As he gradually lost the use of his hands
当他的双手慢慢失去运动能力时
he had to start developing carefully choosing research projects
他不得不开始 精心挑选研究项目
that could be tackled and solved
那些只需要在脑袋里进行几何运算
through geometrical arguments that he could do pictorially in his head.
就能处理好的项目
And he developed a very powerful set of tools nobody else really had.
此外 他还发展了一套非常强力的工具 其他任何人都不曾有过
So in some sense, when you lose one set of tools
在某种程度上 当你失去一套工具时
you may develop other tools, but the new tools
你能发展出另一套工具 不过新的工具
are amenable to different kinds of problems than the old tools.
能解决的难题是和之前那套工具不同的
And if you're the only master in the world of these new tools
而如果世上掌握这套工具的人只有你一个
that means certain kinds of problems you can solve and nobody else can.
那么有些问题只有你能解决 其他人都无能为力
My work up to 1973 was in general relativity
直到1973年 我的工作都在广义相对论的范畴内
and was summarized in a book I wrote with George Ellis called
它们被总结在一本我与乔治·埃利斯合著的书中
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time.
大尺度下的时空结构
Even then, it was difficult for me to write things down
那时候 书写对我而言已经很艰难了
so I tended to think in pictures and diagrams
所以我更倾向于以图形和图表的形式
that I could visualize in my head.
在脑海中进行思