From The Simpsons to Pink Floyd: Stephen Hawking in popular culture

This Oscar,” declared Eddie Redmayne, delirious, “belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS. It belongs to one exceptional family.”

The family was the Hawkings. Redmayne had just been named best actor at the 2014 Academy Awards and, while co-ownership of Redmayne’s statuette might come low down on Stephen Hawking’s list of honours, the success of The Theory of Everything marked absolute proof that the physicist’s story had long transcended the scientific academy. It would be one for the cultural ages, too.

Redmayne had beaten Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game to the Oscar. A fact intriguing not just for the quirk of the two being nominated for playing 20th-century British geniuses – but because Cumberbatch had also played the physicist, in Hawking, Peter Moffat’s 2004 feature-length BBC drama.

Source: theguardian