From John Hastings, Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, UK
Tributes to Stephen Hawking rightly admire the mental resilience that enabled him to live a productive life with an overwhelming physical disability – including that by his daughter Lucy Hawking (20 October, p 42). None that I have come across mention the carers who enabled him to go on living. I have searched and found only that he needed four full-time carers, carrying out for him daily activities that most of us take for granted. Then there were the technicians who designed and built the equipment that enabled him to be mobile and to communicate. These people are also heroes of Hawking's story.
