A young Stephen Hawking would never have made it in today ’s age of austerity | Zoe Williams

The late physicist was a genius and a visionary but it is hard to imagine those qualities thriving with cuts to disability support and the NHS under attackWhat is a fitting tribute toStephen Hawking? It ’s probably not to ask, as John Humphrys unaccountably did, whether the “science community cut him a lot of slack because he was so desperately disabled?” A more insulting idea is hard to imagine: that you spend your life overcoming adversity to get to the top of your field, then the minute you’re dead, someone speculates that you’d never have made it without the adversity.Instead, the question we should be asking in homage to this extraordinary man is what life would be like today for a 22-year-old, recently arriving at Cambridge for graduate studies, diagnosed with motor neurone disease.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Stephen Hawking Disability Society Science Vladimir Putin World news Cuts and closures Education Source Type: news