The Ever-Fascinating Scientist-Minus the Equations

There are some people who can look at complex equations and get lost in them. Where we ordinary folks see a mishmash that evokes the hopeless feeling of wrestling with 12th-grade calculus, these remarkable people see galaxies. Exploding stars. Time itself. (Or, in this case, happiness.) The ability to peer into an equation and find a framework for the universe is a rare one, an enviable one, and one that's provoked persecution throughout history. For proof of this, simply envision the nerd who aced your high-school calc class, then had to dodge jocks' thuggish intimidation on his way through the halls.

It's really a fascination with that nerd's uncanny ability, and not pity for the disabled or an interest in innovative approaches to quantum mechanics, that inspires so much popular attention toward Stephen Hawking. The physicist, who passed away last year, was dealt a devastatingly ironic fate. Given the ability to sail across the stars with math, he had virtually every other ability taken away from him — even the ability to communicate his ideas without the help of a machine. It's no wonder so many people have ventured to pick up A Brief History of Time, watched one of the movies about Hawking, or guessed at the details of his love life. If you were diagnosed with motor neurone disease, as he was in 1963 at the age of 21, what would you find inside your head to dazzle your imagination?