What is the name of Stephen Hawking's eldest son?

Stephen Hawking’s eldest son was Robert Hawking. He was born in May 1967, the first of Stephen Hawking and Jane Wilde Hawking’s three children.

Robert was followed by his sister Lucy, born in 1970, and his younger brother Timothy, born in 1979. The family lived mainly in Cambridge, where Hawking pursued his academic career and became one of the world’s best-known theoretical physicists.

A common mix-up is confusing Robert with Timothy, whose name is also associated with Hawking’s family. Lucy later became a writer and science communicator, collaborating with her father on children’s books. Robert, by contrast, has generally maintained a much lower public profile.

Hawking’s family life unfolded alongside his long career in cosmology and his battle with motor neurone disease, diagnosed in 1963. Despite the disease’s progression, he continued raising his family and producing influential scientific and popular works.