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Stephen Hawking has died
181–190 of 468 posts
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#182A man with truly inspiring perspectives... of the cosmos and of the self.
"In fact, my disability has been a help in a way, it has freed me from teaching or sitting on boring committees and given me more time to think and do research. Theoretical physics is one of the few fields in which being disabled is no handicap — it is all in the mind." -Stephen Hawking
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#183Wasn't he still working on physics? If so, I prefer the terminology of Erdős, he hasn't died, he has merely left.
He absolutely was. Personally I think one of the saddest things about this is that Susskind has lost his greatest (friendly) intellectual rival. Those two spending years arguing with each other over the information paradox was absolutely fantastic. (And personally I’ve always felt that Hawking was the perfect counter weight to how strongly opinionated Susskind is)
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#184As a kid my first introduction to Hawking was on a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. This deserves a black bar. This man I’m sure inspired almost everyone here in some way. Odd to think he’s dead. I thought he’d live forever...
>> I thought he’d live forever...
In one of his universes, he does.
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#185Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so…
Unfortunately these questions will keep haunting mankind ..always ..every time! Golden words by Hawking... May his soul Rest In Peace
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#186What does aging feel like for someone who can't feel their body?
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#187As a kid my first introduction to Hawking was on a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. This deserves a black bar. This man I’m sure inspired almost everyone here in some way. Odd to think he’s dead. I thought he’d live forever...
Not my first introduction to him, but it was great to see him there. Despite being soft sci-fi, Star Trek - TNG in particular - was always a show about wonders of science at heart.
Incidentally, Stephen Hawking was the only person to play himself in Star Trek.
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#188His book, A Bried History of Time have made a huge impact among people like me to fall in love with Physics.
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#189[deleted]
Re: Stephen Hawking has died
#190Growing up in the middle of nowhere, Canada in the 1980s, the library didn't have many good science books. When Hawking's book got published, it was the only thing available like that anywhere around. Remember, this is before you could get any book in existence within one month via Amazon. There was no Amazon.
I got A Brief History of Time and read it, and it's almost cliche to say so, but it changed the course of my life. It's not the only book that affected me, but it was pivotal. George Gamow's little book also was available, and some good Asimov stuff, but otherwise nothing really.
So I went to university in the big city (Saskatoon!) and studied physics, and they had a whole library of physics books! You'd think it was like heaven, but a lot of those books were crap or hard to read. Hawking showed how one can aim for a book that's interesting-and-good and actually achieve it. A few others managed to do the same. There are probably 20 actually-good and readable physics books in the whole world, and his books are a few of them.