January 8, 2012. Copyright 2012, Graphic News. All rights reserved

World-renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, still beating the odds at 70
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, January 8, Graphic News: It was a few months before his 1965 wedding to linguist Jane Wilde, that a brilliant graduate research student took a tumble down a flight of stairs at Cambridge University. Stephen Hawking, the eldest of four children whose mother had escaped the London Blitz to give birth to him in the relative safety of Oxford, had been growing increasingly unsteady on his feet and had begun to have difficulty with his speech. Doctors had declared the onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS -- a type of motor neurone disease -- two years earlier, when Hawking was 21. Now came dramatic proof that the incurable condition, in which the body's muscles -- including those needed to keep breathing -- gradually stop working, was progressing. With an average survival rate of two or three years, Hawking did not expect to live long enough to finish his PhD. His bride-to-be has since reflected that this was the era of nuclear warfare development, the four-minute warning; in such an atmosphere the couple went ahead with their marriage. "We were great ones for taking a chance on life," she has said.

In the decades since, Hawking has challenged orthodox thinking on many fronts, from his own illness -- his case is the longest recorded for an ALS sufferer -- to the origins of the universe itself. In 1974, this exceptional young physicist, whose father had been a research biologist, put forward groundbreaking theories about the nature of black holes, areas of spacetime with intense gravitational pull from which nothing can escape. Hawking argued that black holes were not completely dark and did, in fact, emit radiation, thereby providing a key to understanding how the universe was formed. He further conjectured that the cosmos was boundless and that its beginning was down to the laws of science, without any need for a creator. His insights earned him membership of the Royal Society -- a fellowship of the world's most eminent scientists -- at the unusually tender age of 32.

Following in the footsteps of Sir Isaac Newton, who 300 years earlier had discovered the law of gravity on which Hawking built his theories, he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1979, a post he would hold for the next 20 years. He might have remained celebrated only within academic circles had he not wished to share his knowledge with a non-specialist public. His 1988 popular science tome, A Brief History of Time, was such an instant success that when the publishers, realising a photograph had been printed upside down, attempted to recall it, they found all the books had been bought. Since then there have been several reprints with some 10 million copies sold. Hawking wrote that his goal was simple: "..complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is, and why it exists at all."

An emergency tracheotomy to save him from pneumonia robbed Hawking of the remains of his voice in 1985 and he has since become associated with a voice synthesiser which he operates, now, with his cheek. His marriage to Jane, with whom he had three children, broke down after, as she put it, "fame and fortune muddied the waters and..took him way out of the orbit of our family." Hawking married his nurse, Elaine Mason, in 1995 but divorced her 11 years later amid claims, by other carers, that she had physically abused him. With his daughter, Lucy, Hawking has published a series of science books for children, from whom he receives many inquiring letters. In a series of BBC radio programmes broadcast to coincide with his 70th birthday, Hawking pays tribute to his family, friends and fans of all ages. "I couldn't carry on with my life if I only had physics," he says. "Like everyone else I need warmth, love and affection."
/ENDS