It has always seemed tragically ironic to me that such a great mind has been trapped its whole life in that miserable shell of a body. But then part of me wonders if his physical disabilities have somehow enhanced his mental ones, the way the other senses pick up the slack in the case of blindness, or deafness, etc. Frankly I'm amazed the guy has lived to be this old. We'll miss his capabilities when he's gone, but his life (on the physical level) must be a living hell.
He should have spent the last few years figuring out how to transfer his mind into an android body like Sargon from 'Return To Tomorrow'.
I saw an interview with Roger Penrose a few years ago. He said that Hawking was breathtaking even as an undergraduate, before he got ill.
I believe it was said at one point that he could calculate incredibly complex theories in his head, without need of a blackboard or paper. In any case, here's hoping you pull through, Professor. Too many complexities in the universe to solve, and too many self important idiots eager to fill the vacuum if you go. J.
IMHO, he's one of the best scientific minds to come along since Albert Einstein. I personally would wish he'd stick around for years to come. From what I read, the guy really loves what he does.
The way I figure without his disability, he'd have achieved nowhere near what he did with it. Having so much of a normal life taken from him gave him to freedom to focus his mind on his work, where a normal person would have so much more to consider. I remember reading something about how Garry Kasparov lives at home with his mother, and how she still cooks his meals and picks out his clothes for him. Same principle. Yup. He's lasted far longer than anyone expected.
There's good news; Hawking's doctors say he's recovering from his latest illness and will return home. The underlying ALS will persist, and probably continue to progress, unless a dramatic breakthrough in treatment is made soon. But Hawking will continue to live, and work, as he has for some years now. At age 67, four and a half decades after initially being diagnosed, he is already the longest-lived known survivor of ALS. Remember, he's dealing with a form of the disease which claimed the lives of New York Yankee greats Lou Gehrig and Jim 'Catfish' Hunter within two to three years of diagnosis.
He probably could if he bothered to try, but not having to try helped him focus on his game. One less distraction.
It would be interesting if they could figure out why he has lived so long when others have died. Hopefully he will be around for a while longer.
Hawking probably isn't in the top ten physicists alive right now, let alone as significant as Einstein. The only reason he's so famous is because he populises physics and because of his condition. His main contribution was the Hawking radiation stuff about evaporating black holes back in the 1970's.
Astrophysics is one of those subjects that I find fascinating even though I don't really 'get' it. I still don't quite understand what string theory is and how it relates to anything in the real world. And all that stuff about the grand unified theory... straight over my head. But it is interesting.
Also his applying of Penrose's black hole formation theory (in reverse)to the beginning of the universe. IIRC he was the first to suggest that.
Yeah, me too. Every once in a while I'll be reading an article in Astronomy or Discover, and halfway thru I realize I haven't a fucking clue what they're talking about!
She picks out his clothes - in other words makes sure that nothing clashes and that he has everything on he needs for the day. Her doing that means he doesn't have to take the time out from whatever he's doing/thinking about to do it himself. It takes time and energy to learn anything, and to some people, learning how to dress appropriately, or at least marginally human, can steal time from learning something else, like the secret to life or the cure for cancer (much hyperbole, but I hope you get the idea)
Color me as smart as Einstein.......I just left the bathroom, and I unleashed a power most unholy and deadly.
I'm actually fascinated by this because of a misdiagnosis. An acquaintance of mine was diagnosed with ALS a decade ago. He suffered all of the normal symptoms and is in an identical condition to Hawking. However, turns out my acquaintance doesn't have ALS. He has Lime Disease, but since it went untreated for so long due to the misdiagnoses, it has the same net effect and symptoms over the long term. In further reading about this, it turns out that there have been a staggering number of cases of Lime Disease misdiagnosed as ALS in the US over the latter half of the 20th Century. Could this be the case with Hawking? That could explain his longevity versus Gehrig.
