Stephen William Hawking: The Famed Physicist who Defied ALS Odds

They called him with some many different names – the next Isaac Newton, the Einstein –
and he would prefer nothing but Stephen or Professor Hawking. Stephen William Hawking was
born on 8th January 1942 in Oxford, England. Many do not know that he was born exactly 300
years after the death of Galileo, the famous scientist before the renaissance. When he was eleven,
Stephen Hawking went to St. Albans School and then he furthered his study in his father’s old
college, University College Oxford. He was passionate in Mathematics although his father kept
on encouraging him to study medicine. His love for Mathematics cannot be stopped although the
course was not available at his University College. He chose to study Physics instead and after
three years, he was awarded a first class honors degree in natural science. In his final year at
University, his illness began to twitch at his nerve and it marked the turning point in his life. He
was only 21 when he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease or known as ALS (Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis) which is a degenerative and incurable type of motor neurone disease which
would eventually cost him almost all neuromuscular control. The disease caused him to
paralyzed and led to his total confinement on a wheelchair. With condition, he was predicted to
die within two or three years. Professor Hawking defied the odds and was passed away at 76 on
14th March. He lived for another 50 years to fight and share his knowledge.

Figure 1: Stephen Hawking at a Conference

Despite his passing, he had left behind a great legacy for a person who struggled with
ALS. He inspired most of the people with his work especially in quantum physics. His theory on
black hole and Big Bang’s theory defied the previous work from few scientists. The fact that he
was disabled and still able to contribute something to the world did make it even glorious. Mr.
Hawking stated that in his research that he went further by showing that a black hole can never
split into smaller ones even through the collision of two black holes. Besides, he also argued
about another quantity that could only grow during the event of horizons’ ever expanding and the
quantity is called as entropy. In 1974, Hawking came out with his new theory – Hawking
Radiation. It was a shocking and controversial idea. Yet nowadays most physicists believed that
Hawking radiation really will be generated by black holes. All of his models in science were
combined together in his book, A Brief History of Time.

Stephen was his very own leader. He worked with disability like normal person did. He
showed the world and inspired other to never stop doing anything and continued to move on with
life. He was predicted to die in two years yet he proved the world wrong – he lived for more than
50 years after he was diagnosed. In his life, he showed the leadership skills in him at so many
different events. He was a jokester. He tried to be funny yet informative during his speeches or
conferences and those were what made science even more interesting. One day, in 2007, Stephen
was able to experience the Zero Gravity despite his ALS. The Zero G team successfully took him
on a Zero Gravity flight with free-incident. Stephen was free-spirited and he inspired the team to
invite a group of children who used wheelchairs to experience the same zero-gravity experience
afterwards. Besides, in 2017, Mr. Hawking again had proven the world that he was a loud
speaker against any terrorism. With him not being able to speak without machine and just sitting
on wheelchair, he bravely spoke against the use of war-machine or killer robots, also known as
autonomous weapons. In August 2017, along with another 100 technology leaders including
Tesla and SpaceX CEO, he signed an open letter calling on the United Nations to ban the
development and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as weapons. He warned the world about
the effects of using AI in war machines. He said that, “Unless we learn how to prepare for, and
avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization. It brings
dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many”.

Despite his limitations, Stephen was also known for his passion with countless people
throughout the world outside academia. He was a vocal supporter against Palestinians’ right of
resistance and to call for an end to the war in Syria. He was remembered as an icon of global
impact that publicly opposed Israel's policies towards Palestine and joined an academic boycott
against Tel Aviv in 2013. That was not the first boycott he joined. In 2009, he condemned the act
of injustice done by Israeli military in Gaza. He said in an interview with Al-Jazeera, “The
situation is “like that in South Africa before 1990. It cannot continue”. Stephen had shown the
world that leadership is within us. His love for science did not stop him from expressing himself
in a lot more. He was truly a leader to remembered and star that shined brighter – even after his
death.

Katherine Johnson: A Woman in NASA

Being one of the few women mathematician who contributed to the success of the Apollo
Mission of sending men into orbit and to the moon is no easy feat especially being an African-
American in the 1940’s, which was known as an era of segregation between white and colored
people. Katherine G. Johnson now age 99, has become a modern figure to young mathematicians
and physicists for she had historically propagated the success of putting people into space.

Figure 2: Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson born in West Virginia, being academically brilliant had attended high
school at the age of ten as she jumped a few grades ahead of her brothers and by the time she
was thirteen, she was handpicked as the first Black female student to attend the West Virginia
State College. She took advanced mathematics courses encouraged by the known African-
American mathematician W.W Schieffelin Claytor (who was the third African American to earn
a PhD in Mathematics) who saw her recognizable brilliance in numbers. However, she soon left
after the first session to start a family with her late husband, James Goble.
 Her career in space programs started when she began working at the National Advisory
Committee (NACA), where she was placed at the West Area Computing Unit. At that time, the
organization had begun recruiting African American women to be human computers to work on
complex mathematical calculations for engineers. Katherine Johnson and a few other women
were known as the West Computers as they provided mathematical computations which had
contributed to the early success of the United States’ space program. However, as social
segregation was enforced during that time, these women had to use separate bathrooms and
dining facilities. Only later in 1958, the NACA had become the newly formed National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) which banned segregation.

One of her notable projects at the NACA was her analysis on a small propeller plane,
which had fell out of the sky without warning even as the plane had been functioning perfectly
normal beforehand. It was through her work after spending days observing at the footage
recorded by the plane’s black box and analyzing data, that engineers later discovered that the
flight path of a larger plane can disturb the air around it for up to a half hour after it passes
through. Katherine Johnson’s leadership emerged during her time at the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA), of which she was a member of the Space Task Group.
During an era where women was given lack of representation in space programs, Katherine
Johnson was the first woman in her division to receive credit as an author of a research report
which she wrote with one of the group’s engineers regarding calculations for placing a spacecraft
into orbit. She had authored and coauthored 26 research reports throughout her career in NASA.
This was an extraordinary achievement for an African American woman in the history of NASA.

Her first real success was her involvement in trajectory analysis for America’s first
human spaceflight, Alan Shepherd’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7 where she calculated
backwards from the landing site to the time of take-off. She played an important role in NASA’s
Mercury program from 1961 till 1963 for manned spaceflights. Her successful works did not
stop there as in 1962, Katherine Johnson was requested by John Glenn to verify the calculations
of the electronic calculating machines which at the time were prone to blackouts, which she ran
the same numbers through the same equations by hand on her desktop mechanical calculating
machine. Her verification on the calculations had contributed to John Glenn’s flight success
which he then became the first U.S astronaut to orbit Earth. This had marked a turning point in
the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The peak of her contributions to space exploration is her calculations for the rocket in the
Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Her calculations in perfect estimation on how the Lunar Lander
could rendezvous and dock with the Apollo command and service module which also concerns
on the astronauts’ safe trip back to Earth had given to the success of sending the first three men
to the Moon. Later, she worked on the space shuttle program which had given numerous
contributions in space exploration. After thirty-three years at NASA’s Langley Research Centre,
she retired from NASA in 1986. Her works were given recognition as now a new computation
center had been opened recently in September 2017 which was named after her, the Katherine G.
Johnson Computational Research Facility. Katherine Johnson had also achieved the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, which was America’s highest civilian honor in 2015 at the age of 97.

Katherine Johnson has become a great representation of a female African American to

achieve such extraordinary recognition as well pioneered in female involvement in space
exploration programs. Her perseverance and passion in her work had overcome the obstacles
even in social segregation and gender racism. Katherine’s brilliance and expertise in
mathematics has helped mankind to achieve a big leap in human history, sending people into
space and to the moon. Her strong personality and great capacity in sharing knowledge has what
emerged in her leadership which broke the barriers of race and gender and also aspired young
generations to excel and reach for the stars.
References

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2. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2017, October 6). Katherine Johnson. Retrieved from
Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Katherine-Johnson-mathematician

3. Shetterly, M. L. (2017, August 4). Katherine Johnson Biography. Retrieved from National Aeronautics and
Space Administration: https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography
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