BEFORE AND AFTER

By: Brandon S. CashSteven Hawking

Lou Gehrig’s disease

it is named after New York Yankees baseball player Lou Gehrig, who was diagnosed with this illness in the 1930s.

Hawking

8 Jan 1942 in Oxford, England wanted to specialize in mathematics in

his last couple of years at school where his mathematics teacher had inspired him to study the subject

His father was strongly against the idea and he was persuaded to make chemistry his main school subject

Education

St. Albans school Oxford University

Family

Father: Frank Mother: Isobel Sisters: Philippa and Mary Brother: Edward Frank was a researcher in

tropical medicine. Of his family, Stephen was closest to his mother, who was active in left-wing politics. Isobel relates that around the time of Stephen's birth she bought an astronomical atlas from Blackwell's in Oxford, which her sister-in-law later remarked to have been a rather prophetic purchase.

Father

researcher in tropical medicine Hawking did not get along well with his

father Never wanted him to study mathematics Father teased him about being “slower”

than the other children his age

Mother

closest to his mother active in left-wing politics Very supportive of her son

Research Fields

physical cosmology quantum gravity string theory

Bing Bang Theory

In 1971 he provided mathematical support for the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe

if the general theory of relativity was correct, the universe must have a singularity, or starting point, in space-time

Hawking also suggested that, after the Big Bang, primordial or mini black holes were formed

Black Holes

neglecting quantum mechanical effects, the surface area of a black hole can increase but never decrease, derived a limit to the radiation emitted when black holes collide, and that a single black hole cannot break apart into two separate black holes

In 1974, he calculated that black holes thermally create and emit subatomic particles until they exhaust their energy and explode.

Known as Hawking radiation, this theory was first to describe a mathematical link among gravity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics.

In 1981, Hawking proposed that, although the universe had no boundary, it was finite in space-time; 1983 saw his mathematical proof of this.

Before his Illness

When he was young, he was athletic and enjoyed riding horses and playing with the other children. At Oxford, he coxed a rowing team, which he stated helped relieve his immense boredom at the school. Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge. Diagnosis came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years. He battled the odds and has survived much longer than any other known sufferer of ALS, although he has become increasingly disabled by the gradual progress of the disease.

Illness

severely disabled by motor neuron disease, used an electronic voice synthesizer to

communicate since a tracheotomy in 1985 that followed severe pneumonia.

He gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and is now almost completely paralyzed.

the computer system attached to his wheelchair is operated by Hawking via an infra-red 'blink switch' clipped onto his glasses. By scrunching his right cheek up, he is able to talk, compose speeches, research papers, browse the World Wide Web and write e-mail. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors in his home and office.

His Illness Cont.

When he was first living with just his wife, and was confined to a wheelchair and unable to dress himself, they had physics students in to help him, in exchange for extra attention and help with their work. As he grew more disabled Hawking needed a team of nurses to provide round-the-clock care. He also needed a wheelchair that would help him not be distracted by his disability.

There is every chance that he would never have made the discoveries he has were it not for the support of his family. Despite his disease, he describes himself as "lucky" — not just because its slow progress allowed him time to make influential discoveries but because it afforded him time to have, in his own words, "a very attractive family". When Jane was asked why she decided to marry a man with a 3-year life expectancy, she responded: "These were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had rather a short life expectancy."

Steven Hawking

Before After