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. 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 later said he would like this equation to be carved on his tombstone.Īlthough the doomsday predictions of his early doctors were off, Hawking did almost die after contracting pneumonia while traveling to Geneva in 1985. 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. 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. Hawking was initially puzzled by these findings, as he believed black holes to be celestial death traps that swallowed up all energy. 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. He was initially puzzled by his own equation '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. Furthermore, the loss of motor skills forced the burgeoning cosmologist to become more creative. 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. Obviously that prognosis was light years off, but it seems early onset of the disease was a blessing in disguise, of sorts.

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

What happened to stephen hawking