Charles Widmore
Daniel was born to Eloise Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan) and Charles Widmore (Alan Dale), both of whom were Others. Eloise raised Daniel on her own, hiding the identity of his father from him and pushing him to develop a scientific mind, much to the detriment of his social life and casual pursuits. After graduating from the University of Oxford with his girlfriend Theresa Spencer, Daniel was offered a £1.5 million grant by industrialist Charles Widmore. In the 1990s, Daniel started working as a physicist at The Queen's College, Oxford, with controversial experiments including sending a subject's consciousness through time. His initial tests on lab rats resulted in their deaths, which led to the abandonment of his studies. During his tenure, Daniel encountered Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), who was suffering from temporal displacement trapping him between 1996 and 2004. Daniel helped to ground Desmond's consciousness by telling him to find a constant in both time frames, which Desmond decided was to be Penny (Sonya Walger). This encounter had a profound effect on Daniel, reaffirming the legitimacy of his time-displacement theories and prompted him to resume his abandoned experiments. Daniel eventually performed similar experiments on Theresa, but she ended up suffering from temporal displacement as Desmond had and eventually fell into a coma, with temporary periods of lucidity.