Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. The date was exactly 300 years after the death of the astronomer Galileo — a fact Hawking liked to mention.
As a boy, Stephen was curious about how things worked. He took apart clocks to see inside them. He and his friends built a simple computer out of old clock parts and telephone parts. He was very smart but not the hardest worker in his class. His friends called him "Einstein."
He went to Oxford University at 17. He studied physics — the science of how the universe works. He found it easy. Maybe too easy. He spent more time on the river in a rowing boat than in the library. He did not work very hard. He still got top marks.
After Oxford, he moved to Cambridge University to study something even bigger: how the universe began. He was 20 years old and the whole sky was in front of him.
Then, in his first year at Cambridge, something went wrong with his body.
Stephen has been falling down for no reason. His speech is getting strange. Doctors run tests. The result: he has a disease called ALS. It will slowly stop his muscles from working — his hands, his legs, his voice. They say he probably has two years to live. He is 21. His PhD work has barely started. What does he do?
At a New Year's party, Stephen met a young woman named Jane Wilde. She was studying languages at university. They liked each other.
But Stephen was already getting worse. He needed a stick to walk. Everyone knew his disease would keep going. He would end up in a wheelchair. He might not live long.
Jane knew all of this. She still wanted to be with him.
Stephen had to decide what to do.
Jane wants to be with Stephen. Stephen likes her very much. But he is getting sicker every month. He will need more and more help. He will probably die young. Is it fair to ask her to spend her life with someone so ill? What does he do?
By 1970, Hawking was in a wheelchair. But his thinking was faster than ever.
He had been studying black holes — places in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Other scientists had studied them too.
Then one night, getting into bed, a new idea came to him. The same mathematics that described black holes might also describe the very beginning of the universe — the Big Bang. The moment when everything started from a single tiny point.
This was a very big idea. It connected two things that had seemed separate. But it would take years of hard work to prove. And some older, important scientists did not like it.
Hawking has a bold new idea about the beginning of the universe. But it contradicts what some famous older scientists believe. They may push back hard. He is young, sick, and still building his reputation. Should he pursue this big, risky idea — or work on something safer that is more likely to get accepted?
Everyone in physics knew one thing about black holes: nothing escapes from them. Nothing. Not even light. That is what makes them black.
In 1974, Stephen Hawking worked out something that shocked everyone. Black holes do leak. Very slowly, very quietly, they send out tiny amounts of energy. Over a very, very long time, a black hole could shrink and disappear.
This went against what most physicists believed. It also created a big puzzle: if a black hole disappears, what happens to all the information about the things that fell into it? Does that information vanish forever? That seemed to break one of the basic rules of physics.
Some very famous physicists told Hawking he was wrong.
Hawking has found something that changes how we think about black holes. But it contradicts what the experts believe. Some of the smartest scientists in the world say he has made a mistake. The idea also creates a new puzzle that he cannot yet solve. Should he publish anyway — or wait until he can answer all the questions his idea raises?
By 1985, Hawking could not walk. He could not feed himself. He could not write. But he could still talk — slowly, in a slurred voice that his family and close colleagues had learned to understand.
That summer, on a trip to Switzerland, he got very sick with a chest infection. He nearly died. Doctors kept him alive, but to do it they had to do an operation on his throat. After the operation, he could breathe. But his voice was gone. Completely and permanently.
He was 43. He had lost the last thing his body could still do: speak.
A computer engineer heard about Hawking and offered to help. He had built a program that let someone choose words on a screen — slowly — using a hand switch. Then a voice machine would speak the words out loud. It was very slow. Maybe 15 words per minute. But it worked.
Hawking has lost his voice. He cannot speak to his students, his colleagues, or his family. He can still think — his mind is completely fine — but he cannot get his thoughts out quickly. The computer system is very slow. Physics requires fast thinking and fast conversation. Does he keep going, or is this the moment to step back?
By the late 1980s, Hawking was one of the most respected physicists alive. His work was known and admired by other scientists. But almost no ordinary people had heard of him — and almost no ordinary people could understand what he worked on.
He decided to write a book. Not a book for scientists. A book for everyone. About the biggest questions in the universe: How did it begin? How big is it? Does time have a beginning? What is inside a black hole?
His publisher told him something important: every equation he put in the book would cut the number of readers in half. So if he wanted a million people to read it, he should use almost no equations.
Hawking had spent his whole life in equations. This was a strange rule to follow.
Hawking wants to write a book about the universe for ordinary people. His publisher says: use almost no equations. But physics without equations is harder to explain accurately. He could: write the book with simple words and very few equations (bigger audience, but maybe less precise), or write it the way scientists write (accurate, but almost no one outside science will read it). What does he do?
By 2007, Hawking was 65. He had not been able to move his body freely for over 40 years. He sat in a specially built wheelchair. Machines helped him breathe. A computer spoke for him.
A company that takes people on zero-gravity flights offered to take him. On a special plane, they fly in a curve that, for about 25 seconds, removes gravity. Everything floats — including the passengers.
For someone like Hawking, this was not just fun. It was something he had not felt for over 40 years: freedom of movement. The chance to float. To move without the wheelchair, without the disease, without anything holding him down.
But it was also risky. He was 65, seriously ill, and dependent on machines. Something could go wrong in the air.
A company offers Hawking a zero-gravity flight. For 25 seconds at a time, he would float free — no wheelchair, no gravity, just his body in the air. It is risky for someone in his condition. His doctors are concerned. But it might be the most free he has felt in 40 years. Does he go?
📖 Hawking wrote one of the best-selling science books ever — A Brief History of Time →
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