Acclaimed British physicist
and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has been undergoing tests at Rome’s Policlinico
Gemelli hospital, where he is receiving treatment for a breathing problem,
Adnkronos has learned.

The 74-year-old scientist was
admitted to the Policlinico Gemelli’s Nemo Centre for neuromuscular diseases.
He suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neuron
disease and is unable to move or speak. 

Hawking travelled to Rome for
a meeting at the Vatican of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from November
25-29, where he met Pope Francis.

The 2014 Oscar-winning film
“The Theory of Everything” portrays the remarkable life of Hawking,
who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease when he was a 21-year-old student
at Cambridge University. 

Hawking is not the first
internationally renowned intellect to seek treatment at the Policlinico
Gemelli. In August, the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s wife was
admitted to the hospital for an urgent operation.

The Policlinico Gemelli
earned praise from Sen, who said the treatment his wife had received there was
as good as that of any private American hospital.