The big difference with Stephen Hawking is that he was not born disabled, he became disabled during graduate school. Even in 2025, a human who is born blind and severely paralyzed (so they cannot speak or sign) will probably never learn calculus, regardless of innate ability. Perhaps in the medium term technology will improve.
That said, another major difference is psychology. Switching animals, it seems plausible to me that chimpanzees are theoretically capable of doing basic calculus as a matter of pattern-matching. But you can't force them to study it! Basic calculus is too tedious and high-effort to learn for a mere banana, you need something truly valuable like "guaranteed admission to the flagship state university" for human children to do it. But we don't have an equivalent offer for chimps. (Likewise an Isaac Newton - level dog might still find calculus exceptionally boring compared to chasing squirrels.)
