史蒂芬·霍金誕生于伽利略忌辰300周年。1988年，他出版了《時間簡史》。這本書用通俗語言向普羅大眾解釋了他對宇宙的思考和研究，在世界各地長年位居暢銷書榜前列。自那以后，霍金被譽為繼愛因斯坦之后最偉大的物理學家。

My Experience With ALS

by Stephen Hawking

In my third year at Oxford, however, I noticed that I seemed to be getting more clumsy[笨拙的], and I fell over once or twice for no apparent[明顯的] reason. But it was not until I was at Cambridge, in the following year, that my father noticed, and took me to the family doctor. He referred me to a specialist[專門醫師], and shortly after my 21st birthday, I went into hospital for tests. I was in for two weeks, during which I had a wide variety of tests. After all that, the doctors didn’t tell me what I had. I gathered that they expected it to continue to get worse, and that there was nothing they could do, expect give me vitamins[維生素]. I could see that they didn’t expect them to have much effect.

The realisation that I had an incurable[不可治愈的] disease, that was likely to kill me in a few years, was a bit of a shock. How could something like that happen to me? Why should I be cut off[夭折] like this? However, while I had been in hospital, I had seen a boy I vaguely[有點] knew die of leukaemia[白血病], in the bed opposite me. It had not been a pretty sight. Clearly there were people who were worse off than me. At least my condition didn’t make me feel sick.