ABOVE: Aequorea victoria, the species of jellyfish Osamu Shimomura used to isolate green fluorescent protein.
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Renowned by the scientific community for his research on black holes and relativity and beloved by the public for his guest appearances on The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory, Stephen Hawking died in March at the age of 76. While working on his PhD in 1963 at Cambridge University, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and given two years to live. It was an active mind and a sense of humor, he said in 2013 documentary called Hawking, that kept him alive another five decades.
Having ALS may have actually heightened Hawking’s mental prowess, Kip Thorne, a physicist at Caltech who frequently collaborated with Hawking, told NPR. “It was because of this handicap that he developed new ways of thinking,” Thorne said, ...
