The End of an Era

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

• Albert Einstein

The 14th of march marks the birth anniversary of the legendary physicist Albert Einstein. Stephen Hawking leaving us on this very day is quite symbolic and coincidental. We know Stephen hawking not only as a physicist, but also as a man who really went to the next level to unravel the mysteries of nature.

Not only did his work in theoretical physics and cosmology change our way of looking at the universe, but the way he lived his life changed our mindset of looking towards our lives as well. He put forward the concept of radiation emitted by a blackhole, now known as the Hawking radiation.

We all know him as the author of the best-selling book ‘A brief history of time’. An interesting fact about this book is that it’s earlier drafts contained a lot of equations and mathematical formulations, but the editor forced him to remove those equations as to make the book more appealing to the masses. After this, hawking kept only one equation in the final draft, which was the ‘E=mc^2’!!

Hawking also held the position of ‘Lucasian professor’ at the Cambridge University, earlier held by giants like Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, Paul Dirac and others. As Carl Sagan noted, he was truly the rightful successor of these great men.

Mankind will never forget such a great physicist and will be indebted to him till the end of time.