9 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT STEPHEN HAWKING

newtonsappleteam
Nov 26, 2015
2 min read

1. Hawking was born on Jan 8, 1942 which happened to be 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death.

2. It’s a shock for us to learn that Hawking was a slacker when it came to his school studies. When he was 9 years old his grade ranked among the worst in his class.

3. Despite his poor grades his parents and peers were aware that there was a future genius among them which is proven by the fact that he was nicknamed Einstein.

4. Stephen hawking was extremely interested in mathematics from a very young age. His father wanted to join him in oxford but could not do that due to lack of money. However when he got a scholarship, He compromised to take up PHYSICS as his major as oxford did not have mathematics.

5. Even in physics he always chose the bigger questions. He chose cosmology instead of particle physics despite the fact that the former he says ” was hardly recognized as a legitimate field”

6. Row teams at oxford chose hawking to be a coxswain( a position that does not row but rather controls steering and stroke rate) as he did not have a good athletic build. Though rowing brought him popularity but hurt his study habits. It was due to this fact that Hawking faced isolation and unhappiness at his first year or so in oxford.

7. He was 21 years when he was properly diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and doctor gave him a life expectancy of 2 years. He is 72 years old now; he “outlived” his doctor’s prediction by 51 whole years.

8. In 1985 he became so ill that his wife was asked if his life support should be terminated. She refused for it and he instead got a tracheotomy. Later when he was slowly recovering he started raising his eyebrows to choose letters on a spelling card to communicate. After this he got a computer programme called “equalizer” using he could choose phrases, words or letters from a bank of about 2500-3000.

Despite his inspiring work, Stephen Hawking has not yet been awarded the Nobel prize. The awards which he received were