Stephen Hawking

1942 – 2018

Some of New Zealand’s leading minds in physics have remembered Stephen Hawking as a brilliant man with a great sense of humour.

The physicist and author of A Brief History of Time died peacefully at his home in Cambridge yesterday.

University of Auckland head of physics Richard Easther said he had met Hawking for lunch a few times.

“In that sense he is a normal person, except he is not, he’s Hawking.”

Conversing with Hawking was an interesting experience — often Easther and other physicists would be talking shop and Hawking would chime in on something that had been said a minute or so ago, “pingponging” the conversation back.

“I knew him as a colleague. He was brilliant and was one of the top scientists in the 20th Century.”

University of Canterbury Distinguished Professor Roy Kerr said Hawking was “an incredible strength of spirit and character”.

Kerr first met the degenerative motor neuron disease sufferer when Hawking was 25.

“He was given only a few more years to live . . . Fifty years later he was still working with help and retained his quirky sense of humour.”

University of Otago physics professor David Hutchinson also spoke of Hawking’s “interesting sense of humour”.

“It was a single word answer like ‘no’ then there was a pause then he would say ‘ just kidding’.”

— Ryan Dunlop

Scientist and least-read bestselling author A18-19