Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.

[AFTT47]

Besides his mind, the one thing I admire the most about Professor Hawking is his ability to fight through his disability and not allow it to prevent him from accomplishing his work or making a great career.  I am disabled through an accident and he had it ten times worse than me.  I can still walk around with the aid of a walker.  He made scientific theorems and helped us understand the Universe better, and still taught.  If he could do all that being in a wheel chair and not being able to move on his own or speak, just think of what I can achieve, or any of the rest of us for that matter.

“My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically,” he told the New York Times in 2011. Hawking was frequently frank about his battle with ALS, a degenerative neurological disease that often proves fatal. But he defied doctors expectations, living for over half a century after he was diagnosed in 1963, at the age of 21. The year before, he said in an introduction to the 2010 TV documentary series Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking: “Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.”

--http://time.com/5198842/stephen-hawking-quotes-universe-life/

He is indeed a great inspiration

Yeah, I've always admired him as much for that as his genius. I honestly think if I had been in the same situation, I would have sought out someone's help to euthanize me. He managed to do great work over a span of fifty years in a barely-functional body.