An eternal star of science

LONDON — Living with motor neurone disease for more than 50 years, Stephen Hawking transcended his disability to becoming one of science’s brightest stars, harnessing technology to once again give voice to his ideas.

“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus,” he told The New York Times in 2004.

Hawking was given only a few years to live when he was diagnosed in 1963, but defied the medical profession in typically stubborn fashion.

“I have lived five decades longer than doctors predicted. I have tried to make good use of my time,” he said in 2013 autobiographical documentary Hawking.

“Because every day could be my last, I have the desire to make the most of each and every minute,” he added.

But the disease gradually deprived him of mobility and confined him to a wheelchair.

He was eventually left almost completely paralyzed and unable to speak, except through a voice synthesizer operated by facial movements.

His struggle was portrayed in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, which won an Oscar and Golden Globes.

But it was through scientific articles and his 1988 international best-seller A Brief History of Time that Hawking was able to communicate and share his discoveries. He sold more than 10 million copies of that book, though Hawking frequently made fun of the fact that few people had read it.

Sense of humor

Andy Fabian, an astronomer at Hawking’s University of Cambridge and president of the Royal Astronomical Society, said Hawking would start lectures on black holes with the joke: “I assume you all have read A Brief History of Time and understood it.” It always got a big laugh, Fabian said.

Indeed, Hawking always retained a sense of humor, appearing on Star Trek: The Next Generation and voicing himself in The Simpsons cartoon series.

Hawking was an undisputed heavyweight in his field, holding the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics professorship at the University of Cambridge during 1978-2009, a post once held by Isaac Newton, the father of universal gravity.

“My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics,” he said in 1984.

“Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in.”

In recent years, he enthusiastically adopted social media to spread his scientific research, responding to fans with messages signed off “SH”.

He boasted 4.1 million Facebook followers and amassed millions of followers within hours when he signed up to Chinese social media Weibo. As news broke of his death, Hawking’s philosophical musings became more poignant.

He said: “Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking.

“With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”