“I just hope we can avoid dropping the basket until then.” “In the long run the human race should not have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet,” Hawking said in 2008. Hawking had hoped to leave Earth's atmosphere altogether someday, a trip he often recommended to the rest of the planet's inhabitants. It certainly did little to dampen his ambition to physically experience space himself: Hawking savored small bursts of weightlessness in 2007 when he was flown aboard a jet that made repeated dives to simulate zero-gravity. Richard Green, of the Motor Neurone Disease Association - the British name for ALS - said Hawking met the classic definition of the disease, as “the perfect mind trapped in an imperfect body.” He said Hawking had been an inspiration to people with the disease for many years.Īlthough it could take him minutes to compose answers to even simple questions Hawking said the disability did not impair his work. His achievements and his longevity helped prove to many that even the most severe disabilities need not stop patients from living. Some colleagues credited that celebrity with generating new enthusiasm for science. The film focused still more attention on Hawking's remarkable achievements. His early life was chronicled in the 2014 film “The Theory of Everything,” with Eddie Redmayne winning the best actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the scientist. He made cameo television appearances in “The Simpsons” and “Star Trek” and counted among his fans U2 guitarist The Edge, who attended a January 2002 celebration of Hawking's 60th birthday. The combination of his best-selling book and his almost total disability - for a while he could use a few fingers, later he could only tighten the muscles on his face - made him one of science's most recognizable faces. “I don't know an operational way to give the question or the answer, if there is one, a meaning. “But one can't help asking the question: Why does the universe exist?” he said in 1991.

Hawking said belief in a God who intervenes in the universe “to make sure the good guys win or get rewarded in the next life” was wishful thinking. President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in August 2009.

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