7 Fascinating Facts About Stephen Hawking

Few people emerge from the fields of cosmology and theoretical physics with the sort of name recognition equal to that of a celebrity athlete or actor, but that’s exactly what happened with Stephen Hawking. Thanks to his groundbreaking work with black holes and relativity, he went on to hold distinguished academic posts, be appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire and earn the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom … all while his body deteriorated from a crippling disease that was supposed to have killed him by the mid-1960s.

In honor of his inspiring endurance, and his immense contributions to the understanding of the cosmos that swirls around us, here are seven facts about the life of this otherworldly scientist:

He was an average student in elementary school

Hawking didn’t have the sort of sparkling early academic career you’d expect from a Grade-A genius. He claimed he didn’t learn to properly read until he was 8 years old, and his grades never surpassed the average scores of his classmates at St. Albans School. Of course, there was a reason those same classmates nicknamed him “Einstein”; Hawking built a computer with friends as a teenager and demonstrated a tremendous capacity for grasping issues of space and time. He also got it together when it counted, dominating his Oxford entrance exams to score a scholarship to study physics at age 17.

Upon his ALS diagnosis, Hawking was told he only had two-and-a-half years to live

After falling while ice skating during his first year as a grad student at Cambridge University, Hawking was told he had the degenerative motor neuron disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and had only two-and-a-half years to live. Obviously that prognosis was light years off, but it seems early onset of the disease was a blessing in disguise, of sorts. Most ALS patients are diagnosed in their mid-50s and live another two to five years, but those diagnosed earlier tend to have a slower-progressing form of the disease. Furthermore, the loss of motor skills forced the burgeoning cosmologist to become more creative. “By losing the finer dexterity of my hands, I was forced to travel through the universe in my mind and try to visualize the ways in which it worked,” he later noted.

He was initially puzzled by his own equation

Hawking’s equation, which involves the speed of light, Newton’s constant and other symbols that make the non-mathematically inclined run for cover, measures emissions from black holes that today is known as Hawking radiation. Hawking was initially puzzled by these findings, as he believed black holes to be celestial death traps that swallowed up all energy. However, he determined there was room for this phenomenon through the merging of quantum theory, general relativity and thermodynamics, distilling it all into one (relatively) simple but elegant formula in 1974. Already known for establishing important ground rules about the properties of black holes, this discovery kicked his career into a higher gear and set him on the path to stardom. Hawking later said he would like this equation to be carved on his tombstone.

Hawking almost died in 1985

Although the doomsday predictions of his early doctors were off, Hawking did almost die after contracting pneumonia while traveling to Geneva in 1985. While he was unconscious and hooked up to a ventilator, the option of removing the fragile scientist from life support was being considered until his then-wife, Jane, rejected the idea. Hawking instead underwent a tracheotomy, an operation that helped him breathe but permanently took away his ability to speak, prompting the creation of his famous speech synthesizer.

He considered his non-descript computer voice part of his identity

Hawking’s original synthesizer was created by a California-based company called Words Plus, which ran a speech program called Equalizer on an Apple II computer. Adapted to a portable system that could be mounted on a wheelchair, the program enabled Hawking to “speak” by using a hand clicker to choose words on a screen. After he eventually lost use of his hands, Hawking had an infrared switch mounted on his glasses that generated words by detecting cheek movement. He also had the communication technology overhauled by Intel, though he insisted on retaining the same robotic voice with its distinctly non-British accent he’d been using for three decades, as he considered it an indelible part of his identity.

Hawking wrote books using his vocal synthesizer

Hawking long believed he could write a book about the mysteries of the universe that would connect with the public, a task that seemed all but impossible after he lost the abilities to write and speak. However, he painstakingly pressed forward with his speech synthesizer, receiving valuable assistance from students who relayed draft revisions with his editor in the United States via speakerphone. Hawking’s vision ultimately was realized, as A Brief History of Time landed on the London Sunday Times best-seller list for 237 weeks after its publication in 1988. He went on to pen an autobiography, several other books about his field and a series of science-themed novels, co-written with his daughter, Lucy.

He had a wicked sense of humor

Despite his extraordinary physical challenges, Hawking wasn’t shy about appearing on television. He first appeared as himself on a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, cracking jokes while playing poker with Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. He also lent his voice to the animated shows The Simpsons and Futurama, and, fittingly, surfaced on the hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Of course, screen time wasn’t only about laughs for the world-renowned physicist, who returned to his bread-and-butter topics of cosmology and the origins of life for his six-part 1997 miniseries Stephen Hawking’s Universe. He also provided plenty of stark, sobering descriptions of his life for the 2013 documentary Hawking.

READ MORE: 10 of Stephen Hawking’s Best Zingers