Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest minds of our generation, passed away on March 14, 2018. He had shared his knowledge for over 5 decades of his life, as well as make different discoveries in the means of science. Before his life of successes, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 21. ALS is a neurodegenerative disorder, which could entail muscle cramps/twitching, weakness in hands, legs, feet, or ankles, and difficulty speaking/swallowing.
Hawking had begun to notice the progression of his disease when he had started to become more clumsy, and started falling over more. After he had gone through a variety of tests, the doctors had told him that he was an atypical case who would not live more than two to three years.Although he had lived more than 50 years after his diagnosis, his health had become worse at a fast rate. By the late 1960s, Hawking had to use a wheelchair to get around and he was losing the ability to write with the weakness in his hands. He had started to lose the ability to speak in the 1970s, but the need for a tracheotomy to enable him to breathe inevitably caused him to lose his speech altogether.
Although Hawking had spent the majority of his life battling his disease, he did not let that stop him from continuing to better himself in his findings and theories. He had contributed to the field of cosmology, general relativity and quantum gravity, and the context of black holes. He had also written a few books, one of his most famous being “A Brief History of Time.” Senior, Mario Pineda, had been saddened by the news of Hawkings passing, and said, “We knew that he was already a living miracle, but I guess it just seems shocking to see that he is not alive anymore after all that he had done and been through. I hope there is someone else in our Stephen Hawking had been a great mind, and one of the greatest contributions to science, and he was also a miracle for being able to live 50 more years after his diagnosis rather then two to three more.
