By Jessica RoyAudience Engagement Editor
March 16, 2018 4 AM PT
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In the days since Stephen Hawking’s death, obituaries have described him as being “confined” or “chained” to a wheelchair, as someone who “overcame” his disability and succeeded in spite of it.
None of those things are true. Stephen Hawking had a disability, and Stephen Hawking used a wheelchair. His work was possible because of those things, not in spite of them.
In fact, Hawking — a tireless advocate for disability rights when he wasn’t busy unlocking the secrets of the universe — viewed those things as a positive.
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“My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics,” he wrote in Science Digest in 1984. “Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in.”
From the time he was 20 until his death Wednesday at the age of [...]