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From: john@frog.UUCP (John Woods)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Who are Mach and Hawking?
Message-ID: <209@frog.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Jun-85 12:07:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: frog.209
Posted: Tue Jun 25 12:07:06 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Jun-85 00:38:44 EDT
References: <2366@mordor.UUCP>
Organization: Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA
Lines: 35

> From: FRIEDRICH%GAV@LLL-MFE.ARPA
> A question a couple of days ago asked, in effect, "who are Mach and Hawking,
> and what do they know?"
> 
> Now, for something completely different.  Mach's Principle remains a
> conjecture only.  Stephen Hawking is another story.  Hawking is, in my
> own humble opinion (and that of many others) the world's greatest living
> astrophysicist.  Unfortunately, he has a degenerative nerve disease that
> has crippled and is slowly killing him.  He does his mathematics in his
> head and dictates to graduate students who have been specially trained
> to understand his speech (mostly by experience, I gather).  Charles River
> Data Systems of Natick, Massachusetts, deserves a great big hearty THANKS
> for donating a supermicro or two to Hawking, which will probably help him
> communicate with others.
> 
The book "Stephen Hawking's Universe", by I forget which author, tells a lot
of fascinating tales about Dr. Hawking.  Not only does he do mathematics in
his head, but he has an immense memory for text:  the book tells of one time
when, three days after dictating several chapters of a latest book to his
secretary, told her to correct a couple of words in a specific paragraph of
a specific page, which he suddenly realized he had mis-dictated!

One can, in fact, understand Dr. Hawking without a lot of trouble, at least
if the room is quiet and you try real hard; when Dr. Hawking visited CRDS a
while back (to express thanks for the machine [CRDS, in some meta-sense, also
happily accepts your thanks, too :-)], drop off bug reports, and to show off
a video tape about him made by the BBC), I also found that I could tell most
of what he was saying -- though I was glad of the interpreter, as I wanted
to be sure!  (As an ex-physics student, I revelled in the chance to worship
at the feet of a god!-)


--
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit-ccc@MIT-XX.ARPA