LONDON - Acclaimed British physicist Stephen Hawking is to divorce his second wife after eleven years of marriage, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Citing papers lodged with the Cambridge county court, the newspaper reported that Hawking, 64, will divorce his wife, Elaine, because of the breakdown of their marriage.

Acclaimed British physicist Stephen Hawking, pictured in June, is to divorce his second wife after eleven years of marriage, The Daily Telegraph reported. [AFP/File]

Hawking married Elaine, a nurse hired by his former wife to help him deal with his crippling motor neuron disease, in 1995, after divorcing in 1991 his first wife Jane, with whom he was married for 26 years and had three children.

Hawking, who is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge -- a post once held by Isaac Newton -- was diagnosed with the muscle-wasting condition disease at the age of 22. He is in a wheelchair and speaks with the aid of a computer and voice synthesizer.

Elaine Hawking was formerly married to the scientist David Mason, who designed Hawking's voice synthesizer, his only means of communication.

Hawking's research has centred on theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity, looking at the nature of such subjects as space-time, the "Big Bang" theory and black holes.

He is most famous for his 1988 international best-seller "A Brief History of Time", and is reportedly to star in a movie, "Beyond the Horizon", that will explain some of the complicated theories he has worked on.