The author and physicist, one of the most important thinkers of the last century, was praised by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Steve Wozniak and others following his passing on Monday.
Stephen Hawking clearly made a huge impact on the world of Apple- and not only because of all those years of jokes about how the revolutionary system he used to speak sounded a lot like an early Macintosh.
Cook praised the late Hawking on Twitter Tuesday morning, stating that "we will always be inspired by his life and ideas."
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking. We will always be inspired by his life and ideas. RIP.
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 14, 2018
Apple's cofounder, Steve Wozniak- who recently joined Hawking in signing a letter opposing the development of artificially intelligent weapons- said that "Stephen Hawking's integrity and scientific dedication placed him above pure brilliance," according to the BBC.
Hawking's work interfaced with Apple's various times over the years. Hawking would end up using Swiftkey software, an app that's available in iOS, for one of the later editions of his speak-to-text set-up.
He even released his own app, called Stephen Hawking's Pocket Universe, which arrived in 2016 and was meant, according to Hawking at the time, to "highlight the excitement of new discoveries, and to offer an understanding of the new picture of reality that is emerging as a result."