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Examples of Scientists - Stephen Hawking

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special - Stephen Hawking -

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Stephen Hawking's background

What makes Stephen Hawking such a great example?

Stephen Hawking's background

Stephen Hawking was an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, best known for his work on black holes and for the bestselling popular-science book A Brief History of Time. Diagnosed with the motor neurone disease ALS at 21 and given only a few years to live, he instead continued working for over fifty years, eventually communicating through a speech-generating computer as the disease progressively paralysed him. He held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge, the chair once held by Isaac Newton, and became one of the most publicly recognisable scientists of his era.

What makes Stephen Hawking such a great example?

Birth of Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is a striking example because his life pulls in two opposite directions at once: a body devastated by illness within two years of his diagnosis, set against a mind and reputation that went on expanding for another five decades. A convincing chart for him needs to carry both the severity of the affliction and the extraordinary, compensating strength of intellect and will that let him defy his prognosis for so long.

The chart shown is Stephen Hawking's birthchart, together with transits for his 1963 diagnosis with motor neurone disease, guessed at midday, around the outside. Aspect lines [traditional] are between the transits and his birthchart.