The QuoTes
Genius told he had only two years to live in 1963 dies at the age of 76
“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.”
“Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”
“What is your IQ? No idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.”
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and about what makes the universe exist. be curious. and however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.” THE world yesterday celebrated the life and achievements of Britain’s greatest scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking.
The legendary physicist died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of yesterday morning.
Friends said he had been declining physically for some time and had been receiving palliative care since the start of the year.
Hawking defied the odds to survive to 76 after being struck down with motor neurone disease in 1963 and given just two years to live.
And he defied the physical limitations of his condition – which left him in a wheelchair and reliant on a voice synthesiser to communicate – to build an incredible scientific legacy.
Twice-divorced Hawking leaves three children and three grandchildren.
His children Lucy, 47, Robert, 50, and Tim, 38, said: “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.
“His courage and persistence, with his brilliance and humour, inspired people across the world.
“He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”
Eddie Redmayne, 36, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Hawking in the film The Theory of Everything, said: “We have lost a truly beautiful mind, an astonishing scientist and the funniest man I have ever had the pleasure to meet.”
Benedict Cumberbatch, 41, who played Hawking in an earlier film, said: “I feel so lucky to have known such a truly great man…”
Former US president Barack Obama wrote: “Have fun out there among the stars.”
Hawking refused to be limited by his disability and once wrote: “In my dreams I’m always able-bodied. Either I don’t want to admit to myself I’m disabled or I feel that by will alone, I can overcome it.”
Judith Croasdell, 69, who worked as Hawking’s personal assistant for 10 years, outlined his view on death. She said: “Stephen felt the human mind was just like a computer and that some day the computer would be turned off.
“He told me he never regarded himself as disabled because he was free and liberated by his thoughts.”
Judith nicknamed the scientist “The Hawk” or “Old Rogue” and described him as a mischievous joker. She added: “He could be a naughty fellow and was a fighter – gung-ho in everything he did.
“But he was also very devoted to his grandchildren. He was thrilled he had three and that’s a side of him most people never saw.”
As a youngster, Hawking enjoyed riding and rowing. But as he began his post-graduate studies in cosmology at Cambridge in his 20s, he was given the devastating diagnosis of MND.
By the late 70s, he was confined to a wheelchair, with only family members able to understand his speech.
Scientific advances allowed him to communicate through a voice synthesiser, first controlled with his fingers, and then with blinks and facial twitches.
But friends say in recent years communication became so slow that several sentences would take 30 minutes to translate.
Despite this, he became the world’s most famous scientist since Albert Einstein.
He developed a theory of cosmology as a union of relativity and quantum mechanics, and discovered black holes leak