When Stephen Hawking returned to St. Albans for the Christmas vacation at the end of 1962, the whole of southern England was covered in a thick blanket of snow. In his own mind, he must have known that something was wrong. The strange clumsiness he had been experiencing had occurred more frequently. At the party he threw on New Year's Eve, he had difficulties pouring a glass of wine, and most of the liquid ended up on the tablecloth.

After a series of examinations, he was told that he had a rare and incurable disease called ALS. The disease affects the patient's nerves in the spinal cord and the parts of the brain which control motor functions. The body gradually wastes away, but the mind remains unaffected. Hawking just happened to be studying theoretical physics, one of the very few jobs for which the mind is the only real tool needed. This, however, gave little comfort to the twenty-one-year-old who, like everyone else, had seen a normal life ahead of him rather than a death sentence. The doctors had given him two years.

Hawking was deeply shocked by the news and experienced a time of deep depression. He shut himself away and listened to a great deal of loud music. He kept thinking, 'How could something like this happen to me? Why should I be cut off like this?' There seemed very little point in continuing with his research because he might not live long enough to finish his PhD. For a while he quite naturally believed that there was nothing to live for. If he was going to die within a few years, then why bother to do anything now? He would live out his time span and then die. That was his fate.

It was not long, however, before he dragged himself out of his depression and back to work. In the hospital, he had seen a boy die of leukaemia in the bed opposite him, and it had not been a pretty sight. He realised that clearly there were people who were worse off than him. At least, his condition didn't make him feel ill. Whenever he felt like pitying himself, he remembered that boy.