Wishing Speedy Recovery to Stephen Hawking
Wishing a speedy recovery to a great man, Stephen Hawking.
On Monday, 20th April, 2009, Professor Hawking was rushed to Addenbrook's Hospital, Cambridge, England. He was reported to be very ill.
Professor Stephen Hawking, aged 67, is one of our most brilliant minds. A world-renown mathematician and physicist, he is also known to the general populace for his best selling book, "A Brief History of Time", released in 1988. In that best seller, he discussed complex scientific ideas and theories (like black holes and string theory) and was able to achieve the remarkable feat of conveying those weighty matters in understandable layman's terms. A very enjoyable book and remarkable that he covered so much, so easily, in such a small book.
Stephen Hawking is the current Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University and was set to retire at the end of this academic year.
A Short History
Professor Hawking is remarkable not just for his undisputed brilliance of mind and prodigious intellect, not just for his ability to translate and explain incredibly complex matters into understandable form, but also for the miracle of his long victory over his incurable disease. He suffers from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's disease".ALS is a more common form of motor neuron disease - a progressive, degenerative and incurable weakening of body muscles. Seventy percent of people diagnosed with it die within 5 years of diagnosis. Professor Hawking has survived this disease for over 40 years.
Professor Hawking was first admitted to hospital with this disease when he was just 21 years old. Even though at that time, he did not know what it was, he knew it was incurable.
Despite this debilitating disease, Professor Hawking has lived a full and inspirational life. His accomplishments are awesome for their sheer brilliance alone but taken on top of his life-long ill-health, they amount to nothing less than miraculous.
His first marriage was to Jane Wilde, with whom he has three children.
In 1985, Stephen Hawking contracted pneumonia which required him to have tracheotomy. A hole was made into his windpipe to enable him to breathe. Even though his speech prior to surgery was already difficult, after the operation, he was unable to speak. He had to communicate via raising his eyebrows to choose letters on cards that were held up to him.
It was an American computer expect that developed the Equalizer programme which enabled Prof. Hawking to choose words from a menu, map out what he wanted to say, and which was then sent to an electronic voice synthesizer. This is how he has been "speaking" for years.
Stephen Hawking, apart from his scholarly output, has also penned a number of children books as well as having many speaking engagements. His long-term scientific work has been, in conjunction with other scientists, in search of a "single unified theory" that was hoped to resolve the conflicts between the General Theory of Relativity and Theory of Quantum Mechanics.
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity deals with the laws of motion governing large objects, like planets. Quantum Mechanics deals in the world of subatomic particles.
I wish Professor Stephen Hawking a full and speedy recovery.