Hawking

Hawking is a graphic biography of U. K. physicist Stephen Hawking.  The biography covers his life from his birth to his death.  As most people are aware, Hawking was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neuromuscular disease while he was in his early 20s.  While the disease weakened his muscles and limited his ability to move and speak, it did not limit his mind. Hawking is known for his groundbreaking research in cosmology and physics and lived to reach his 60s. Though he used a wheelchair, he traveled all over the world to summer schools, conferences and sabbaticals.

As a person with a disability, I was quite surprised to read about all the traveling that he did.  It is well known in the disability community that airlines lose most of the wheelchairs that are checked by passengers.  It was surprising to read that he never lost his.  It is also surprising that he was allowed to fly at all while he was beginning his career.  Prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act, wheelchair users were not permitted on airplanes. While Hawking was flying to and from the U. K., he would have had to transfer to American planes for some of his trips. It is pretty amazing to me that as his disabilities got worse, he always found a way to continue working and that Cambridge University, his employer, never tried to prevent him from working. If he was an American, this would not have happened.  Hawking received many accommodations for his disabilities.  Not everyone received this assistance, particularly before the year 2000. Hawking was lucky.

The book gives plenty of details about his research and how he arrived at his conclusions.  Mathematical equations fill the pages.  They went right over my head but I was amazed at how the comic book format made them look simple. The book has been written and illustrated in comic book panels with bright colors illustrating the drawings. At 290 pages, Hawking's life has been presented in full and I don't see that the graphic novel format affected the completeness of this biography. 

I am anxious to re-read the book but before I get started I am rating it at 5 out of 5 stars. This is a must read.