Hawking's daughter tells of agony

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LONDON, April 13 (UPI) -- Rumors that British mathematician Stephen Hawking was abused drove his daughter to drinking and depression, the Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Lucy Hawking, 33, says she spent four weeks in a U.S. rehabilitation center after reports that the cosmologist and best-selling author had suffered physical and mental abuse.

The single mother of an autistic son also expressed surprise and disappointment that police dropped their investigation.

Inquiries began last year after complaints by nurses employed to care for Hawking, who has suffered from motor neurone disease for 40 years.

Hawking, Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Applied Mathematics and author of A Brief History of Time, was reported to have been cut, beaten and left alone in his garden on the hottest day of last year resulting in heatstroke and sunburn.

Lucy Hawking is one of his three children from his first marriage to Jane, whom he left in 1989 after 26 years. He married his former nurse, Elaine, in 1995.

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