Stephen Hawking was born in 1942 in Oxford, England. He attended University College in Oxford where he earned an honours degree in Natural Science in only three years. He went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology and earn his Ph. D. Since 1879, Dr. Hawking has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position what has been held by such notable figures as Sir Isaac Newton (1669) and Isaac Barrow (1663).
Dr. Hawking had never been very agile or well-coordinated. but in his third year at Oxford he noticed that he was becoming more clumsy and even fell a few times for no apparent reason. A visit to the doctor a year later revealed that he had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), an incurable disease that is characterized by the degeneration of the motor cells in the brain and spinal cord. Life expectancy for a victim of this debilitating condition is between two and five years. At first, Dr. Hawking became depressed — who wouldn't? But he realized that there were a lot of things he could still do, after all, and if he were going to die, he might as well do some good before he went.
Well, a marriage and family and three books later, Dr. Hawking is still with us. He uses a computer and speech synthesizer to communicate; he likes his current set up because he says, "[the synthesizer] doesn't speak like a Dalek. The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent."
To learn more about Dr. Hawking's work, visit www.hawking.org.uk.
