13 A Young, Cool Stephen Hawking, Standing With His Bride
On one hand, none of us probably thought that Stephen Hawking was born in a wheelchair. But as a pop culture figure, his wheelchair and electronic voice are his thing, and against all logic you find it hard to think of him any other way, like how you can’t think of Hulk Hogan without the tan and mustache.
That photo up there is from 1965, when a 23-year-old Hawking married Jane Wilde. That was after his diagnosis with ALS, the disease that would put him in the wheelchair (note the cane). But just a couple of years before that, he had no idea he had a degenerative disease — he was a healthy, active, drinking college student at Oxford:
Seconds after this picture was snapped, his pants hit the floor.
Then, one day he noticed he was having trouble keeping his hands steady, and once fell down a flight of stairs. Hey, best to go get it checked out, right? Could be, like, an ear infection or something throwing off his balance. That’s when the 21-year-old (now studying for his Ph.D. at Cambridge) was told he’d be bedridden soon, and dead within a few years, a prognosis that is true for almost every ALS patient. Hawking, somehow, is still alive 50 years after his diagnosis.
