Hawking ‘very ill in hospital’

Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world's most famous scientists, is "very ill" in hospital, Cambridge University said today.

The 67-year-old physicist was undergoing tests at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge. A university spokesman said Professor Hawking, who is best known for his book A Brief History of Time, was taken to Addenbrooke's by ambulance and had been unwell for "a couple of weeks".

Professor Hawking, who suffers from motor neurone disease, is wheelchair-bound and speaks with the help of a voice synthesiser. He first developed symptoms of the disease in the Sixties and is one of the world's longest surviving sufferers.

He has worked at Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics for more than 30 years and since 1979 has been the university's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. He was made a CBE in 1982, became a Companion of Honour in 1989 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

He lives in Cambridge and has three children and one grandchild.