When someone who has had a large influence on you and been a big part of your life dies, it creates a vacuum. The hardest part about losing someone is often times the fact that the world somehow seems to go on, even though to you they were integral to reality. Today the scientific community and the whole world are feeling something to that effect.
Early on Wednesday morning, Stephen William Hawking, world famous visionary physicist, passed away at his family home in Cambridge at the age of 76. Hawking made countless intellectual achievements: co-discovering the fact that black holes emit radiation, proving the existence of singularities, being the first person to give correct calculations suggesting how the universe may have grown, helping to create one of the most widely accepted models of the universe in its original state. I couldn’t explain you to anything Hawking said scientifically, but I can respect any man whose achievements and name are known worldwide.
Beyond that, Hawking is best known for his battle with slow onset Motor Neurone Disease, which slowly paralyzed him over the course of decades. When Hawking was diagnosed in 1961 he was given two years to live: he lived for fifty-seven. He never let his disability, as immense as it was, slow him down. He wrote books, gave talks and continued to make immense contributions to the scientific community till the very end.
Everyone at Fyling Hall wishes that Mr. Hawking rests in peace.
Damilare Williams-Shires