There are great thinkers whose lives dot the pages of world history, where modern-day scholars and students alike still wonder at their words and works. Di Vinci was one, Confucius another. And in the past century, we were blessed to have two others — Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
Wheelchair-borne for five decades of his seven on this earthy realm, Hawking was a genius. While the vast majority of us would never contemplate such theories as the reason why our vast universe exists and the very nature of it in the equations and theories of pure physics, for Hawking, that was as common as cornflakes.
Hawking was a master communicator — and given his condition of motor neurone disease that cruelly trapped his deteriorating body in the confines of a wheelchair — typing any and every word was a victory in itself. They were words that thinkers thought long and hard over.
For the rest of us mere mortals, he translated complex and profound theories of physics into pop fiction, and his 1988 book A Brief History of Time allowed the latest concepts in astrophysics to become a dinnertime conversation piece.
But Hawking was far more than a Cambridge professor with a thesis on the vast universe beyond our blue planet we share on its trip around the sun. He was an inspiration to all of us too, providing pure genius on the relevance of us all, on our common purpose, on what should unite us.
After his passing, his family shared one of Hawking’s quotes. “It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.” He is missed already.
