Stephen Hawking knew what he wanted to do by the time he was eight years old. His parents lived in London where his father was undertaking research into medicine. He did not want to follow his father as his parents hoped. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he did Physics instead. Stephen was interested in studying the universe.

    But when he was 21, he was told that he had ALS—an incurable nerve disease, which affects walking, speaking, breathing, swallowing, etc. The doctors predicted that he had only a few years to live. “The doctors' grim prognosis made me determined to get the most from a life I had previously taken for granted and life was no longer boring for me,” Hawking says today, speaking from his wheelchair through a computerized voice synthesizer.

    He didn't die. Instead, as his physical condition worsened, Hawking's reputation in scientific circles grew. Hawking himself acknowledges his disease as being a crucial factor in focusing his attention on what turned out to be his real strength: theoretical research.

    In 1988, Stephen Hawking published a book called A Brief History of Time. The book tries to explain many of Hawking's physical and mathematical ideas and calculations without using maths. The book became a best seller and his later books are Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays and most recently in 2001,The Universe in a Nutshell. Of the three, the first one was made into a film in 1991.

    Hawking says, “You have to be positive if you're to get much sympathy or help. Nowadays, muscle power is obsolete. What we need is mind power—and disabled people are as good at that as anyone else.”