A brief look at one of the smartest dudes of our time.
BOY MEETS GIRL
While studying for a doctorate at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking got some dreadful news: he had a disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord—the ones that control your muscles. Over time, people with ALS have trouble breathing. Their muscles weaken and waste away. They can’t move. They can’t speak. In time, they can’t even breathe on their own. Most ALS sufferers die within ten years.
Hawking could have packed his bags and gone home. No one would have blamed him. Why didn’t he? For one thing, he’d just met a really cute girl and he wanted to ask her out. That turned out well (they got married). In time, Hawking became world-famous, wrote best-selling books such as A Brief History of Time, won a bunch of big-shot science awards, and…guest-starred on a hit TV show. (More about that later.)
FACTS ABOUT A BOY
• Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942—the 300th anniversary of the death of another amazing scientist and stargazer: Galileo Galilei, the father of modern astronomy and physics.
• Hawking was a grade-school slacker. At age 9, he was near the bottom of his class. In spite of his poor grades, his teachers and classmates nicknamed him “Einstein.”
• Despite mediocre grades in school, Hawking aced the scholarship exams that got him into Oxford. His score on the physics exam? Almost perfect.
• Hawking joined the rowing club at Oxford. That made him popular. But rowing practice took up six afternoons a week. That put him behind on his classwork. Hawking says he used “creative analysis to create lab reports”—in other words, he made stuff up.
• Hawking’s Ph.D. is in cosmology. No, that’s not the study of make-up, it’s the study of the origin and development of the universe.
BOY MEETS D’OH-MEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE
And now…what you’ve all been waiting for (or skipped ahead to read): In 1999, Hawking guest-starred in an episode of The Simpsons titled “They Saved Lisa’s Brain.” He almost missed the taping because his wheelchair broke down. Then he was 40 minutes late due to traffic. But it all ended well: Hawking and Homer meet up at Moe’s tavern, where they discuss the universe. “Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer,” Hawking says. “I may have to steal it.” The producer said the scene was “a chance to get the world’s smartest man and the world’s stupidest man in the same place.” After the episode aired, Hawking said, “Almost as many people know me from The Simpsons as for my science.”