COSMOLOGIST STEPHEN Hawking is a living embodiment of the power of mind over matter. Struggling through life with a body racked by motor neurone disease has not lessened the capacity of his mind to deliver some of the most important cosmological discoveries of the past century. This weekend sees him honoured at Cambridge with an international symposium at which some of the world’s leading scientists – along with the public – will gather to celebrate Hawking’s life and work. It closes tomorrow on his 70th birthday and will afford us all an opportunity to recognise yet again that disability does not signify inability and that being laid low by a crippling disease does not mean that determination and spirit cannot win through to deliver significant accomplishments.
Could there ever be an example of this as compelling as Hawking? Born in 1942, the English theoretical physicist was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21. Already a highly promising student he could have retreated from life, succumbing in despair to a diagnosis which he knew would likely bring an early death. And yet he did the opposite, embracing life and finding a way to accommodate his advancing disability.
He worked on the expansion of the early universe and on difficult concepts related to the nature of gravity. One of his most important findings – ranked by many cosmologists as the single most significant of the past 100 years – showed that despite their tremendous power those gravitational monsters Black Holes do not annihilate all that they gobble up, some scant information escapes due to quantum effects.
Despite the rarefied field in which he worked, Hawking remained connected with the public at large. He did this through public lectures but also through his bestselling work A Brief History of Time published in 1988. It sold nine million copies and helped make him an international star. He became a scientist celebrity, so much so that he was invited to make guest appearances on programmes such as the Simpsons, Star Trek, and Red Dwarf. His humanity and humour was manifest again this week when he confessed to thinking about women all day, adding, “They are a complete mystery.”
And so we celebrate the man on this his 70th birthday, and remember his many accomplishments. Although we see him in a wheelchair and can only hear his thoughts conveyed through a voice synthesiser, we also rejoice. We see yet again that the power of his mind uplifts and enriches us all.