When it was reported this week that had been taken into hospital and was "very ill" the overall mood of the media seemed to be that the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University and author of the best selling 'A Brief History of Time' book was as good as dead. Indeed, many of those reports read more like obituaries than anything else.
However, I am glad to say that the truth is now emerging and it would appear that far from being at death's door, Professor Hawking is actually in a comfortable condition and according to his first wife, Jane Hawking, who has visited him "he's fine - he's doing well. I don't think his condition is life-threatening."
Professor Hawking had been ill for some weeks with a respiratory infection, and was taken to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge on Monday for tests. The 67 year old world famous physicist, who suffers from motor neurone disease, is being kept in hospital for observation and is responding to treatment.
