Stephen Hawking – Lucy Hawking talking about her father.

Posted on by Opher

Stephen Hawking had a degenerative disease –amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that wears away at nerve and muscle function over time. It affects the muscles but not the brain. While in his early twenties he was given just months to live. Most people would have curled up and died.

Here is what his daughter, Lucy Hawking had to say about him:

‘My father never gave up, he never shied away from the fight. At the age of seventy-five, completely paralysed and able to move only a few facial muscles, he still got up every day, put on a suit and went to work. He had stuff to do and was not going to let a few trivialities get in his way.’

What an inspiration that man was!

He is rightfully buried in St Paul’s Cathedral between Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Not bad!

 

Stephen Hawking – Inspiring Quotes

Posted on by Opher

Stephen Hawking is probably the most intelligent man on the planet in the last hundred years – an incredible human being who defied his medical condition and overcame adversity.

I have just read the inspiring book of his (his last) – Brief Answers to the Big Question’. It was very uplifting and enthralling. It made me very sad to think that we have lost such a great mind.

This is what he had to say about the future:

‘We stand at the threshold of important discoveries in all areas of science. Without doubt, our world will change enormously in the next fifty years. We will find out what happened at the Big Bang. We will come to understand how life began on Earth. We may even discover whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. While the chances of communicating with an intelligent extra-terrestrial species may be slim, the importance of such a discovery means we must not give up trying. We will continue to explore our cosmic habitat, sending robots and humans into space. We cannot continue to look inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Through scientific endeavour and technological innovation, we must look outwards to the wider universe, while also striving to fix the problems on Earth.  And I am optimistic that we will ultimately create viable habitats for the human race on other planets. We will transcend the Earth and learn to exist in space.

This is not the end of the story, but just the beginning of what I hope will be billions of years of life flourishing in the cosmos.’

Stephen Hawking Quotes – A tribute to the man who has now disappeared into his own black hole.

Posted on by Opher

Stephen Hawking – probably the greatest mind of the last fifty years – right up there with Einstein and Newton – has just fallen into his own black hole. The Hawking radiation of his life will continue to radiate from that black hole for centuries to come.

Here’s a few quotes that I can relate to.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.
“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,” Hawking told German paper Der Spiegel in 1988. He often spoke about space exploration and the extent of human potential.

On religion

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason,” Hawking told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in 2010. “Science will win, because it works.” But his work wasn’t all dry rationality. “Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion,” he told PARADE magazine in 2010.

On the reason the universe exits

“If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God,” he wrote in his 1988 bestseller ‘A Brief History of Time’.

On finding alien life

“Primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth,” he said at an event honoring the 50th anniversary of NASA at George Washington University in 2008.

On climate change

I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet,” he said in an interview with The Telegraph in 2011. “But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.” In recent years, Hawking spoke and wrote about the dangers posed by climate change and the frailties of planet Earth.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.