The Surf Report

Hawking the Future

by Diane Rhodes

January 8th is the 60th birthday of a man who shouldn't be here. Professor Stephen Hawking, who holds the Lucasian Chair in Mathematics at Cambridge University in Britain, was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) in his mid-twenties and has survived decades beyond that expected. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-britain-stephen-hawking0107jan07.story

Like Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking has helped to popularize science for people who normally wouldn't spend much time thinking of how the Universe will end, or how it began. His work has also inspired a number of people to enter the space sciences as a career. He has made the theory of black holes accessible to people outside the field of physics and astronomy. And did it all while confined to a wheelchair, eventually even unable to speak. http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spacepeople_a-z/hawking.shtml

His career has spanned astrophysics and mathematics. He has achieved acclaim as an author and even ... an actor! Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation will recall the holographic poker game. Fans of The Simpson's will recognize him, surrounded by the infamous family, his synthesized voice generated by the computer on his chair. http://www.hawking.org.uk/text/about/gallery.html

He is also not a stranger to controversy: He once made a statement that "Mankind will not survive the next 1000 years unless he goes into space". All argument aside, Stephen Hawking is a believer in mankind's future in the cosmos, and the theory that mankind shouldn't keep all our eggs in one basket.

Mankind's Survival:: http://www.space.com/news/hawking_colonies_011016.html
Controversy: http://www.space.com/news/hawking_rebuttal_011016.html

Whatever else Professor Hawking achieves in his life, he has given people young and old a sense of wonder about space. And maybe it's his ability to think and theorize that has kept him alive far beyond all predictions. Only his body is confined to his wheelchair. His mind roams the Universe.