“Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind”: Portrait of a genius (Salon)
Stephen Hawking is the world’s most famous living scientist for two reasons
that (despite his own wishes in the matter) are impossible to disentangle. The
first is his disability, a motor neuron disease related to amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS, often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease) that, beginning in
his late teens, has rendered him severely disabled. Most people, when
diagnosed with ALS, live only a few more years; Hawking has survived for 49,
turning 70 on Jan. 8. The second source of renown is his work as a theoretical
physicist and cosmologist, particularly on the nature of black holes and the
origin of the universe.
Even people with no inclination to tackle the brain-bending concepts Hawking
outlines in his bestselling 1988 book, “A Brief History of Time,” find his
personal story inspiring. In that light, scientific preoccupations they might
dismiss as arcane and impractical in an able-bodied person become a metaphor
for the human ability to transcend limits. As Hawking himself says in the
three-part documentary series “Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking” (you
can stream it on Netflix), “Although I cannot move, and have to speak through
a computer, in my mind I am …