The history of my time with Stephen Hawking was brief indeed.
I’d been sucked in (black hole allusion unintended but fortuitous) by all the hoopla surrounding the famed physicist’s best-selling book, A Brief History of Time. It had come out in 1988 and was an immediate sensation, promising readers an accessible and even entertaining guide to unlocking the universe’s mysteries. Having fulfilled my minimal science requirement in college only by writing a science fiction short story for extra credit (bless you, Dr Danforth, for taking pity on liberal arts majors), I was excited by the prospect of becoming a starry-eyed smartypants without having to expend much effort.
So, at some point I cracked open somebody’s copy of the book. I was crestfallen, however, to discover that the wheelchair-bound scientist’s purportedly breezy roll down Cosmos Lane was unadorned by the cartoon drawings and elementary captions I’d hopefully envisioned. What Hawking surely had deemed a significant dumbing-down of the material still left it several levels above my comprehension. But then I hit upon another possible path to meteoric expansion of my astronomical knowledge: I’d buy the audio book and listen in the car! Some upcoming weekend, I’d depart Savannah, Georgia, where I was living at the time, an interstellar ignoramus but would arrive several hours later at my parents’ home in Greensboro, North Carolina, a newly minted Big Bang brainiac.
In retrospect, I’m not sure why I felt I’d easily comprehend and feel enlivened by the audio version of a book that had vexed and bored the hell out of me in the 10 minutes I’d devoted to the print version. Perhaps I thought it would be abridged to within 30 pages of its life, and/or alluringly voiced by a hot Hollywood actress. Possibly, having had no experience to that point with audio books, I thought the spoken version would be the true Idiot’s Guide I’d sought in the first place—in sort of the same way that marketers earlier had transformed the genius of Einstein into a T-shirt on which he goofily sticks out his tongue.
As you might have guessed, my brilliant plan didn’t work out too well. If the audiocassette version of A Brief History of Time had been abridged at all, it certain hadn’t been purged of all the multi-syllabic science words and allegedly thought-provoking concepts that merely had provoked me to seek aspirin for an early-onset headache. And the reader certainly wasn’t some sultry actress who made deep space sound titillatingly like Deep Throat, or who lent relativity the ring of an after-party romp. I can’t remember who the narrator was, except that he was male and was not the author—whose computer-synthesized voice might at least have intrigued me for a time. As it was, by 20 minutes in I was violently banging my leg against the car door, trying desperately to keep myself awake and alert in highway traffic. About 10 minutes after that, half-asleep at the wheel and seeing the wrong kind of stars, I nearly drove off a bridge on I-95. It was at that point that I elected not to contribute my body to eternity in a failed attempt to better understand timelessness. Out popped A Brief History of Time, replaced by a music CD—probably something as cerebral as the Ramones—as I turned the page on my failed foray into cosmology.
The reason Stephen Hawking is on my mind this week is because I read yesterday that he’ll turn 70 this Sunday. Which is startling when you consider that the guy first started showing signs of Lou Gehrig’s Disease 50 years ago, when he was at university at Cambridge. (Although Hawking doesn’t call it Lou Gehrig’s Disease, just as we Yanks don’t call scoliosis David Beckham Syndrome, even though it leaves people bent. The physicist sometimes calls his condition by its widely familiar medical name, ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—but more often refers to it as “motor neurone disease.”)
I’m not proud of myself for this, but frankly, most times I’ve given Hawking any thought at all in the years since his book almost caused my death, it’s been not to ponder his work or to admire his amazing productivity in the face of his physical limitations, but to ask, either to myself or out loud, “Shouldn’t that guy be dead by now?” The news story about his pending 70th birthday reinforced my feeling that Hawking’s biggest accomplishment might simply be his continued existence. I mean, Lou Gehrig himself was dead within a few years of giving his tear-jerking “luckiest man on the face of the Earth” farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, and many of us, myself included, have at least peripherally known of people who’ve contracted ALS later in life and have died rather quickly and horrifyingly, becoming completely paralyzed and ultimately losing even their ability to breath. So, how is it possible that Hawking has lived long enough to become such an icon that he’s been featured in a skit on Conan O’Brien’s show and has appeared in animated form on The Simpsons?
I’ve done a little reading on this subject in the past 24 hours, and the answer is that nobody—including smartest-guy-in-the-room Hawking himself—really knows why he’s still around. Apparently if you’re fated to get ALS, it’s better to do so at a younger age, as he did, because survival periods tend to be longer. And certainly the fame and wealth that Hawking’s fully functional brain has brought him has bankrolled the very best care possible. At this point in the disease’s progression, he has around-the-clock aid. Virginia Lee, a brain disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, was quoted as saying, in one article I read, “The disease can sometimes stabilize, and then the kind of care delivered may be a factor in survival.” Remaining mentally alert, she added, “also is extremely important, and [Hawking] clearly has done that.” Still, only about 10 percent of people with ALS live longer than a decade. Most succumb to the disease within two to five years. I also read that Hawking’s DNA is being analyzed for possible clues to his longevity—yet another way in which he may yet contribute to science.
I found on Hawking’s Web site an essay he wrote, or dictated, titled, “Professor Stephen Hawking’s Disability Advice.” This is the opening paragraph:
“I am quite often asked, ‘What do you think about having ALS?’ The answer is, not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not to think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing. Which are not that many.”
Toward the end of the essay, Hawking notes that ALS “has not prevented me from having a very attractive family and being successful in my work.” Indeed, he’s been married twice and has three children, including a daughter with whom he’s written several children’s books on physics. He’s earned a shelf-full of science awards, been named a Commander of the British Empire and has been honored with this country’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. And he hasn’t been spending his senior years contentedly resting on his laurels, either. After years of coyly speaking of God in a vague metaphorical sense, the cosmologist threw diplomacy to the winds in 2010, telling The Guardian newspaper that he believes there is “no heaven or afterlife.” He called such a notion “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”
Clearly Stephen Hawking doesn’t fear the dark, and hasn’t for the extraordinary length and breadth of his surprising and inspiring life and career. He might have done his damnedest to kill me 20 years ago, but I nevertheless must salute the guy, wish him a happy birthday, and hope he makes it through another year—rather than assuming he won’t.
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