The Incredibly Complex Life Of Stephen Hawking

Disability Outreach

Photo Credits: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

Beginning in the 1990s. Hawking became a major role model for disabled people of all kinds. He was known to lecture as well as participate in fundraising activities, and he was a signer on the Charter for the Third Millenium on Disability, which called on governments to prevent disability and protect the rights of the disabled.

In 1999, he was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society. In 2012, Hawking narrated the “Enlightenment” segment of the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony in London and has also spoken out in support for the legislation of assisted suicide for the terminally ill.