Yesterday was the end of an era. Professor Stephen Hawking has resigned the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.

Thankfully he is not resigning the post due to complications from his illness. Rather it is apparently academic tradition to step down from that post at the age of 67. However, I think it worth taking a few moments to pause and contemplate his story.

Hawking is one of the most recognized faces in physics, if not all of science. Many times I’ve asked students to name a few physicists and Hawking is always among those listed (though disappointingly sometimes as ``that guy in the wheelchair” ).

Hawking suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or commonly called just ALS*. He was diagnosed while very young, still in school and unmarried at the time. The disease is usually a death sentence with a 10 year mortality rate of over 80%. Despite this illness, he has been very productive in science and one of its most inspirational personalities.

Hawking’s work usually deals with cosmology and astrophysics, the universe on a very, large scale. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of black-holes, the evolution of the universe, and the properties of the universe today. He has authored nearly 200 articles, books and letters on various subjects in theoretical physics. All of this, while having to overcome more difficulty than many of us can understand.

I first came across Hawking’s name and work as a kid when I found a copy of “A Brief History of Time.” For many years that book (and a later one by Weinberg) formed most of my understanding of modern theoretical physics and cosmology. I remember reading it again while in high-school, perhaps understanding a little more from it, and greatly thinking how cool it would be to be a physicist. At the time it wasn’t quite enough to push me to the realization that perhaps I actually could study physics. It was however a step in that direction from my early life.

So let us wish Prof. Hawking well, let us be inspired by his story and work, and let us try to meet adversity with dignity in our own lives when it arises.

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*it’s unfortunate that the acronym is also shared by the Advanced Light Source where I did my thesis work. I have a baseball cap from the ALS with the letters, a logo depicting the synchrotron, and the full name spelled out in smaller type. I’ve been asked several times why I’m wearing a hat with the name of a disease by people that don’t bother to read the smaller words below the letters ALS. sigh...