14 Real Life Heroes Who Have Changed The World

13. Stephen Hawking

A man who has defied all physical, emotional and academic boundaries in his lifetime. Hawking suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a motor neuron disease that has left him paralysed and people will mostly recognise him for the American, robotic sounding speech generating device which allows him to communicate.

Not only has his determination to defy the doctor's predictions of his two year life expectancy in 1963, but he has also dedicated his life to the world of academia. His book A Brief History Of Time discusses his own theories of cosmology and he is the director of Research at the Center for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.

Despite his disease which is a severe disadvantage not only for his personal life, but for his research too, he is still married with children and is continuing his research in order for us to better understand the world in its scientific form.