Stephen Hawking, World renown Physicist passed away this morning at the age of 76. His death has sent social media tribute ripples around the world. Karen Kennedy-Allin, Teacher of Physics and Biology, Weyburn Comprehensive School, said Hawking has had a big impact on her life and on the science curriculum in the school.

"Stephen Hawking was a huge name in physics and he definitely influenced me on my path to becoming a physics teacher. He wrote a book in the 80's called A Brief History in Time."

The book talked about Space and time, the expanding universe, Black holes and how Time isn't a constant throughout the whole universe.

"Stephen Hawking really tried to find a 'Theory of Everything' and that was one of his main focus. The influence of that is as we were trying to write the new physics curriculum which started over five years ago, we really wanted to bring Theoretical physics to the forefront fo the Physics 30 curriculum and a lot of that started with Stephen Hawking and how he brought these physics concepts to the general public with the book the brief history of time. Then he rewrote it to make it even more acceptable to the general public and he called it 'A Briefer History of Time. Basically, he was told that for every equation he had in the book, he would lose thousands of people who would buy read the book. So he only had one equation in the book and it was E=MC2, the most famous physics equation of them all."

Kennedy-Allin said that theoretical physics is anything that has happened, basically, in the last 100 years in physics. 

"It's basically things like Cosmology, Quantum Gravity, String Theory, Relativity, Einstein's Relativity is a  big part of theoretical physics. Planks Constant which has to do with every piece of electronics that we have had ever since they were invented. If you use anything electronic you are using theoretical physics because we know what is happening at the quantum level but we cannot explain why." 

"I offer my students to read A Brief History of Time or A Briefer History of Time and they can do that as one of their student directed studies if they would like to. Years ago I remember offering that project and even our Brett Jones read Stephen Hawking's book and did a book report and a little presentation on A Brief History of Time."

Kennedy-Allin recognises the big impact Hawking had on popular culture as well.

"Without Stephen Hawking having brought physics to the general public, a show like 'The Big Bang Theory, wouldn't be possible."

Kennedy Allin says to have lived in the same time as Hawking is quite an honour and talks about him on a regular basis. She adds that she will be talking about Hawking today in school to honour the man and give students the opportunity to yet again read his book and say if anyone has an interest in theoretical physics then read his books for sure.

Hawking was diagnosed in his 20's with ALS commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He was not supposed to live for long but lived for over 50 years with the condition.