Stephen Hawking Essay

If you were to mention the name "Stephen Hawking" in a group of people, a few different things may come to mind. You may think of his controversial views on religion, his debilitating disease, or his theories of how the universe was formed. This essay will dive into all of these topics, including many other facts of Stephen Hawking's life.

Stephen Hawking is an interesting and famous person. He is simultaneously part of two different groups of society which most people view as existing on opposite ends of a spectrum. He is profoundly disabled, requiring much care. He is also a brilliant academic who has been compared with Einstein. Stephen Hawking, in his popularity, shows that our society is generally understanding and accepting of very unique people.

In the 1970’s, Stephen Hawking made the argument that the quantum-mechanical effects of black holes made them emit radiation

There 2 famous people with ALS, one is Lou Gehrig and the other is Steven Hawking. Lou Gehrig was a baseball player who was born in June 19, 1903 and died in June 2, 1941. He played for the New York Yankees form 1923-1939. He was nicknamed “The Iron Horse”. He played 2130 consecutive runs in his career. He had to give up hos baseball career because of ALS. This disease could not let him play any more baseball. Another famous person is Steven Hawking and he is an English theoretical physicist. He is most known fore his theroes of black holes and emits radiation. He is almost all paralyzed and now lives in a wheel chair because of ALS. He talks through a speaker and still does research about a bunch of different things in this universe. Both of these people had and have ALS. This a paper about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis with the help from the following sources.

Hawking is still alive and has been living with his disease for fifty-two years now (“Stephen Hawking Biography”, n.d.). In doing research as to how Hawking has been able to live so long with this disease, I came to the conclusion that there is not a reason. An article written by Terrence McCoy (2015) in the Washington Post described his lengthy life as “extraordinary” and “extremely rare”. This is further indication that his interminable existence is supported by pure luck. What an incredible coincidence that such an important man was able to withstand the consequences of a highly fatal disease. Stephen Hawking, the Hawking family, and the rest of the world are, whether they know it or not, thankful for this one man’s extreme luck. His contributions to scientific knowledge and his perseverance will be forever

Imagine waking up, day after day, with a weakness in your hand or shoulder. You ignore it by thinking it is just part of getting older. The weakness progressively gets worse and you notice that other parts of your body are getting weaker. You start slurring your speech more often and chewing food becomes more and more difficult as time goes on. Finally, you decide to go visit your doctor, and after a series of tests, you find out that you have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (The Mayo Clinic, 2014). Many people, including myself, do not really understand what ALS is. We know that Lou Gehrig, the New York Yankee who was diagnosed in 1939 and died in 1941, is who the disease is named after. Today, there is an estimated 30000 people living with this debilitating disease at any given time (The ALS Association, 2014).

population show that a little over 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis each year. That equals out to fifteen new cases a day. The ALS CARE Database shows that sixty percent of the people with ALS are men and ninety-three percent of patients in the database are Caucasian. ALS cases estimated that 1.2- 4 per 100,000 individuals in Caucasian populations. Filipinos are second to Caucasians with 1.1 -2.8 per 100,000 individuals. Most people who develop ALS are between the ages of forty and seventy. There disease still however appear in people between the ages of twenty and thirty. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is twenty percent more common in men than in women. Military veterans, mainly those deployed during the Gulf War, are approximately twice as likely to develop ALS. Some famous people that have had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis are: Lou Gehrig an American Baseball player, Professor Stephen Hawking who has conducted work on the basic laws that govern the universe, Lead Belly an American folk and blues musician, Charles Mingus an American jazz bassist, and David Niven an Academy Award-winning English actor (Famous People with Amyotrophic Lateral Slerosis, n.d.; Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis- Topic Overview,

Black holes are fascinating phenomena. Only recently have physicists begun to even find proof of their existence, and yet their unique physical properties have extraordinary and galaxies-wide effects. The physics to truly understand the underpinnings of black holes have only been around since 1915 when Einstein conceived and presented his General Theory of Relativity, in which gravity is considered in terms of curved space-time. However, in Exposition of the System of the World, written over a hundred years earlier in 1798, Laplace predicted that masses of sufficient size would have a gravitational attraction so large that light itself could not escape. Stephen Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time-- perhaps the most successful cogent popular science book ever written-- and an extraordinary physicist, wrote one of the definitive papers on the physics behind black holes. (and then interestingly enough, recanted his once firm belief that black holes even existed--at which time he married his nurse. Physicists are eccentrics in a long and noble tradition.

One of the reasons certainly has to do with the name Lou Gehrig, a famous baseball superstar who had to suddenly retire in 1939 due to ALS and then passed away shortly after. But, another reason ALS is so well known is undoubtedly due to it being an especially devastating disease with horrific effects and no known cure despite years of research.

“As I slowly lost my speech, I gained my voice. As I diminished, I grew. As I lost so much, I finally started to find myself” (Neil Sellinger). ALS changes a lot of people’s opinion on life once they fully experience that they’re unable to do the things they once used to. Their perspective changes fully. In Tuesday’s with Morrie, Morrie teaches people to live life through love, money is not needed to have a happy life, and that accepting death is okay.