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Stephen Hawking Looking for Assistant

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the update-your-resume dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wanted: Bright graduate student to assist world-famous scientist. International travel, developing computer systems and dealing with the press required. Renowned astrophysicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking has announced he is looking for a graduate student to work for him for one to two years. Dust off those CVs, kids!"

2 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Stephan Hawking needs respect too. by Almost-Retired · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And so far, in the 26 messages posted, I have detected damned little respect for the perservereance and intelligence of the man, who does after all, hold the Issac Newton Chair in Mathematics at Cambridge, no small feat by itself. To me that apparent lack of respect is most sad.

    Here we have a man, who perhaps because of his disability, is giving his brain exersize that the rest of his body will never get, a man who has contributed much to our knowledge of the universe, and who may yet deduce the causitive reason for the accelleration we are seeing of distant objects before he passes.

    As for his passing, I'd imagine that his health is monitored at least 10 times more diligently than any of us do for ourselves. That will see to it that the age related degenerative things are kept in check as best we know how to do. However, the real monitoring is more likely concentrated on the treatment of bedsores and that sort of thing, as well as maintaining his immune system as best we (the medical professions 'we') can. However, he has a resident rn to handle the bedpanish and bedsores sorts of things, so those duties would not normally fall to the assistant.

    If I were 50 years younger, I'd kill for a chance at that job. Unforch, my experience level at 50 years ago wouldn't have allowed me to do what he needs done today. Without formal schooling, it does take a while to arrive at that point of having the knowledge needed.

    --
    Cheers, Gene

  2. It's a really tough job to fill... by Cycnus · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I've recently watched a BBC Horizon episode "The Hawking Paradox" (available on BT I believe) where you see him working with his current assistant, a young French mathematician, and you must admire the patience of Hawking and the people around him to actually get communication flowing.
    Hawking's ability to use his clicker to pick-up words on his computer has deteriorated and making a sentence is a really tough job for him: you have to guess what he wants to say and watch his eyes for confirmation... it must be a maddening thing to know all that knowledge and all those ideas bottled up inside that brain that can barely communicate a few words a minute...

    With all our technology, you'd think that we could do a better job of helping people with such crippling diseases to allow them communicate more fluently.

    It's sad that this great mind may never be able to give us all it can, even if some of his ideas end up being wrong, there is still enough material there to make great advances in science.