Titbit: World’s Smartest Man Says Women are a Complete Mystery

Okay. There might be some people questioning whether Stephen Hawking is the world’s smartest man, but surely he has to be in the Top 100.

Apparently when Mr Hawking was 21 he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. This is a disease that progressively starts shutting down muscle groups in the body. As far as I know, just exactly which muscle groups get shut down in which order is basically random. But sooner or later vital muscles such as those working the lungs or the heart are shut down, which, as you might expect, is rather drastic and the outcome is somewhat final.

But before vital muscles are attacked generally those muscles that operate the legs, arms, neck, back, and throat are picked on by the disease.

Back when Mr Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease he was told he probably had about five to seven years to live before the disease starting shutting down vital life sustaining muscle groups.

On the 7th of January Mr Hawking had his 70th birthday.

Taken from the article on PerthNow (here) by Alice Ritchie:

“In 1974, aged just 32, he became on of the youngest fellows of Britain’s prestigious Royal Society. Five years later he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a post once held by Isaac Newton”.

In an interview with the New Scientist magazine marking his birthday, Hawking—who divorced his second wife in 2006—was asked what he thought about during most of the day, and he replied: “Women. They are a complete mystery”.