After Einstein, the world was given another genius by the name of Stephen Hawking. Famed physicist Stephen Hawking turns 70, the subject that most occupies his thoughts is not how the universe arose from nothing or how he's been able to live with a neurodegenerative disease for so long. Here's what he thinks about most: "Women. They are a complete mystery."
That's the bottom line from a recent interview with Stephen Hawking, timed to coincide with his birthday celebration at Cambridge. The theorist is almost completely paralyzed due to his decades-long struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and had to provide his answers by laboriously twitching his cheek to operate a computerized speech-translation system. It was his brief comment on women that attracted the most attention: How could it be that a scientist who has plumbed the deepest mysteries of the cosmos finds himself mystified by women?
Based on the view most folks have of geniuses, how could it not be?
The saga of the super-smart professor who is flummoxed by interpersonal relations, particularly with the opposite sex, is at least as old as Sigmund Freud and the stereotype we have of Einstein. It's as up to date as the astrophysicist on "The Big Bang Theory" who can't say a word to women unless he's under the influence.
Somehow, folks get a satisfying sense of karma from the idea that geniuses are socially stupid. But the stereotype doesn't really hold true, particularly in Hawking's case. Like the real-life Einstein, Hawking has had an active romantic life, marked by two marriages. (Einstein's 2nd marriage ended with the death of his wife and cousin Elsa; Hawking's ended in an ugly divorce.) Hawking's disease doesn't hamper his sexual appetite or his potency, and the fact that he's fathered three children is evidence of that. He's been called an incorrigible flirt as well as a party animal on a wheelchair.
Through the years, Hawking has had a special thing for Marilyn Monroe. A picture of the enigmatic blonde hangs in his Cambridge office, and Hawking once said that if he could travel back in time, he'd rather meet Monroe than the great physicist Isaac Newton, who "seems to have been an unpleasant character."
Even as he approaches the age of 70, Hawking seems to have kept his playful, pleasant, mischievous character. That may help explain his latest comment about the mystique surrounding women, as well as his own mystique. One instance is when actress Jane Fonda was clearly won over when Hawking came backstage after her performance in a play about a woman musicologist in the early stages of neurodegenerative disease. When Fonda asked Hawking what he thought of her performance, Hawking typed out a short response: "You were my heartthrob" — which got a big laugh. Fonda came away starstruck by this man who cannot move or speak, can, nonetheless, comprehend the incomprehensible.
Which makes us wonder if maybe women aren't such a complete mystery to Hawking after all.
