What The Final Year Of Stephen Hawking's Life Was Like

It's not hyperbole to suggest that Dr. Stephen Hawking fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. When the brilliant young physicist was diagnosed at age 21 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, doctors didn't expect him to make it to his 25th birthday. 

Hawking proved them wrong, surviving for decades while his brilliant mind soared into the cosmos — despite being unable to move or speak as his ALS progressed. When he passed away on March 14, 2018, at the age of 76, he was considered among the greatest minds of his generation, opening up the mysteries of the universe like no scientist before him. Hawking, however, was never one to acknowledge such a thing. In one of his final interviews — with Piers Morgan for "Good Morning Britain" — he was asked if he believed he was one of the world's smartest people. "I would never claim this," Hawking responded. "People who boast about their IQ are losers."

That interview took place about 12 months before his death, a period that was characteristically busy for him as he continued his research, gave numerous interviews, and even made a few pop-culture appearances — including a video game and a popular TV sitcom. There is a lot that many people don't know about Hawking, particularly concerning the last months of his life. To discover more, read on for a window into what the final year of Stephen Hawking's life was like. 

While Stephen Hawking let his mind wander through the mysteries of the cosmos, he was also keenly aware of what was happening right here on Earth. Given the combo platter of climate change, asteroid strikes that were long overdue (following the biggest asteroid impacts in Earth's history), the steep population growth, and the specters of another deadly pandemic or nuclear war, Hawking's opinion was that humanity was toast. Since Hawking predicted the end of the world, he suggested that Earthlings had better be prepared to pull up stakes and find another planet to inhabit — and the clock was ticking. 

He discussed that in a 2017 television series for BBC Two, titled "Stephen Hawking: Expedition New Earth." "I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth and make a new home on another planet," he said in the series. "To stay risks annihilation," he added, explaining that preparations for a mass exodus needed to be in place within the next 100 years.

With the help of engineering expert Danielle George and physicist Christophe Galfard — who was once Hawking's student — the series explored the practicalities of relocating to a different planet, unveiling cutting-edge research revealing that achieving that goal was closer than most people may have realized.

Stephen Hawking's reputation was internationally known. It didn't hurt that his life story had been told in the Hollywood biopic "The Theory of Everything," featuring actor Eddie Redmayne in the leading role. As a public figure, he was as recognized in the annals of pop culture as he was in the halls of academia. This led the Cambridge-based scientist to travel the world, which included frequent trips to the U.S.

When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Hawking fretted over whether he'd still be allowed into the country due to his own outspokenness deriding the new resident of the White House. "I have many friends and colleagues there and it is still a place I like and admire in many ways, but I fear that I may not be welcome," Hawking said when interviewed by Piers Morgan for "Good Morning Britain."

That fear was likely justified, given that Hawking, the previous year, had described the future president in unflattering terms when asked to explain Trump's popularity with American voters. "I can't," Hawking said of Trump in an earlier appearance on "Good Morning Britain." "He is a demagogue, who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."

Among Stephen Hawking's many television cameos were "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," both of which sprang from the imagination of Matt Groening. Hawking declared himself to be a huge fan of the latter, making multiple appearances in the show over the course of its run. 

Hawking also expressed his affection for "Futurama" in a June 2017 Facebook post hyping his appearance in a "Futurama" mobile video game. "If you love 'Futurama' as much as I do, which is more than George Takei does, you'll be excited to learn about 'Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow,' a new mobile game arriving June 29th," he wrote, accompanying a clip in which he appears with animated versions of the aforementioned "Star Trek" star, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Speaking at New York Comic Con in 2023, "Futurama" co-creator David X. Cohen recalled one time that Hawking provided his voice for the show, when he was a visiting professor at CalTech in Pasadena. "He could've just emailed us a file of his voice, but he wanted to record it like our other guest stars did," said Cohen, as reported by Metro. "So we went to his house, we set up microphones, and he had this cool setup in his living room where he had mirrors on every surface, just so he could see what everybody was doing, and he recorded his lines into the mic for us. That was super exciting."

During the summer of 2017, Stephen Hawking made his seventh and final guest-starring appearance on "The Big Bang Theory." Hawking had first appeared in 2012 during Season 5 and guest-starred in one episode during each of the next six seasons after that. Much like Hawking wanted to fully experience what it was like to record dialogue for "Futurama," he also refused to phone it in for "The Big Bang Theory." "All of Professor Hawking's dialogue was preprogrammed and triggered through a voice synthesizer," "Big Bang Theory" creator Chuck Lorre told The Hollywood Reporter. "When we offered to do that, we were told he preferred to program and trigger his lines by himself. He wanted to 'act.'"

In the Season 11 premiere, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) seeks Hawking's blessing to propose to girlfriend Amy (Mayim Bialik). That episode, titled "The Proposal Proposal," features a scene in which Sheldon is communicating with Hawking via his laptop. "Well, Sheldon," Hawking says, "I think you should make her finger like Saturn and put a ring on it."

By the time the season concluded, Hawking was gone. In the season finale, the show played tribute to Hawking in a scene that, because of time limitations, was cut from the broadcast episode but later shared online. In that scene, Amy and Sheldon receive a posthumous wedding gift from Hawking: a pocket watch, upon which he'd had inscribed, "I'm so glad you married Amy. It's about time. Ha, ha, ha. Love, Stephen." 

On January 8, 2018, Stephen Hawking marked a major milestone: his 76th birthday. The previous July, Cambridge held a special celebration in honor of his 75th, featuring several guest speakers from the world of academia. Among those paying tribute were physicist Brian Cox, scientist Gabriela González, and Martin Rees (former master of Trinity College in Cambridge).

The final speaker at the event was Hawking himself. He began by recalling how he first became aware of the ALS that would eventually steal his mobility and speech, while ice skating with his mother. "I fell over and had great difficulty getting up," he said, as reported by Cambridgeshire Live. "At first I became depressed. I seemed to be getting worse very rapidly." However, he ultimately experienced a revelation. "While there is life, there is hope," he told the audience in attendance, reportedly leaving them in tears.

He ended his presentation with humility. "Our picture of the universe has changed a lot in the last 50 years, and I am happy if I have made a small contribution," he said, before concluding with some words of inspiration. "Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet," he added. "Be curious, and however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at."

Stephen Hawking had long been a champion of artificial intelligence. That said, he was also keenly aware of the potential problems that could result. In a March 2017 interview with The Times, conducted about a year before his death, Hawking offered a solution to prevent such a situation from occurring. "We need to be quicker to identify such threats and act before they get out of control," Hawking told the newspaper. "This might mean some form of world government." However, he also recognized that the nations of the planet banding together could also lead to a whole other threat, that of a tyrannical global government ruling humanity with an iron fist.

Later that year, in an interview with Wired that appeared in November, his concerns about AI had escalated. "I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that replicates itself," he said. "This will be a new form of life that will outperform humans."

He doubled down in a speech he delivered that same month during the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal. "Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it," he said (via CNBC).

In early March 2018, Stephen Hawking appeared as a guest in the season finale of "StarTalk," National Geographic Channel's science-based talk show hosted by astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. The episode, which premiered just days before Hawking's death, marked his final television appearance. 

During the wide-ranging conversation, Hawking revealed that his favorite food was oysters, his favorite drink was Pimm's, and his favorite equation was one that he'd invented himself, about the entropy of a black hole. Hawking also talked about his famed 2007 zero-gravity flight. "It was wonderful to float weightlessly, free of my wheelchair," he recalled. "I could have gone on and on and on."

At another point in the interview, Hawking shared his views on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and how it related to his Euclidean approach to the big bang theory (the actual theory, not the beloved sitcom), and later discussed time travel, explaining how the creation of negative energy could make it possible, and why he believed it would soon be necessary for humans to leave Earth. "Of course, it would be impossible to move the population of the Earth to a new planet, but if we can establish independent, self-sustaining colonies in space, it would ensure the survival of the human race, in the event of a disaster on Earth," he said. "Leaving Earth will also give us a new perspective, and cause us to look outwards rather than inwards."

In the weeks leading up to his death, Stephen Hawking was completing a paper, which was submitted to the Journal of High-Energy Physics less than two weeks before he died. That paper — titled "A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation" — made some bold predictions about the future. One key prediction, reported The Independent, proposed that the universe would eventually come to an end when the energy powering stars runs out. Another theory contained within posited that humans would some day discover alternate dimensions via space travel, which Hawking felt would improve humanity's understanding of the cosmos significantly. Meanwhile, Hawking had also devised a mathematical formula that could test the multiverse theory.  

Hawking's co-author, Professor Thomas Hertog of Belgium's KU Leuven University, believed this paper was Hawking's greatest academic achievement. "This was Stephen: to boldly go where 'Star Trek' fears to tread," Hertog told The Times, sharing his belief that had Hawking lived, he would have won a Nobel prize — which are not awarded posthumously. "He has often been nominated for the Nobel and should have won it," Hertog added. "Now he never can." 

Stephen Hawking's funeral took place in Cambridge on March 31, 2018; a few months later, a celebration of his life was held in London's famed Westminster Abbey. On the day of his Cambridge funeral, however, another event was being held: an Easter lunch put on by an organization called FoodCycle, which provides meals for the needy. A small sign on a table read, "Today's lunch is a gift from Stephen ..." As FoodCycle's Alex Collis told BBC, the lunch had been funded by a special notation from Hawking and his family prior to his death. "They wanted to do something to support people going through a tough time," Collis said of Hawking's final act of kindness occurring after his death.

FoodCycle hosts weekly dinners in a Cambridge church, using fresh food that would otherwise be thrown away, donated by various suppliers. "It was a really lovely gesture..." added Collis, "and very kind of them to think of FoodCycle."

Stephen Hawking's final book was published in October 2018, more than six months after his death. Completed by his family, "Brief Answers to the Big Questions" was a compilation of Hawking's answers to questions that he was commonly asked. The most controversial of these answers was Hawking's assertion that there is no God. "No one directs the universe," Hawking wrote, as reported by CNN. "For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God. I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature."

In the book, Hawking also shared his belief that there is intelligent life beyond our planet but warned that humanity needed to approach these beings with caution. "We need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further," he continued, furthering his theory that aliens would kill us. In addition, Hawking predicted that time travel would one day be possible, and that "within the next hundred years we will be able to travel to anywhere in the Solar System."

Hawking's daughter, Lucy Hawking, was among those who worked on completing the book, and she explained why her late father felt it was important. "He realized that people specifically wanted his answers to these questions," she told CNN.

Prior to his death, Stephen Hawking was working on a paper, "Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair." Completed by colleagues, the paper was published posthumously, released in October 2018. Hawking's final work grappled with a question that he had been working to understand for decades: What becomes of information when an object is sucked into a black hole? 

Building on Albert Einstein's work, Hawking presented a paradox about black holes, noting that they will ultimately evaporate and vanish from existence. That, he pointed out, refutes the laws of quantum physics, which dictate that information never becomes lost. "The difficulty is that if you throw something into a black hole it looks like it disappears," Malcolm Perry, a Cambridge professor of theoretical physics who co-authored the paper with Hawking, told The Guardian. "How could the information in that object ever be recovered if the black hole then disappears itself?"

As Perry explained, the paper doesn't answer the question so much as lead future scientists in the right direction to someday finding it. "It's a step on the way, but it is definitely not the entire answer," added Perry. "We have slightly fewer puzzles than we had before, but there are definitely some perplexing issues left."