Stephen Hawking Movie Update: 73-Year-Old Genius Shares Same Birthday As Elvis

By R. Siva Kumar - 09 Jan '15 04:29AM

What is common between Stephen Hawking and Elvis Presley?

Their birthdays----January 8. And their immortal fame.

Hawking is also a "rock star" of sorts in the science community for his pioneering work with black holes, in which he blended the "principles of the small world of quantum physics with the huge world of Einstein's general relativity", according to space.com.

"No one had done that before," Neil deGrasse Tyson said in a video explanation of Hawking's theory. "That's badass."

Hawking is afflicted with ALS, a degenerative motor neuron disease overpowers neurons that control muscle movement. First diagnosed when he was 21 years, Hawking was told by his doctors that he had just two years of his life left. Hawking did not let his disease bog him down. As he said, once: "Life would be tragic if it weren't funny."

Check out more pungent quotes from him here.

However, Hawking's scientific career was progressing, and he was teaching till ALS made him take to a wheelchair and stopped his ability to speak. Opposing the odds of his disease, Hawking is now able to communicate through a single cheek muscle as well as a "computerized speech-generator".

In November last year, a movie based on his life, called "The Theory of Everything", talks about his personal life and his struggle with his illness. The movie has been nominated for four Golden Globes, including the categories of dramatic picture and score. Other nominees included the actors Felicity Jones, Hawking's first wife, named Jane, who became nominated for best actress. The actor Eddie Redmayne, playing Stephen Hawking, has been nominated for best actor. Hawking liked Redmayne's role in the film.

"At times, I thought he was me," Hawking wrote in a post on his Facebook page.

Hawking did not have too many illusions about life or human existence. As he said once: "We are an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special."