Passage Five

He is a rare celebrity scientist. He’s even had a TV cameo role (小角色) in Star Trek in which he plays poker with scientific icons (偶像)Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Yet when asked about comparisons between himself and the two scientists, he calls it all "media hype (炒作)." Once asked how he felt about being labeled the world’s smartest person, he responded: "It is very embarrassing. It is rubbish, just media hype. They just want a hero, and I fill the role model of a disabled genius. At least I am disabled, but I am no genius. " Hawking has ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a neuromuscular disease that progressively weakens muscle control. He gets around in a wheelchair, and after completely losing the use of his vocal chords in an operation to assist his breathing in 1985, he communicates through a computer. A speech synthesizer "speaks" for him after he punches in what he wants to say, selecting words in the computer software by pressing a switch with his hand. Unfortunately, it makes him sound like he has an American accent, he says. Despite his humorous, self-effacing manner, Hawking is one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists. Many consider him to be the most brilliant since Einstein. Since 1979, he’s held the post of Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University—which was once held by Isaac Newton no less—and has twelve honorary degrees. He’s also a best-selling author. His book, A Brief History of Time ,has been translated into 33 languages and has sold nine million copies. For much of his academic life, Hawking has been among a group of theoretical physicists searching for a "theory of everything’—one unified scientific theory that explains the big cosmological questions like How did the universe begin Why is the universe the way it is and How will it end You are probably familiar with the existing theories, such as the Big Bang theory. However, these theories are inconsistent with each other. So Hawking—among a group of theoretical physicists—has been on a quest to come. up with a theory of quantum (量子)gravity that would incorporate these theories—the theory of everything (TOE)—which would solve the problem of what caused the universe to start expanding. How successful have the world’s leading cosmologists been Hawking predicts we’ll have the TOE in the next 20 years.

Why does Hawking communicate with others through a computer