Do you think that Stephen Hawking illness have helped him to become what he is today?

I think he has admitted himself that had it not been for his ALS he may have not needed to visualise mathematical problems in quite the same way as he does and so not have come to the same conclusions as he has.

I think a great mind is a great mind, he may have gone about solving his questions in a different manner, but I think he still would have made most of the discoveries he has.

I have heard him say, in a documentary, exactly what @RareDenver wrote above: that if he had not had to cope with such extreme physical limitations, he would not have been forced to think about things in the way that he has done. The sheer lack of access to certain tools drove him to a more visual approach that led to new discoveries and conclusions.

But the capacity was always in him or he couldn’t have accomplished what he has.

He might at any time have decided that it was all too much for him, but he persisted. That’s the lesson I hope we can learn. Most of us are capable of much more than we do.

There’s no doubt in my mind that a person’s circumstance’s contribute to what they accomplish in life. The question is whether those circumstances will have a positive or negative effect. Luckily for Stephen Hawking, he took a negative and turned it into a positive. He is an inspiration.

There are probably some people who could have become astrophysicists but chose to be athletes, dancers or musicians instead. Having his life choices being limited to academic (or at least non-physical) pursuits could not have hurt his chances of becoming the scientist he is.

Yes, because he was also an athlete and that may have been a minor distraction. Not to mention the major distractions we all have.

When I was at uni we had a guy in our class with the exact same problem (and just as severe as Hawking’s). He always wrote the best essays, often faster than we did, and they were obviously all typed (as opposed to the hand-written ones we were still allowed to hand in at the time). He’d type one key at a time, and it took him ages to write a page, but that’s the only thing he did all day. And it was just as slow to try and have a conversation with him, but his brain had all the time to think up the proper sentences and arguments in the meantime.

I, too, have familial ALS and along with Professor Stephen Hawking, am in the 5% of ALS patients to survive ten or more years. It is quite an experience watching your body deteriorate while your mind remains clear. As you must give up physical activities,you fill that void with simpler physical as well as mental activities. It certainly gives you time to think and I beileve that probably had an affect on the Professor’s thought process and research.