Oddly, this news struck me harder than other recent deaths of celebrity musicians that I was huge fans of. I guess Professor Hawking always had that aura of timelessness around him, and everyone just knew he was doing important work that would change humanity's understanding of the universe and our place in it.
It seems somehow unfair to have him taken away in the middle of all that.
EDIT: Fond memories of walking around Cambridge University two decades ago with my cousin, and she casually pointed to a building and said "Oh, Stephen Hawking works in there". Seemed so mundane to think that such important works were going on in some nondescript building that I just happened to be walking past. I always envisaged him working on a totally different plane from the rest of us mere peons.
It seems somehow unfair to have him taken away in the middle of all that.
EDIT: Fond memories of walking around Cambridge University two decades ago with my cousin, and she casually pointed to a building and said "Oh, Stephen Hawking works in there". Seemed so mundane to think that such important works were going on in some nondescript building that I just happened to be walking past. I always envisaged him working on a totally different plane from the rest of us mere peons.