Stephen Hawking

(1942 – 2018)



imprisoned in his wheelchair, the body shackled by motor-neurone disease, his intellect perched on wings, always flying free.


A failing body never allowed to be a hurdle, as the mind posited theories of astrophysics no one else was able to see.


The vastness of his spirit forging ahead, a mind bound not by gravity,


Professor Stephen Hawking roamed the vast inter-galactic sea.


Black holes and the curvature of space-time, grand hypotheses calculated, before a cup of afternoon tea,


his words not of conceit, but of standing on the shoulders of giants, a testament to a generous humility,


the world has lost a scientist, a curious mind ever flowing, always remaining true to the need of rigorous proof, a physicist who has rendered all words of praise and superlatives empty,

such was the power of his intellectual heights, of a giant,


as we mourn his passing,

as we acknowledge the falling of a titanic, towering tree.






(inspired by the words of Dr. Carl Sagan, and many other scientists and biographers)