Stephen Hawking: groundbreaking theoretical physicist, author, cosmologist — and "academic grandfather" to an assistant professor of mathematics at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Hari Kunduri studied for his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2002, under Hawking who was a professor there. Another Hawking student — British physicist Malcolm Perry — was Kunduri's own supervisor
'He had a lot of brevity and clarity in his speech that translated into the way he wrote papers, his science, as well.' - Hari Kunduri
"Since Hawking was part of group, he was always there at seminars," he told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show..
"He was a very accessible person — he tried to be. Obviously, there's a huge gap … even [without] his other condition, difficulty in speaking, there would still be a big gap because he's a famous, hugely famous successful scientist, so there's always a feeling of nervousness.
"But he would hang out at lunch, he'd crack jokes and things. He was a relaxed sort of person. He'd invite people over for Christmas at his house and so on."
Last year, Hawking had people over to his house to celebrate his 75th birthday.
'Just get the hell out of there'
"Around 10 o'clock, he said, 'Thank you for coming,' and that was his signal to tell us to just get the hell out of there," said Kunduri, laughing.
"That was his message. Of course he's tired by then, he has all these guests over. He had to speak very briefly. He had a lot of brevity and clarity in his speech that also translated into the way he wrote papers, his science, as well."
The renowned physicist is being remembered by a Memorial University professor as an accessible man despite being a hugely famous and successful scientist. (Yonathan Weitzman/Reuters)
Kunduri said Hawking was significant on many levels — chief among them, his work.
"Regardless of everything else, his issues that he had that he's probably more famous for, his attitude and personality and his impairments, his work is top, first class, so that's very inspiring. A lot of the work I do is based on maybe one little thing of something that he did."
The Big Bang and black holes
For Kunduri's money, Hawking's three biggest accomplishments were in advancing the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe, constructing a mathematical model for black holes — "That's kind of what I work on, more or less," said Kunduri — and then combining ideas from quantum mechanics and general relativity to show that black holes aren't really black.
"That particular result is the one that transcends just his area of physics, general relativity, and moves into other areas of physics, so that's been something which has attracted so much interest from people outside of this specialized area," he said.
