Stephen Hawking Looking for Assistant

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!"

Comments

ALS

[jd]

It's probably not going to be easy to diagnose at this stage - not only because it likely advanced far beyond the point 99.9% of sufferers would be tested, making any kind of direct comparison impossible, but also because he has survived so long, and we therefore have no data whatsoever on what ALS would look like at this point, and also because the disease has not progressed significantly for some time - it stopped and even reversed a very little at one point. Sure, you can study the existing damage, but without an active element, there would be nothing to test for.

Actually, it shouldn't be too hard to identify the illness, even from an armchair, for exactly the reasons I outlined. The number of neurologically degenerative diseases that actually spontaneously go into remission is not exactly high. That alone should eliminate the vast majority of ALS-like diseases to something much more manageable. We also have video footage from different stages. Horison did a documentary on Professor Hawking prior to him losing his speech to the trachea operation. We certainly have video footage of him since. Again, that should allow you to exclude certain possibilities. Finally, although a lot of his body has no motor control worth speaking of, his hands most evidently do as that is how he controls the chair and the voice synthesizer, although he's not exactly a speed demon on typing with it. His face also does - he doesn't lack the ability to show emotions.

Oh, that made me think of something else. Those are the same muscles he pushed the hardest from shortly before being diagnosed until he became a total invalid. He would swing on trees extensively, according to his mother in one documentary. It's suspected his heavy physical exercise regimen may have contributed to the disease slowing down and stopping later on in his life, but I believe it to be highly significant that the muscles he pushed the most suffered the least. Again, that can't possibly be characteristic of too many conditions.

From these well-documented and well-established facts, it should be easy to go through those conditions which Professor Hawking might have and discard those that simply don't behave in the way observed. (Or, to pull a Sherlock Holmes, reject the impossible and whatever is left - however improbable - must be correct. This doesn't work in practice for most things, but in this one case, there will be few enough possibilities that eliminating the impossible should be very doable indeed.)

Re:ALS

[Lord Aurora]

Or, to pull a Sherlock Holmes, reject the impossible and whatever is left - however improbable - must be correct.

Actually, that's technically pulling an Occam, as it's a variation on Occam's Razor. Yeah, yeah, Holmes said it like that, but Occam's razor is generally thought to be the foundation for Holmes' theory. Er...Doyle's theory, as it were.

Re:Not a student..

[archen]

Well if you're going for a sort of academic career, then the next "level" I would think would be this sort of apprenticeship. Which would be pretty cool considering there are many people capable of getting a doctorate, but only one such opportunity to work for Stephen Hawking. I imagine that if you could land that job then your resume would only need one sentence. "Stephen Hawking picked ME to work for him".