Professor Stephen Hawking has admitted that he “briefly tried to commit suicide” in the 1980s when his worsening neurological disease left him unable to breath or speak without assistance. The Cambridge professor was discussing his own experiences of being diagnosed with a terminal illness in an interview.Hawking, largely regarded as one of the most influential theoretical physicist since Einstein, defied medical experts who predicted he had just months to live after he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease — a progressive neurological disorder that leaves sufferers disabled and eventually causing deaths.