- Title: UNITED KINGDOM: SCIENTIST STEPHEN HAWKING MARRIES ELAINE MASON
- Date: 15th September 1995
- Summary: CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND (SEPTEMBER 15 1995) RTV - ACCESS ALL 1. SLV STEPHEN HAWKING, IN WHEELCHAIR, ENTERING REGISTER OFFICE 0.10 2. SV HIS BRIDE (ELAINE MASON) ENTERING REGISTER OFFICE 0.15 3. SLV PHOTOGRAPHERS 0.17 4. SLV/SV ELAINE MASON OUTSIDE OFFICE (2 SHOTS) 0.23 5. LV COUPLE COMING OUT OF REGISTER OFFICE 0.42 6. LSV MEDIA 0.46 7. SV/SLV COUPLE POSING FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS / KISSING (2 SHOTS) 1.10 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
- Embargoed: 30th September 1995 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM
- City:
- Country: United Kingdom
- Reuters ID: LVABG84KOSIR25XIGJRUPEOJLPPY
- Story Text: Britain's best-known scientist and top-selling author Stephen Hawking wed his former nurse on Friday (September 15) in a brief civil ceremony in Cambridge, England.
The 53-year-old physicist, wheelchair bound with Motor Neurone Disease (Lou Gehrig's disease), exchanged vows and kisses with Elaine Mason in a Cambridge registry office.
"It's wonderful. I have married the woman I love," Hawking said.
The couple cuddled and kissed for waiting reporters and photographers as the rain stopped when they left the building.
"I'm very happy, he's everything I want and more," said Mason, resplendent in a white dress and pill box hat. She held up her husband's head on occasions and showed off her wedding ring.
Friday's ceremony will be followed by a church blessing and reception in the university city of Cambridge on Saturday.
Neither Hawking's first wife Jane, whom he left after 26 years of marriage to live with Mason, nor their three children attended the ceremony.
Hawking's admission of a relationship with Mason, hired by his wife as part of a team to provide round-the-clock care, shocked the scientific community.
It also showed that despite his handicaps the bespectacled professor, whose intellect has been compared to Albert Einstein's, was subject to the same passions as others.
Mason, 45, is the former wife of the computer engineer who designed Hawking's voice synthesizer, his only means of speaking since a bronchial infection destroyed his speech a decade ago.
Hawking gained international prominence in 1988 with "A Brief History of Time", a book that explained the origin of the universe.
The book showed that he had refused to let the muscle-wasting disease, which has left him with virtually no movement, defeat him.
Seated in his wheelchair and speaking with a robotic American accent through a voice synthesiser, Hawking has became a symbol of how even the severely handicapped could overcome their disabilities.
Thanks to Hawking's book, a 25-million best seller which was also made into a movie and interactive CD-ROM, his ideas about black holes and the Big Bang theory are well known.
His 25-year-old daughter Lucy has described her father's refusal to accept his shortcomings as both admirable and infuriating.
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