«Please, Lord, Stephen is alive!». Trapped in anguish and terror, when they told her via telephone that her husband, the world's most famous scientist and atheist, was on the verge of death, Jane Hawking exclaimed this phrase. Like so many other times, she clung to God, that God in whom she always believed to resist and maintain hope in the face of the fervent atheism of her sick husband, who despised and even mocked her faith and beliefs in A Supreme God, because that the god of Dr. Stephen Hawking has always been Physics, astrology and Mathematics.
Every wise woman buildeth her house;
Proverbs 14
Jane Hawking published a book of memoirs called Towards the Infinite (Lumen editorial), in the review that in the summer in Geneva Switzerland in 1985 when a virulent pneumonia left Professor Hawking in a coma and was about to kill him, while participating in a activities at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire). This situation led Swiss doctors to imply to Jane that there was nothing to do, and that if she gave them her authorization, they would disconnect the artificial respiration that kept her husband alive to let him die with as little pain as possible. Jane, however, flatly refused: and her response was swift:
Stephen must live.
The situation was so dramatic that the doctors had no choice but to perform a tracheotomy, an operation that saved the scientist's life but also left him speechless, forcing him to communicate with the legendary robotic voice of his synthesizer (designed by American scientists). In any case, Jane was not wrong when she made the decision to keep her husband alive at all costs.
In an interview given to a Spanish media, she said that it was God who miraculously saved Stephen's life many times, when the illness she suffered wanted to kill him, it was precisely that faith in God that strengthened her to keep going, God who was questioned by the astrophysical theories of Stephen Hawking.
Jane and Stephen divorced in 1991, when the astrophysicist left Jane for Elaine Mason, one of her nurses.
On March 14, 2018, Stephen died in Cambridge, UK, because of Sclerosis lateral Amiotrofia, one of the most intelligent men in the world who did not appreciate the wisdom of the woman who was by his side for a long time. A woman who believed in a God of miracles and creator of the universe including black holes.
The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge;
But the foolish despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 1: 7
References.
Joanna Moorhead (2015), Jane Hawking Brief history of a first wife. . Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/apr/04/features.review17. Accessed 01/4/2018.
Jon Gornall (2018), Dr Jane Hawking: Her own theory on it all. Available at: https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/dr-jane-hawking-her-own-theory-on-it-all-1.711357 Accessed 02/4/2018.