When was stephen hawking confined to a wheelchair

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The sale raised money for two charities, including one belonging to the British physicist. The British theoretical physicist and cosmologist, famed for his work exploring the origins of the universe, died in March at the age of He spent most of his life confined to a wheelchair with motor neuron disease.

The wheelchair was estimated to go for 15, pounds but wound up fetching , pounds. Additionally, Hawking's page dissertation "Properties of expanding universes" from sold for , pounds, well above the estimate of up to , pounds. A book with Hawking's handwritten annotation was one of the personal and academic possessions up for auction. Register here. A handwritten page is seen from a copy of the PhD thesis by the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking ahead of an auction of items from his personal estate at Christie's in London, Britain October 30, Share this article.

News Desk Reuters. Topics :. Most Viewed. Hawking updates and upgrades his equipment regularly, as you might expect. In fact, Intel has a dedicated team of computer engineers always working to improve the facial recognition technology that Hawking relies upon to express his thoughts and do his work. Professor Hawking may be confined to a wheelchair, but he certainly doesn't let that confine his ability to understand the cosmos and share his knowledge with the world.

Check out his sky-high-tech wheelchair and watch Professor Hawking display his acting chops on the sitcom "Big Bang Theory! What this image suggested was a rather damaging trope: the disabled person should always seek to not use a wheelchair, rather than the impairment being something positive to reflect and work with. Society still seeks to create an image of a disabled person's life as pitiable or a burden on society. This can be incredibly damaging to a disabled person's mental health and their perception of themselves.

One cannot ignore the role of class, race and gender privileges when it comes to disability as these are often intertwined. Prof Hawking was first diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21 and given a very short time to live.

However, prior to that, his experience had been one of an able-bodied upper middle-class male who studied at Oxford. As my colleague Alex Taylor wrote for the New Statesman in , Prof Hawking's social class and that he became disabled at 21 meant that he was afforded opportunities that would not have been given to a disabled person in his era who was born with their condition.

Often, the biggest barrier to a disabled person's advancement in society can be low expectations in the education system. I grew up on Merseyside in northern England and went to a mainstream primary school and a comprehensive secondary school on a former council estate.

I was sometimes advised to take "easier" subjects on account of my disability. Fortunately, I persisted: I studied the subjects I wanted to. I went on to university and to get my dream job here at the BBC. Only 44, of over , students declared a disability when starting their degree courses in , the Higher Education Funding Council reported.