Stephen Hawking: Redefining limits
Stephen Hawking was arguably one of the finest minds in last century. Born into a family of doctors on 8th Jan, 1942, Stephen faced similar struggles that every student faces in early days of school. He didn’t like teaching methods and wasn’t academically strong in the beginning, but eventually he developed an aptitude towards scientific subjects.
Then he started making exceptional progress. Stephen, against his father’s wishes, studied mathematics instead of medicine. He got a scholarship from Oxford and graduated with first degree honours, even though in his finals he just attempted theoretical physics based questions. Even though he assumed he was considered a lazy and difficult student, the University knew he was “cleverer than the examiners”. Be it academics or extra curricular activities, like his love for boating, he excelled at all of them.
He was at the prime of his life.
Then tragedy struck. He found out he has an undesirable supervisor for his doctorate, he realized that his training in Mathematics is insufficient for General Relativity and Cosmology. And on top of it he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Being told that he just has 2 years to live, Stephen went into depression. He saw little point in continuing his studies.
My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.
A 21 year old man, who is at prime of his life, suddenly being told that he just has 2 years to live, naturally can’t continue just working normally. At that time he didn’t see any reason to work. But after getting motivated by his supervisor Dennis William Siahou Sciama, and meeting his future wife Jane Wilde, he was able to get out of depression. It turned out the doctors were inaccurate about his life expectancy. They were way off. The disease was spreading way slower than they thought. There was a hope for Stephen after all! Even after these unfavourable conditions, he was able to publicly challenge the work of his previously desirable supervisor Fred Hoyle and his .
But his condition was not ideal, far from it. Yet he managed to time and again make breakthrough discoveries. He is the personifaction of sheer determination and brilliance. Even when he was at the lowest point in his life he did not give up. He continued to persevere. He managed to have a family and excel in his career while he was suffering from a terminal disease. He kept winnging prizes and making breakthrough discoveries. This clearly shows how passionate and determined the man was for his craft. And for this reason I consider him my role model.
Finally, after fighting the disease for 55 years, on March 14, 2018, Stephen died. Just about 1 year after this death, we got the render of first picture of blackhole. His life’s work was theorizing about black holes and he couldn’t see the results of his work. He was able to fight that terminal disease for so long, and continued working on his craft. He faced challnges and obstructions, but he never gave up. He kept pushing, and people helped him out, to enable him, to keep pushing ahead.
