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WASHINGTON, March 14-- Scientists around the world have mourned the passing of and given high accolades to Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who revealed some secrets of the origin of the universe in his rather difficult lifetime stricken by deadly disease. American space agency NASA praised Hawking who died in the early hours of Wednesday "a renowned physicist and ambassador of science," whose "theories unlocked a universe of possibilities that we and the world are exploring." He "showed us there are no limits to achieving our dreams," European Space Agency said in its twitter account, praising the man who suffered amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and lost his ability to write down math equations, but worked with incredible determination to make great accomplishments in cosmology. Christopher Shaw, a neuroscientist at King's College London called Hawking "an outliers outlier, both in terms of his extraordinary contribution to science and the time he survived with motor neuron disease." "Stephen Hawking overcame unimaginable challenges to become one of the most influential and renowned scientists of our time. His life is a testament to the power of human creativity and imagination," said Venki Ramakrishnan, President of Britain's Royal Society. Hawking, known for his work with black holes and relativity, had sought "new links between the very large (the cosmos) and the very small (atoms and quantum theory) and to gain deeper insights into the very beginning of our universe," according to Hawking's colleague Martin Rees, an astronomer with the University of Cambridge. | 
