Stephen Hawking: Encyclopedia II - Stephen Hawking - Illness

Stephen Hawking - Illness

Despite being severely disabled by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a motor neuron disease, Hawking is highly active in physics, writing, and public life. The disease makes it necessary for Hawking to carry out in his head the long and complex calculations that his work requires.

When he was young, he was athletic and enjoyed riding horses and playing with the other children. At Oxford, he joined the rowing team, which he stated helped relieve his immense boredom at the school. This athleticism, however, was soon to change. 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, although he has become increasingly disabled by the gradual progress of the disease. He has used an electronic voice synthesiser to communicate since a tracheostomy in 1985 that followed severe pneumonia. He gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and is now almost completely paralysed. The computer system attached to his wheelchair is operated by Hawking manually through a blink recogniser, implanted in his glasses. By blinking and scrunching his cheeks up, he is able to talk; compose speeches, research papers, and books; browse the World Wide Web; write e-mail; and perform most other computer tasks. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors, lights, and lifts at his home and office. Hawking has jokingly complained that his computer-synthesized voice speaks with an American accent, though he is quick to add that technicians are working on a unit that will speak with a British accent.

When he was first living with just his wife, and was confined to a wheelchair and unable to dress himself, they would hire physics students to help him, which allowed Hawking cheap care. Eventually Hawking needed a real caregiver. He also needed a wheelchair that would help him not be distracted by his disability. Hawking’s current wheelchair can go up to 30 miles an hour, though when he “walks” with people, he likes to go six or seven miles per hour.

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"[1]. 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."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Illness", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki