Farewell, Stephen Hawking

Such a shame Stephen Hawking has passed away. He was a brilliant and inspirational man.

When A Brief History of Time came out, I went to the Barbican Library in London, close to where I was then working, and borrowed it. I was already aware on him through a long standing interest in space flight, science fiction and cosmology – I had previously enjoyed Carl Sagan’s book (and tv series) Cosmos amongst many others, and had spent many hours in various bars debating what the future may hold in those areas with friends and colleagues – so felt it would be a good book to read. I got maybe a third of the way through it and gave it up, with a splitting headache. Thirty years on, older and perhaps a little wiser and certainly even more open minded, perhaps I should give it another go…..

But Hawking’s appeal spanned far more than the brilliance of his thinking and his science – as inspirational as that undoubtedly was. Here was a man, struck down at a young age by a dreadfully debilitating and incurable disease, given just months to live, still battling on years later in defiance of all medical reason. Confined to a wheelchair, communicating only by that voice box device (and the twinkle in his eyes….) he was still pushing the boundaries of human thought in his chosen field 50 years later.

And finding time to appear in The Simpsons, for goodness sake – I haven’t seen the episode in question and only became aware of it in his BBC obituary today, but I must YouTube it. The idea of him arguing with Homer about the shape of the universe (donut or not?) strikes me as being quite brilliant. Ditto appearances in The Big Bang Theory and Red Dwarf, two more classic psuedo-science comedy shows. They bear out the many tributes that have referenced his sense of humour, armed with some very funny quotations.

As if that wasn’t enough, he guested as vocalist on Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell album on the track Keep Talking – more self-deprecating humour methinks? And a fine piece of music – I don’t have the album but it’s in my Library courtesy of the Echoes – Greatest Hits compilation and I listen to it a lot – a favourite track from an all-time favourite band.

I watched the movie biography that came out a few years ago – The Theory of Everything, for which Eddie Redmayne received a well deserved Oscar in 2014 – and enjoyed it immensely. As a portrait of an ordinary (if brilliant) man coping with the most extraordinary circumstances in life, it is to this writer a moving tribute to Hawking, and should serve as an inspiration to everyone.

I’m lucky in that I remain quite fit and healthy in my mid 60s, and thank God I have never suffered or had to face anything remotely as serious as Hawking faced at the age of 22 and coped with in good humour and brilliant achievement for another 50 plus years, but I am truly humbled by the man. We all have ambitions, and often fail to achieve them out of pure laziness and lack of will-power – I know that I am very guilty of that. Few men are blessed with Hawking’s brilliant intellect or spirit and sheer love of life, and the world is a poorer place for his loss.

And a lot dumber too.

RIP Mr. Hawking, and thank you for your life and inspiration.