As a professional physicist, I found a Brief History of Time hard to understand. The parts where he is lowering electromagnetic cavities to the black hole’s event horizon were not written for the faint of heart. In my opinion, Kip Thorne does a much better job of writing a science book for the interested layman. Brian Greene and Neil de Grasse Tyson are also excellent. Hawking is brilliant, no question about it, but there are dozens of equal or greater brilliance, but lesser fame. Part of this is the public appeal of Hawking’s subject matter, black holes, but how many have ever heard of Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, or John Archibald Wheeler? ALS surely has something to do with his fame, but he deserves every bit of fame he gets.
I am not a physicist IANAP, but I studied it in high school and took some astronomy in college. I had heard of Hawking as an undergrad back in the early 80s. I had heard of Feynman from my Dad (who taught HS physics) but never heard about the bongos until now. I was also aware that Feynman was a great popularizer of physics and quantum mechanics.
I’ve read Hawking’s Brief History of Time, and didn’t find it especially interesting. I do find that he has lived for decades with a completely debilitating disease when everyone else with it dies within two years. I find that amazing. That he enjoys life is beyond my ken.
Wait a sec…Cecil Adams is the most brilliant man alive. It says so right here on the label. Telling me that he isn’t is like telling me that there’s no Santa Clause and that it was really my mom who put the money under my pillow when I lost a tooth. You can’t do that; it’s not fair. Moreover, if he isn’t the most brilliant man (or perhaps I should say Supreme Being) alive today, then I want all my money back from when this was a paid subscription board. And I also sincerely hope that Cecil is right now hurling lightning bolts at your house and making boulders fall from the sky. He can do that, you know. Cuz he’s Cecil. So there.
Is that the clause which states that children must be in bed by 10:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, lest they will not receive presents?
You can’t fool me, there’s no Sanity Clause.
I think you’re flat-out wrong, then. At least in popular culture, Hawking has become iconic as “the most intelligent person alive” (RNATB’s original phrase). Whether or not he actually is is irrelevant to the popular perception. He is very widely known through the combination of his actual prominence in the field of theoretical physics (especially since he works on a “sexy” topic like black holes), his popularization of science, his disability, and his artificial voice.
You can apply the “Simpsons test” for this. If someone has appeared on the Simpsons, they’re pretty well known in pop culture. And Hawking makes the grade (as did the late Stephen Jay Gould).
I can’t think of any other living person who is as widely known for their brilliance as Hawking. And that’s the question, not how brilliant they actually are.
I completely agree with this, and think that the question is an absurd one for any layman (or even physics graduate) to answer. There are relatively few people even in the general population of physicists who are qualified to render an opinion as to whether Stephen Hawking is one of the ten finest minds or whatever. Certainly, his celebrity comes from his appearance, or rather, the public persona that is displayed; in person, he is known to be cantankerous and often rude perhaps understandable given his condition and the frustrations that must come with it, but still at odds with how the general public perceives Hawking. (The same can be said of fellow celebrity physicist Richard Feynman, as seen in the volume of personal correspondence published posthumously by his daughter.) During his undergraduate days, Hawking was actually known for more his carousing than his studiousness and potential contributions to the field (although his profs recognized his native, if often unexercised ability).
As for Hawking radiation, it should be noted that physicist Jacob Bekenstein developed the essential quantum thermodynamics of black holes that underlie Hawking’s theories, and is widely considered among the physics community to have at least equal claim on the theory. (Bekenstein has gone on to do groundbreaking work in black hole thermodynamics and information theory, and is known for the eponymous bound which defines the maximum amount of information that could be stored in a black hole of given mass.) As with all modern physics, this research is an extension of work done by many before, in particular, Soviet researchers Alexandar Strabinsky and Yakov Zeldovich introduced Hawking to the concept of evaporation via virtual particle pair creation and emission in a rotating black hole.
As noted above, some physicists (and other scientists) come to considerable public fame owing on in very small part to their actual contributions and more to their ability to be an appealing public figure, where others work in public obscurity for decades. In particular, John Archibald Wheeler, mentor and science-father to almost numberless physicists working in gravitation, theoretical particle physics, and quantum mechanics, is deserving of accolades; but the typical layman, if he knows of the name at all, will have read it only in the footnotes or parenthetical references of men like Feynman or Kip Thorne.
Stranger
So you’re saying Mr. Wizard isn’t highly regarded in the scientific community? Lies!
one reason for his status among laymen is a 4 word phrase he created: understanding “the mind of God”.
Other scientists are more modest, saying they just want to understand the mysteries of the universe. But Hawkins shoots higher, so it makes him look even bigger in popular culture.
I’ll certainly grant that Hawking is deserving of his fame, but folks like Wheeler and Thorne are deserving of at least as much fame, if not more. Hawking is a great physicist, and great physicists deserve to be famous, but he’s not the greatest physicist.
OMG, what are the chances?
Colibri writes:
> I think you’re flat-out wrong, then.
Flat-out wrong? That seems to say that you have some objective evidence. An appearance on The Simpsons isn’t a piece of objective evidence. Objective evidence would be an opinion poll in which the answer to the question “Who is the smartest person alive?” would have a higher proportion of people answering, “Stephen Hawking” than “I don’t know” or any other person.
> I can’t think of any other living person who is as widely known for their brilliance
> as Hawking.
Note that this is a different question. The poll question should be “Who is the smartest person alive?”, not “Who is someone living and famous who is known for their brilliance?”. That’s an entirely different question.
He’s like Carl Sagen in the way that he brought science to and made it popular with the masses of people. He brought new interest and because of him more people know about science than would’ve.
Note that I said “I think,” not that “I have objective evidence for.” However, I would contend that an appearance on the Simpsons is certainly objective evidence that someone is well known to the general public. The Simpsons is a popular, satirical program with a broad audience. The whole point of using a figure like Hawking in the show is that a significant proportion of the audience is going to recognize who he is.
I would also note that Hawking would not have to get the highest proportion in a poll such as you suggest to be consider “widely recognized.” He would only have to be one of the top several figures.
What I said was that no one was widely regarded as the most brilliant person alive. Note: most. Not well up there in the poll, but the absolute most. If you don’t have a poll on that exact question, it doesn’t count.
Of course, you will agree then that without a poll your unsupported assertion that “no one is widely regarded as the most intelligent person alive” is worthless.
Was Carl Sagen anything other than a TV personality?
Certainly. He became a professor at Cornell right about when I was born and my father ( a physics grad student there at the time ) relates stories of attending lectures by him before rushing home to deal with my diapered rear ;).
Of course he was. Sagan was a prominent professional planetary astronomer, working first at Harvard and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and later at Cornell. (I attended some lectures by him when I went there in the early 1970s; he was noted as a brilliant speaker even then.) He was also a long term advisor to NASA. His career as a popularizer of science came later.
Dang. Probably one of my physics TA’s.