MARCH 26, 2018 • 15
var.st/science
“To have been on the leading edge of physics with such a disease over so many decades has to be one of the greatest triumphs of human will in the history of humankind. His life was a celebration of human spirit.” — Dr. J. Richard Bond, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
“Always he insisted [that] mankind stop its pursuit of insane weaponry, hinting that our imaginations had become paralyzed. He will be remembered for centuries.” — Dr. John Polanyi, Nobel Chemistry laureate, Department of Chemistry
“Stephen was a brilliant mind, a phenomenal researcher, a truly extraordinary scientist. He also had a magnificent sense of humour. For example, he once famously drove over Prince Charles’s foot while showing him some wheelchair tricks. Don’t refer to Stephen as “wheelchair bound” or “suffering from” ALS/ motor neurone disease or other pity-based words to describe disability. His wheelchair and robot voice system didn’t constrain him – instead, they liberated him.” — Dr. AW Peet, Department of Physics
“I think Stephen Hawking will be remembered with the likes of Newton [and] Einstein, people that revolutionised their fields and dedicated their lives to understanding the world around us. Much of [today’s] research on topics such as black holes is directly building on Hawking’s contribution to science.” — Matt Young, PhD student, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics
“The sheer magnitude of his accomplishments in the field was astounding, entirely irrespective of the difficulties of his daily life... In the history of science, [his] academic achievements have been matched by few... He will be missed, but his legacy will live on.” — Patrick Fraser, Physics and Philosophy specialist student
“His death caught me off guard. I never really expected him to die. Much like the Queen, I saw him as a staple of culture that just ‘exists.’” — Daniel Wardzinski, Computer Science major, Mathematics and Philosophy double minor student
“He showed me that success comes from how you think and not what people think of you. I guess a lot of people measure how successful they are by how people look at them, but Hawking didn’t care about that.” — Jenoshan Sivakumar, Astrophysics specialist student
“His collaborations with his daughter Lucy Hawking to write children’s books on space and science were incredibly influential on my childhood. They played a part in why I decided to learn physics.” — Abhinav Bhargava, Physics and Philosophy specialist student “Great scientists are rare, and great explainers are possibly even rarer. But in [A Brief History of Time], Stephen Hawking wrote about complicated concepts so well that they seemed almost intuitive.” — Cameron Davies, Mathematics specialist, Ethics, Society, and Law major student
“Dr. Hawking was a genius and a pioneer in physics, but what was most inspiring about him was his pursuit of passion and of life in the face of adversity.” — Hansen Jiang, Astrophysics specialist, Computer Science minor student
“It’s safe to say that Stephen Hawking is half the reason we’re here. He inspired an entire generation to look to the stars and imagine the unimaginable. To say he’ll be missed would be a drastic understatement.” — U of T Astronomy & Space Exploration Society
John Polanyi is pictured directly beside Stephen Hawking, who delivered a lecture at U of T in 1998. COURTESY OF JOHN POLANYI