Where There is Life There is Hope

I just came back from viewing The Theory of Everything. It is a movie about life of Stephen Hawking with his wife, Jane Wilde. It is based on the book, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, and stars Eddie Redmayne (“Les Misérables”) and Felicity Jones (“The Amazing Spider-Man 2”).

The theme of the movie is, “Where there is life there is hope.” At the end of the movie, Stephen clicks something like this:

“We are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet rotating around a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special… There should be no boundary to human endeavor, however bad life may seem, where there is life, there is hope.”

I don’t remember the exact words, but I know that I was inspired by his life story.

This movie had a great emotional impact on me. I felt great compassion for both Stephen and Jane. I know what it is like to suffer from a life-threatening illness and I know what it is like to care for someone with a life-threatening illness. Both sides of the equation need love and support.

Jane is a hero and Stephen is also a hero. He was given two years to live, which turned into decades. It’s all about the love they shared.

It turns out that he and I both began our graduate work in physics in 1962, although the movie begins in 1963. He was at Cambridge University while I was at Washington University in St. Louis. He got his Ph. D. for his work on the beginning of the Universe being the result of a singularity.

Did you see the movie, The Theory of Everything? What did you think?

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Books by Jane Hawking

Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous and remarkable scientists of our age and author of the scientific bestseller A Brief History of Time, which sold more than 25 million copies. In this compelling memoir, his first wife, Jane Hawking, relates the inside story of the… [Read More…]