Before Stephen Hawking became one of the most brilliant scientists the world had ever seen, his own father apparently worried he was turning into a lazy teenager with no drive.

According to a new biography, the future physics legend once spent so much time lounging around the house that his father, Frank Hawking, wrote in his diary that the family was “a little worried” about him.

“We are a little worried at the way Stephen is turning out,” Frank reportedly wrote in 1961, according to the upcoming book Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work. “He hangs round the house with little initiative and does not study much.”

It is a stunning glimpse into the early life of a man who would later become one of the most famous scientific minds on Earth.

At the time, Hawking was studying at Oxford, but his father seemed concerned that the young student had lost confidence in his path. Frank reportedly wrote that Stephen’s mother, Isobel, believed their son had “an inferiority complex” and had “lost faith in physics at Oxford,” thinking it was somehow inferior to the arts.

“This is a great pity if so,” Frank wrote.

Of course, history had other plans.

Just two years later, at only 21 years old, Hawking was diagnosed with ALS and reportedly told he had only two years to live. It was a crushing diagnosis that could have ended his dreams before they truly began.

Instead, Hawking stunned everyone.

He not only survived far beyond his doctors’ expectations, but went on to become one of the most celebrated astrophysicists of all time. He lived until 2018, dying at the age of 76 after a life that defied almost every prediction made about him.

Hawking became a household name through his groundbreaking work on black holes, the universe, and the mysteries of time itself. His 1988 book A Brief History of Time became a global sensation, selling millions of copies and turning a deeply complex subject into something ordinary readers wanted to understand.

The irony is hard to miss.

The boy once described by his own father as lacking initiative would grow into a man whose mind changed the way millions thought about the universe.

Hawking’s legacy was not just about equations or theories. It was also about endurance. His body weakened over the decades, but his mind remained astonishingly sharp. He continued working, writing, speaking, and challenging the world to think bigger.

In one of his most famous messages, Hawking urged people to keep looking upward.

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet,” he wrote. “Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”

He also offered a simple but powerful reminder that seemed to define his own extraordinary life.

“And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

For a man whose father once feared he “did not study much,” Stephen Hawking more than proved the world wrong.