Перевести текст по , at the age of 21, while studying in cambridge, s. hawking was diagnosed with a form of motor neurone disease and given a few years to live by doctors. but stephen continued to live and work thanks to a california computer programmer, who developed a special program. it could be directed by head or eye movement. the invention allowed hawking to select words on a computer screen that were then passed through a speech synthesizer. through the program, and the help of assistants, stephen hawking has continued to write at a prolific rate. his work has included numerous scientific papers, of course, but also information for the non-scientific community. he managed to become one of the great science popularisers of our age. he has even written books for children with his daughter lucy. his inspiration of public interest in some of the deepest questions of physics is certainly one reason why he has become such an iconic figure. 4. in his first few years of research, he became known for the insights into the nature of black holes (then a very new idea) and how our universe began. these earned him election to the royal society at the exceptionally early age of 32. s. hawking’s discovery in 1974 that black holes emit thermal radiation due to quantum effects was one of the most important results in 20th-century physics. this is because it unified three previously separate areas of physics – quantum theory, general relativity and thermodynamics. in 1988 he wrote a brief history of time. the short, informative book became an account of cosmology for the masses. the work was an instant success, spending more than four years atop the london sunday times' best-seller list. since its publication, it has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 40 languages. in 2001, hawking followed up his book with the universe in a nutshell, which offered a more illustrated guide to cosmology's big theories. he has done a lot to extend our grasp of gravity, space and time. he’s an outstanding scientist but, more than that, he’s an outstanding human being.