Today, Stephen Hawking passed away at the age of 76 after a more than 50-year battle with motor neuron disease (MND, and often called ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). The world renown physicist was diagnosed with MND at the early age of 21 years old while studying at Oxford College in England in 1963. Professor Hawking was diagnosed with a rare, slow moving form of motor neuron disease which led to him accepting the use of a wheelchair at the end of the 1960s and him losing his ability to be easily understood speaking in the late 1970s. After losing his speech altogether, he communicated initially by raising his eyebrows to spell out words using a letter card, until receiving a computer program in 1986 that enabled him to communicate more independently by selecting phrases on a screen with the click of a switch or button. He was able to click using his hand until 2005, at which point he used his check muscles to make selections using the computer program.
“Professor Hawking will be remembered as one of the most important scientists of his time. Despite being diagnosed at a very young age with MND, he persevered and there are many people with ALS today that can relate to that drive, including many of those connected to ALS TDI. Hawking’s scientific contributions and his overall influence on scientists across the globe are immeasurable. We join the rest of the global scientific and ALS/MND communities in mourning the loss of Stephen Hawking,” said Steve Perrin, Ph.D., CEO & CSO of ALS TDI.
Professor Hawking wrote many books, scientific papers and there are countless recaps of his life and contributions available online as well as films and documentaries of his life and work. One of the more recent attempts to recount Professor Hawking’s life was the Oscar award-winning film, The Theory of Everything.
Selected Remembrances of Professor Hawking