In addition to being a journalist, novelist, educator, and philanthropist, Lucy Hawking is best known for co-authoring the George children’s book series with her late father, theoretical scientist Stephen Hawking. She started out as a journalist and later debuted her writing career with the critically panned mystery books “Jaded” and “Run for Your Life.” She then collaborated with her well-known scientist father to create amusing children’s books with a science theme. Both Lucy, who had never written about science before, and her father, who had never attempted to compose a story, found it to be a novel experience. They started a series after their first novel, “George’s Secret Key to the Universe,” enjoyed tremendous success on a global scale. George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt, George and the Big Bang, George and the Unbreakable Code, George and the Blue Moon, and George and the Ship of Time are the five additional books in the series that the two authors published before Stephen Hawking’s passing. All five books have received positive reviews.
Early Childhood & Life
Stephen Hawking, a physicist, and Jane Wilde Hawking, a writer, welcomed Catherine into the world on November 2, 1970, in London, England. She has two brothers called Robert and Timothy Hawking and is the only daughter and second child of her parents.
Her parents moved to Cambridge after she was born, but she lived in her early years in Pasadena, California. She claims that she had a typical upbringing because of the efforts of her mother and maternal grandparents, despite being mortified by the amount of unfavorable notice her disabled father was receiving.
She went to Oxford University to study French and Russian. Later, she attended the City, University of London to study foreign journalism.
The career of Lucy Hawking
After graduating, Lucy Hawking decided that working in journalism would be a useful way to practice writing for her ultimate goal of becoming a writer. She contributed pieces to prestigious news organizations during this time, including The New York magazine, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Times, The London Evening Standard, and The Guardian.
While juggling her journalism job with a number of personal issues in the early 2000s, she persisted in finishing her first book, “Jaded,” which was published in 2004. In this mystery book, William Gadget, a banker who appears to be happy, enlists the aid of four of his pals after claiming that his life is in danger.
After the mediocre success of her first book, she released her second book, “Run for Your Life,” which was also titled “The Accidental Marathon,” in 2005. The book, which garnered better reviews, is about an antique dealer who learns that her line of work might actually be a cover for art forgery after her employer vanishes.
After receiving lukewarm reviews for her mystery books, she turned to children’s literature and released “George’s Secret Key to the Universe” (2007) with the help of her father and Christophe Galfard, a former Ph.D. student of his. The book has been very popular and has inspired five follow-up works. It tells the story of George, a young boy who uses a computer-generated portal to travel around the solar system.
In her talk at NASA’s 50th birthday celebration in April 2008, Lucy, who traveled the globe after her book was published, stressed the significance of getting kids interested in science at a young age. Later that year, for her work to promote science around the world, she was granted the “Sapio Prize,” an Italian honor given to creative researchers.
She once more collaborated with her father in 2009 to pen “George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt,” the second novel in their children’s book series. In this follow-up, the middle school cosmologists George and Annie are back for a galactic exploration journey.
In 2011, Stephen and Lucy Hawking co-authored “George and the Big Bang,” the third novel in the George series. In the book, George and Annie visit the Large Hadron Collider to observe one of history’s largest scientific experiments and discover a plot to sabotage the experiment.
For its 2011 Origins Project, Arizona State University selected her as a writer-in-residence. At the BrainSTEM: Your Future is Now festival held in 2013 at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, she participated as a lecturer.
The fourth book in the series, “George and the Unbreakable Code,” was penned by Lucy and her father and published in 2014. Best friends George and Annie “travel further into space than ever before” in this episode to discover how the largest computers in the world were compromised.
She got funding from the UK Space Agency in 2015 to work with British publisher Curved House Kids to create the “Principia Space Diary,” an educational initiative for astronaut Tim Peake. The curriculum has been finished by 90,000 students, which enabled it to be nominated by the British Interplanetary Society for the 2017 Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Excellence in Space Education.
The fifth novel in the George series, “George and the Blue Moon,” written by Christophe Galfard and Stephen Hawking, was published in 2016. George and the Ship of Time, the series’ last book before Professor Hawking passed away, was published in March 2018, the same month he passed.
Bigger Works of Lucy Hawking
The “George” children’s book series is unquestionably Lucy Hawking’s most noteworthy creation to date, with all five books garnering praise for inspiring young readers to pursue a career in science. George’s Secret Key to the Universe, her first children’s book, is a worldwide bestseller that has been released in 43 nations and translated into 38 different languages.
Personal Legacy & Life
One year after the birth of their son William, Lucy Hawking wed Alex Mackenzie Smith, a former UN Peace Corps volunteer in Bosnia. However, the couple subsequently got divorced in 2004 for unspecified reasons. She is motivated to assist those who are autistic after being inspired by William, who was subsequently diagnosed with autism.
She had fallen victim to depression and turned to excessive drinking in the early 2000s as her marriage had failed and she had learned of her son’s autism. She was able to get back to her regular life with assistance from her family and friends, though, after spending a month in an Arizona clinic.
She is a philanthropist and the vice president of the National Star College, a facility that offers support and instruction to young people with multiple and complex disabilities. She serves as a trustee for the Autism Research Trust, which advocates for scholarly research into autism in general.
Lucy Hawking’s Net Worth
One of the wealthiest and most well-known journalists is Lucy. Our analysis of data from sources like Wikipedia, Forbes, and Business Insider revealed that Lucy Hawking is valued at $5 million.
Trivia
After one of her son’s friends questioned Professor Hawking at a party about what would happen to him if he fell into a black hole, Lucy Hawking received the inspiration for her bestselling “George” book series. She made the decision to use entertaining techniques to involve the younger generation in subjects like science and politics after observing the boy’s amusement at his response that he would “turn into spaghetti.”