His sons and daughter, Lucy, 47, Robert, 50, and Tim, 38, released a joint statement saying that they were saddened by the passing of their father.
Advertisement
But it was through scientific articles and his 1988 worldwide bestseller A Brief History of Time that Hawking was able to communicate his genius and share his discoveries about black holes.
His 1988 book “A Brief History of Time” became an global bestseller and brought him widespread fame.
Despite the disease, he was able to communicate from his motorized wheelchair using his cheek muscle attached to a speech-generating computer.
“There are many good theoretical physicists who make a big contribution, but there aren’t that many greats”, he said.
“Half the people in the room don’t even know what he’s talking about, quantum theory, black holes, spontaneous particles coming into existence, the big bang, grand unification theory, but even though you don’t understand all of it, he brought it to the public mind”, said McDonald.
While the world mourned Hawking’s demise, Pattnaik made a wonderful piece of art depicting Hawking and the universe behind him.
Director-General Fabiola Gianotti of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, hailed Hawking for the “enthusiasm, vitality and passion for knowledge” that he showed during visits to the Large Hadron Collider and related facilities in and around Geneva.
As their careers progressed, Gowdy said he saw Hawking often at conferences. The dot was a reference to planet Earth.
His success in turn transformed him into a massively popular scientist, one as familiar to the wider world through his appearances on The Simpsons and Star Trek as his work on cosmology and black holes.
Alex Flournoy, a professor at Colorado School of Mines, says he got into physics because of Stephen Hawking.
The disease spurred him to work harder but also contributed to the collapse of his two marriages, he wrote in a 2013 memoir My Brief History.
In the book, he wrote about when he was diagnosed. But most glaring is that Neymar clearly heard a famous man died today who happened to spend much of his life in a wheelchair, and, I imagine, could only think: I, famed soccer player Neymar, am also at this very moment in a wheelchair. “In those days, he was like my spiritual teacher”, Jiang told Xinhua, “Just thinking about his life experience and his attitude toward hardships; I was very much inspired and encouraged”.
As a pioneer of space exploration, Hawking defied the odds living with ALS for most of his adult life.
“Although humanity has lost one of the most prominent cosmologists and astrophysicists of our time, his work and vision will last forever”, said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Hawking consulted on the bio-drama, which earned five Academy Award nominations, and a Best Actor win for Eddie Redmayne for his portrayal of the physicist.
He compared Hawking to Albert Einstein, who would have celebrated his 139th birthday Wednesday, as “both a brilliant scientist and a cultural icon”.
Advertisement
“But his personal struggle against his illness helped humanise the story of this otherwise brilliant mind”, Nandi said.
