The Incredibly Complex Life Of Stephen Hawking

Stephen And Jane Wilde

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While in graduate school, Stephen began a relationship with his sister’s friend, a young woman named Jane Wilde.Their relationship had begun shortly before his diagnosis in 1963 and the two were engaged in 1964. Hawking had said that the engagement had “given him something to live for” and the two were married on July 14, 1965.

Early on, the couple had trouble finding housing that was close enough to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. They had a son born in 1967, a daughter born in 1970, and another son born in 1979. The first years of their marriage went well, even when the family moved to Southern California for Hawking’s year-long position at Cal Tech in 1974.