51. Einstein's Inspiring Heir.
51、爱因斯坦的激励人心的继承人、
1. He is almost totally paralyzed, speechless and wheelchair-bound, able to move only his facial muscles and two fingers on his left hand. He cannot dress or feed himself, and he needs round-the-clock nursing care. He can communicate only through a voice synthesizer, which he operates by laboriously tapping out words on the computer attached to his motorized chair. Yet at age 50, despite these crushing adversities, Stephen Hawking has become, in the words of science writers Michael White and John Gribbin, "perhaps the greatest physicist of our time." His 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, has sold 1.7 million copies around the world.
1、他几乎完全瘫痪，不能说话，离不开轮椅，能够活动的只有他面部的肌肉和他左手的两个指头。吃饭穿衣他不能自理，白天夜晚都需要人照顾。他只能通过一个发声合成器同别人交流。这个计算机式的发声合成器固定在他那装有马达的轮椅上；他吃力地操作键盘，把要说的话一个词一个词地打出来。尽管他遭此极度厄运，斯蒂芬·霍金在他年已半百的时候还是成了“也许是当代最伟大的物理学家”。(科技作家迈克·怀特和约翰·格里宾语)他1988年出版的《时间简史》一书，在世界各地共销售了170万册。
2. Hawking's choice of career was most fortunate, for himself as well as for science. Rejecting the urging of his physician father to study medicine, Hawking chose instead to concentrate on math and theoretical physics, first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. But at age 21 he developed the first symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disorder that would inevitably render him paralyzed and incapable of performing most kinds of work. Rs the authors note, theoretical physics was "one of the very few jobs for which his mind was the only real tool he needed."
2、霍金选择了这一职业，对科学事业和他本人都是件极大的好事。他父亲是个医生，曾敦促他学医，但他没有从命，而是先后在牛津大学和剑桥大学专攻数学和理论物理。可是他在21岁的时候，出现了肌萎缩性(脊髓)侧索硬化的征兆；这一疾病不可避免地要导致瘫痪，使他很多事都不能做。用本书的两位作者的话来说，“研究理论物理是他能做的屈指可数的几件工作之一—这些工作实际需要的工具仅是他的大脑。”
3. He has used that tool with consummate skill. While still a graduate student, Hawking became fascinated by black holes, the bizarre objects created during the death throes of large stars. Working with mathematician Roger Penrose and using Einstein's relativity equations, he developed new techniques to prove mathematically that at the heart of black/holes were singularities—infinitely dense, dimensionless points with irresistible gravity. He went on to demonstrate that the entire universe could have sprung from a singularity and, in his 1966 Ph.D. thesis, wryly noted that "there is a singularity in our past."
3、他娴熟地使用了这一工具。还在当研究生的时候，他就对研究黑洞现象—巨大星体泯灭过程中产生的奇怪物体—入了迷。他同数学家罗杰·潘罗斯合作，运用爱因斯坦的相对论等式找到了新的计算方法来证明：在黑洞的中心是一堆密密麻麻的、无边无际的、具有巨大引力的奇异小点。他继而证明，整个宇宙都有可能是从某个奇点演变而来的。他在1966年写的博士学位论文中略带讽刺意味地写道：“我们过去的历史中就有一个奇点。”
4. Gathering momentum as a fellow at Cambridge, Hawking calculated that the Big Bang, which gave birth to the universe, must have created tiny black holes, each about the size of a proton but with the mass of a mountain. Then, upsetting the universal belief that nothing, not even light, can escape from a black hole, he used the quantum theory to demonstrate that these miniholes (and larger ones too) emit radiation. Other scientists eventually conceded that he was correct, and the black-hole emissions are now known as Hawking radiation.
4、在剑桥当研究员时，他再接再励，并推测出：可能是产生宇宙的大爆炸同时也产生了那些小黑洞，其大小同质子差不多，但质量却重如一座大山。后来，他用量子理论证明这些小洞(还有大一些的)能发出射线，从而推翻了认为任何东西(包括光在内)都不能逃脱黑洞的普遍看法。其他科学家最终还是承认他是正确的，而且现在人们还把黑洞射线称为霍金射线。
5. Engrossed as Hawking is with his work, the authors say, "ALS is simply not that important to him." He certainly does not dwell on his handicap. His succinct, synthesized voice comments are often laced with humor, he enjoys socializing with his students and colleagues, attends rock concerts and Sometimes takes to the dance floor at discos, wheeling his chair in circles. But he can be stubborn, abrasive and quick to anger, terminating a conversation by spinning around and rolling off, sometimes running one of his wheels over the toes of an offender.
5、由于霍金一心扑在工作上，本书的两位作者说：“瘫痪对他显得并不那么重要。”他肯定没有老是想着自己的残疾。他那通过发声合作器说出来的简单话语，时不时还带着点幽默的味道。他喜欢和学生、同事们一起参加社交活动，参加摇滚音乐会，有时还到迪斯科舞厅去，坐在轮椅上转圈子。可他有时也很执拗，对别人有些生硬粗暴，爱发脾气，有时他突然中断同别人的谈话，坐着轮椅转个圈，然后悻悻地离去。他甚至还会用轮椅的一个轮子轧冒犯者的脚趾。