“Finally, a question about something important,” he said. Hawking even hilariously weighed in on the cosmological effect of Zayn Malik leaving the boy band One Direction in 2015. Still, he never lost his trademark sense of humor. The crippling disease eventually left him confined to a chair with limited mobility and an automated voice box as his only means of verbal communication. Indeed, he had endured his own share of tragedy early in life, having first been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) as a 21-year-old cosmology student at the University of Cambridge.

'Life would be tragic if it weren't funny,' the scientist, who followed in Sir Isaac Newton's footsteps to secure the title of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, told the New York Times in 2004. While scientists aren't typically known for their humor, Hawking made science a laughing matter.

Just as he made complex subjects like quantum physics and the mechanics of black holes more accessible to the more than 10 million readers who bought his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, he succeeded with his big and small screen appearances just by being down to earth. The entire purpose of Star Trek was to predict what the future of humankind would be like, and the writers obviously thought that Stephen Hawking's work would live on well into the 24th century.Giving new meaning to the term popular science, renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, who died in March 2018, earned his rightful place in the pop culture universe by both making cameos in and inspiring various television shows, movies and music. Hawking had been mentioned in passing in TNG, season 4, episode 23, 'The Host', when it was revealed that one of the Enterprise's shuttlecrafts was named Hawking, but his physical appearance finally sealed it. Placing him alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein was no coincidence, and the writers of the series used his cameo as a way to reaffirm the importance of his life's work. The entire Star Trek timeline was filled with opportunities to introduce 'historical' figures into the canon, and 'Descent' was Hawking's official entrance. Besides being a wonderful piece of fan service, Hawking's appearance in TNG also firmly established him in the canon of the franchise. Although figures like Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain were obviously known, late-20th century icons were usually absent because of the complicated timeline of Star Trek's past. References to real-life historical events in Star Trek have often been scant, and it was never made clear what parts of human history exist within the universe of the franchise.

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