Ride For Life: Hawking wows wheelchair crowd

A few minutes later, Hawking arrived in his electric wheelchair, once again bringing encouragement to Ryan and about 25 other youngsters in wheelchairs. He held court for about an hour Friday afternoon with the schoolchildren in a gymnasium at Mentor Graphics, with about 200 parents and company employees looking on.

All knew of his four-decade struggle with ALS, often called Lou Gehrig's disease, which has cost him his voice and almost all movement in his limbs.

With the aid of a computerized voice synthesizer on his wheelchair -- and his characteristic wit -- Hawking soon captivated the kids and the grown-ups and had them laughing as he explored such topics as gravity, the big bang and black holes.

Alluding to his famous discovery that radiation could escape from black holes, he said that people "could climb out" of a black hole if they found themselves stuck in one. "But I wouldn't advise you to jump in. You would likely be made into spaghetti."

Hawking drew more laughter when he told his audience that he grew up taking things apart to see how they worked, "but I wasn't very good at putting them back together."

He urged the students to keep asking questions about the world around them -- "we all need to be like children in that sense."

After his informal talk, he answered questions from the children, including some who also were using speech synthesizers.

"Do you like Oregon?" 12-year-old Natasha Bello said via the computer device on her wheelchair.

"Yes," Hawking replied after a few moments of working his computer with slight finger movements.

"How big is the universe?" a boy asked with his speech synthesizer.

"The universe is very big. In fact, we think it is infinite."

"Why did you get interested in science?" a student asked.

"I got interested in science because I wanted to know the universe and why we are here."

Hawking, the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University in his native England, became world famous with his 1988 best seller, "A Brief History of Time." Despite his ALS, he has raised three children and continues to travel and give public lectures.

Friday evening, he spoke to a sold-out crowd of nearly 3,000 people in Keller Auditorium about how physicists are advancing to a "unified theory" that will explain how the universe works. His lecture covered concepts he discusses in his new book, "The Universe in a Nutshell."

As for Ryan, he'll go back to finishing his senior year as an honor student at Gresham High School -- where he started a popular astronomy club-- and will enter the University of Portland this fall. In his spare time, he also is following his hero's lead by talking to other youngsters and groups about cerebral palsy.

"Dr. Hawking taught me, and others like me, to look beyond our wheelchairs," Ryan said. "He inspires us. He gives us all hope."