ter this he took a Mensa test to see if he was still bright or not and got 200 or 250: so there was no permanent damage. In his 3rd year he began to notice that his hands were less useful than before. Hawking graduated from Oxford in 1962, at the age of 20, and took a trip to Persia with a friend. During the visit he got sick and after having tests shortly after returning and going up to Cambridge to do Graduate work, he was diagnosed with Amytropic lateral sclerosis also known as Lou Gerhig's disease, or motor neuron disease as it is called in England. After being diagnosed with 2 1/2 years to live, Hawking decided to not start any research--believing that he was dying, he though he may not even finish his Ph.D. It was around this time that he met his future wife, Jane Wilde. (Scherniak, p.2 ln. 14) Hawking's graduate thesis discussed what happens when a star burns off its fuel and collapses into a black hole. In 1965 he applied for and received a research fellowship at Caisus College, Cambridge and married Jane Wilde. They have 3 children: Robert, Lucy, and Timothy (born 1967, 1970 and 1979 respectively). Meeting Jane lifted Hawking out of his terminal-illness depression, and he started to work again. (Evans, p.132) Hawking's research at Caisus College was to be done in theoretical physics (quantum physics or cosmology). He chose to do it in cosmology partly because he found elementary particles unattractive and because he wanted to study with Fred Hoyle, who was at Cambridge at the time (the most distinguished British astronomer of the time, and also a science fiction novelist). Hawking's research centered on Black Holes, and from the late 60's onward he has been in the forefront of Black Hole research. One discovery of Hawking's is that Black Holes emit radiation. Based on Einstein's general theory of relativity, nothing can escape the event horizon of a Black Hole, but based on quantum mechanics, for every particle there is an anti...
