Stephen Hawking - His Last Book.

I’m enjoying Stephen Hawkings book ‘Brief Answers to The Big Questions’. I listed those questions in the post before this one.

I think he was destined to have the terrible disability inflicted by Motor Neurone disease for a reason. He says he was not good at studying at university, like many young men he was distracted by sport, girls and other leisure pursuits that had priority for his energies.

He says – “I wasn’t a very good student when I was at school and was rarely more than halfway up my class. My work was untidy and my handwriting not very good “.

It was in his third year at university that he became aware that something was not right. He was falling over and becoming clumsier. When he found that he could no longer row a sculling boat properly, he went to the doctor who told him to ‘lay off the beer’

It was after a fall whilst ice skating and he couldn’t get up unaided that his mother took him to a specialist who diagnosed the Motor Neurone disease that changed his life, and I think,was the catalyst for the many scientific puzzles of our world which he unravelled.

As he writes in this extract –

I have led an extraordinary life on this planet. While at the same time travelling across the universe by using my mind and the laws of physics.
I have been to the furthest reaches of our galaxy, travelled into a blackhole and gone back to the beginning of time.
On earth I have experienced highs and lows, turbulence and peace, success and suffering.
I have been rich and poor, I have been able bodied and disabled.
I have been praised and criticised, but never ignored. I have been enormously privileged, through my work, in being able to contribute to our understanding of the universe. But it would be an empty universe indeed if it were not for the people I love, and who love me. Without them, the wonder of it all would be lost on me.
And at the end of all this, the fact that we humans, who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature, have been able to come to an understanding of the laws governing us, and our universe, is a great triumph. I want to share my excitement about these big questions and my enthusiasm about this quest. One day, I hope we will know the answers to all these questions. But there are other big challenges, other big questions on the planet which must be answered, and these will also need a new generation who are interested and engaged and have an understanding of science.
How will we feed an ever-growing population? Provide clean water, generate renewable energy, prevent and cure disease and slow down global climate change? I hope that serious science and technology will provide the answers to these questions, but it will take people, human beings with knowledge and understanding, to implement these solutions. Let us fight for every woman and every man to have the opportunity to live healthy, secure lives, full of opportunity and love. We are all time travellers, journeying together into the future. But let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit
Be brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done.

When the disease which was to symbolise his life, was diagnosed, there was of course a period of depression. But he did not succumb to wallowing in self-pity as many would, but instead his immobility channelled his energies into an interest in science and astronomy with the resulting discoveries to benefit mankind and the world.