blessed with a son and a daughter. He presently lives with his wife and children in Seattle, Washington, US. His mother sometimes visits him in the US.

Born as the eldest son of English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking, it was quite expected that Robert would follow his father’s footsteps into science. As a kid, he developed interest in science and also expressed his desire to become a scientist like his father, but later he chose to study software engineering and graduated from the prestigious ‘University of Oxford.' His professional endeavors saw him working in the field of information and technology for years. He lived in Canada for a few years and presently works for the famous American IT company, Microsoft Corporation, as a software engineer.

He is a family person from the very beginning and shared a strong bond with his family, especially with his father who served as the Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge. He took care of his father from a tender age as his father suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Prior to the release of her memoir, ‘Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen,’ Robert’s mother, Jane, praised her son saying he “had to do things for his father that children really shouldn’t have to do." Her book was later adapted into the 2014 blockbuster British biographical romantic drama film ‘The Theory of Everything’ in which Oliver Payne and Tom Prior portrayed Robert.