Dr. Stephen Hawking is now no longer with us. I would normally qualify this as sad news, but I'm actually hoping that he's in a much better place where he doesn't have to suffer any longer, nor watch the Human species he so often chastised suffer either.
Stephen Hawking will be remembered for many things, one of which is as a brilliant theoretical physicist, which is what I'd rather focus on. His
Hawking radiation formula accurately predicts the decay/evaporation of black holes (specifically, the entropic principles thereof). The
Penrose-Hawking theorems are also very important
mathematical tools.
He authored the book (as well as many
others),
A Brief History of Time, which became a bestseller for a record number of weeks, and introduced a new generation (myself included) of tinkerers to concepts of quanta, cosmology, and the like.
The world owes a great deal to his humanity - disagreements about its course of direction aside, as we had no choice but to look at him as nothing more than a triumph.
You are appreciated.
