Remembering Stephen Hawking: Life Without You Would Definitely Be Tragic

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first." - Interview in The Guardian, May 2011.

A renowned physicist, ambassador of science, a best-selling author, a person who explained blackholes, gave the answer to the question - "Where did the Universe come from?", sailed into the end of his time in a wheelchair. His death was confirmed by a spokesman from Cambridge University. He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday. He was 76 years old. He was by far the longest survivor of ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Cosmology's brightest star just went out leaving us with answers about the mysteries of the cosmos that no other scientist except Albert Einstein has ever decoded, but his body of work will continue to inspire millions for centuries to come.

BIRTH:

British cosmologist Stephen William Hawking was born in England on Jan. 8, 1942 — 300 years to the day after the death of the astronomer Galileo Galilei. He attended University College, Oxford, where he studied physics, despite his father's urging to focus on medicine. Hawking went on to Cambridge to research cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole.

"My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus" - Interview in The New York Times, December 2004

Hawking, who wrote the best-selling books "A Brief History of Time" and "The Universe in a Nutshell," was diagnosed in 1962 with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly called ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease-  which is a rare motor neurone disease that led him to be trapped inside his own body while working on a large scale on "why the Universe exisit?". According to him, if we'd find the answer to that question, it'll be the ultimate triumph of human reason and we would know the mind of God.

He was diagnosed at the age of 21, and the doctors only expected him to live for another 2 year post the diagnosis, however, his disease progressed much more slowly than expected and to our surprise and amazement, he survived for more than half a century.

A fresh sense of purpose was ignited in him when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and he also witnessed the death of a boy due to leukaemia.. His present started mattering more than ever before. He also started focusing on his research more - He also said his goal was simple - It is a complete understanding of the universe, "why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

FIRST MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH:

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”

 

Stephen Hawking definitely did not let anything get in his way, neither his illness which caused him to be on a wheelchair throughout his life nor a complete loss of speech after 1985. Stephen Hawking talked through ‘the computer’, using a speech-generating device (SGD) or a voice output communication aid. This is a special device that either supplements or replaces speech/writing.

In 1974, Hawking drew on quantum theory to declare that black holes should emit heat and eventually pop out of existence. For normal-sized black holes, the process is extremely slow, but miniature black holes would release heat at a spectacular rate, eventually exploding with the energy of a million one-megaton hydrogen bombs. Hawking studied the basic laws governing the universe. He proposed that, since the universe boasts a beginning — the Big Bang — it likely will have an ending.

 

ACHIEVEMENTS & AWARDS:

 

"I want my books sold on airport bookstalls"- Interview in The New York Times, December 2004

He published his first book "A Brief History Of Time" in 1988. The title made the Guinness Book of Records after it stayed on the Sunday Times bestsellers list for an unprecedented 237 weeks. It sold 10m copies and was translated into 40 different languages.

 

"The downside of my celebrity status is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognised. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away" - Interview on Israeli TV, December 2006.

Hawkins was a towering figure in Cosmology. He won the Albert Einstein Award, the Wolf Prize, the Copley Medal, and theFundamental Physics Prize. The Nobel prize, however, escpaed him. He lectured at the White House during the Clinton administration. In 2009, he received the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama. His life is also played out in biographies and documentaries, most recently The Theory of Everything, in which Eddie Redmayne played him. He appeared on The Simpsons and played poker with Einstein and Newton on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

MARRIED LIFE:

He married twice and fathered three children. He married his high school sweetheart in 1965. But their marriage did not last due to the great pressures coming from his progressive condition, his demands on his first wife and his refusal to talk about his illness. Hawking married Elaine Mason, one of the nurses employed to give him round-the-clock care. The marriage lasted 11 years.

HIS THOUGHTS ON TIME TRAVEL & ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:

He also said time travel should be possible, and that we should explore space for the romance of it. 

"Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out. I was one of the first to write about the conditions under which this would be possible. I showed it would require matter with negative energy density, which may not be available. Other scientists took courage from my paper and wrote further papers on the subject," he told Parade in 2010.

"The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether," Hawking told WIRED in November 2017. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," he told the BBC in 2014.

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS:

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” .

He did not believe in life after death either.
An avowed athiest, he believed that we did not need god to explain evertything about the Universe. Now science offers a more convincing explanation. What he meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn't.

ON CONTACT BETWEEN HUMANS & ALIENS:

"I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low" -In Naked Science: Alien Contact, The National Geographic Channel, 2004.

His extraordinary mind, brilliant sense of humour and extreme wit will be missed. Sir, May you keep flying like superman in microgravity, as you said to astronauts on Space Station in 2014.