A potentially super-offensive question about Hawking.

[King Author]

I can't think of any way to make this sound not horrible and inappropriate, so I'll just ask it straight-up. Is any significant amount of the praise the scientific community lavishes upon Stephen Hawking because he's physically disabled?

I ask because I was thinking recently; Albert Einstein's work underlies almost all modern electronics of every kind. Without his work (which probably only a handful of people in history have understood 100% and which perhaps nobody else but him could've ever conceived of in the first place), we wouldn't have GPS, modern satellites, cell phones, probably hundreds of obscure industrial mechnisms that I can't name off the top of my head and all the many products they produce. Einstein's work literally and utterly shaped the world.

Now, I've no doubt that Stephen Hawking is very smart, but is he really one of the most important minds alive today? Because I can't really think of anything he's done that's impacted anything other than the upper echelons of the community of theoretical physicists. The two main things Wikipedia credits to him is working with singularities (which, tellingly, we still don't really understand at all), and discovering Hawking radiation (which, again, the jury's out on). And even if those are impressive feats on their own, have they really changed anything, even the way theoretical physicists think?

Don't get me wrong, please -- I'm not saying Hawking isn't important or shouldn't be as praised as he is; I'm not saying anything. I'm just asking if maybe the reason he's a household name is due more to his disability than his accomplishments. Like, the average person (myself included) sorta mentally pats themselves on the back for respecting Hawking, since he's so severely physically disabled. It makes Joe Anybody feel like a good person to look up to him and compliment him.

It's just a purely curious question.

[gorcee]

So, in other words, do we handicap his accomplishments because he's handicapped? That's a fair question.

I think the answer is no, but with a caveat. Hawking is a brilliant individual, and you need to weigh his accomplishments with respect to the science of his time. Einstein did a lot of stuff, no doubt. He was huge, and he discovered great and myriad properties of the universe.

Einstein, however, also lived at a time when these things were able to be discovered.

Because Einstein and other great physicists of his time helped us move so far forward, continuing progress is harder. There are no "easy" problems to solve. Or, more appropriately, there are no easy solutions to be found. Hawking, in his regard, made some decently large advancements in an era when those were difficult. Hawking, furthermore, has a gift of communication that allows people to relate to the concepts.

What makes Hawking impressive is that he is more or less on equal footing with his contemporaries. His contemporaries, however, can write things down on a blackboard or piece of paper. They can easy discuss and argue ideas with colleagues. All of this is more difficult for Hawking.

So, what's most impressive about Hawking isn't just what he did, but how much more difficult it has been for him to do those things. So his disability has earned him some extra credit, perhaps, but not undue credit.

[SU3SU2U1]

Hawking is a household name not because of his scientific accomplishments, but because of his popular books. A Brief History of Time made some waves upon its release. Best selling authors tend to be well known.

The same is also true of Michio Kaku.

[eSOANEM]

I remember a horizon documentary a while ago which was broadly about Hawking's work and they said that that his latest paper (which as I recall was about the black hole information paradox and said it was solved by summing over all histories including those where the black hole doesn't exist) was widely criticised for a lack of substance and being purely conceptual.

So I don't think the scientific community does give him a more forgiving ear than it does any other physicist with at least one fairly significant prediction to their name (and Hawking radiation is a fairly significant prediction as it shows that black holes have finite rather than infinite entropy which is a good thing).

That doesn't say anything about why he is a household name though and I suspect that his disability does play a part in that.

[Copper Bezel]

Hawking is a household name not because of his scientific accomplishments, but because of his popular books. A Brief History of Time made some waves upon its release. Best selling authors tend to be well known.

The same is also true of Michio Kaku.

Yeah, he has that role as a "science popularizer" that has a huge effect on the general public's awareness of him. There are a few people who seem to have split Carl Sagan's "only scientist the guy on the street can name" role. Neil deGrasse Tyson's getting there, and his day job credentials are more as an educator than as a theorist, aren't they?

For Einstein - well, history is fickle. He wasn't the only one discovering really amazing things at the time. People don't sarcastically use Bohr's name in vain.

[cphite]

I can't think of any way to make this sound not horrible and inappropriate, so I'll just ask it straight-up. Is any significant amount of the praise the scientific community lavishes upon Stephen Hawking because he's physically disabled?

I ask because I was thinking recently; Albert Einstein's work underlies almost all modern electronics of every kind. Without his work (which probably only a handful of people in history have understood 100% and which perhaps nobody else but him could've ever conceived of in the first place), we wouldn't have GPS, modern satellites, cell phones, probably hundreds of obscure industrial mechnisms that I can't name off the top of my head and all the many products they produce. Einstein's work literally and utterly shaped the world.

Now, I've no doubt that Stephen Hawking is very smart, but is he really one of the most important minds alive today? Because I can't really think of anything he's done that's impacted anything other than the upper echelons of the community of theoretical physicists. The two main things Wikipedia credits to him is working with singularities (which, tellingly, we still don't really understand at all), and discovering Hawking radiation (which, again, the jury's out on). And even if those are impressive feats on their own, have they really changed anything, even the way theoretical physicists think?

Don't get me wrong, please -- I'm not saying Hawking isn't important or shouldn't be as praised as he is; I'm not saying anything. I'm just asking if maybe the reason he's a household name is due more to his disability than his accomplishments. Like, the average person (myself included) sorta mentally pats themselves on the back for respecting Hawking, since he's so severely physically disabled. It makes Joe Anybody feel like a good person to look up to him and compliment him.

It's just a purely curious question.

I don't doubt that there is at least some of that... he's a unique figure, and a lot of people are impressed (and rightly so!) by what he has to overcome just to do his thing. Most people have trouble following the stuff he's working out when they can write it out - he's doing it in his head.

But I think a much larger reason for his popularity is simply that he's tended to focus his career on the public. He writes books that are accessible to a mainstream audience, and so his name is simply out there more. Carl Sagan, Brian Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Michio Kaku are other examples of this.

===

[gmalivuk]

Carl Sagan, Brian Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Michio Kaku are other examples of this.

I'd say Hawking is probably more well-known and well-regarded among laypeople than most other popularizers due to his disability, because it does make him a more impressive figure in most people's minds than an able-bodied person who wrote the same stuff would be. However, I think where the OP goes wrong is in assuming that the scientific community mirrors the general public in the level of praise they "lavish upon" people.

[EdgarJPublius]

It is a fundamental misconception that just because physics pioneered fifty years ago has practical applications now while more current physical theories do not, that the modern discoveries are less fundamental and/or less important.

It is very rare that fundamental science on the levels studied by Einstein, Hawking and their contemporaries have practical applications within their lifetimes.

In forty or fifty years, we may well see that Hawking's theories are as important to technology of the time as Einstein's theories are now.

[Idetuxs]

I couldn't find how it could be an offensive question.

So you do think he is smart and accomplish a lot but when it comes down to practice you can't see his work there, making Einstein's work more important. Well my opinion is the same as EdgarJPublius.
It's extremely important that people continue to work on theories. Hawking theories can get to practice may be in the next generation or the other one.

Take a look at history, even with maths this happened. Zeno was imagining the Achilles and the tortoise paradox , he probably didn't think it was serious stuff but he did wrote it down. Maybe the mere of thinking abstracts thoughts are important to the future. Don't know if it actually inspired Cantor to do his work or whatever but my point is that it's important if you can apply your theory now ONLY to the present. You never know.

That's on the side of theories that are not even proven right. Once they are it may take a while too to be useful other than in paper.

[mfb]

Without his work (which probably only a handful of people in history have understood 100% and which perhaps nobody else but him could've ever conceived of in the first place), we wouldn't have GPS, modern satellites, cell phones, probably hundreds of obscure industrial mechnisms that I can't name off the top of my head and all the many products they produce. Einstein's work literally and utterly shaped the world.

I think you vastly overestimate the influence of Einstein's work. While the influence of special relativity (SR) is really large, you don't need Einstein to work with this.
If not Einstein, another physicist would have come up with SR and general relativity (GR). They would have different names and use different variables, so what. Maybe it would have been a decade later, maybe even more - but it would have been discovered. Everything necessary to put these theories together was gathered, it was just a matter of time.
The same is true for the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and other stuff Einstein worked on.


In addition, it is a nice myth that you need GR for GPS. While the deviations from SR are too large to ignore, you could just measure these deviations and add additional terms in the calculations to get the same results.

[idobox]

I think that both Einstein and Hawking are extremely famous with the layman because, whatever their contribution to science is, they stand out physically. It's simple brand recognition.

Around Einstein's time, there were a bunch of great scientists, like Fermi, Bohr, Dirac and others who totally changed the way we see the world, with countless applications. Heisenberg shattered the idea of a deterministic universe (or maybe someone else even before, but you get the point). And do you have any idea what they look like?

I think the popularity of Einstein and Hawking outside the science community is akin to that of Che Guevara or Abe Lincoln: most people have a vague idea of what they did, don't care about the details, and use them as symbols because they make good posters.

[Charlie!]

It is a fundamental misconception that just because physics pioneered fifty years ago

I don't want to make you feel old, but... Hawking's most famous paper was published almost 40 years ago

[EdgarJPublius]

Well, I already feel old, but now that you mention it, Einstein's Nobel prize was more than ninety years ago now...

[doogly]

Dirac in the 70s noted that back in the 20s and 30s, it was easy for a 2nd rate physicist to do 1st rate work (for example, Schrodinger and Heisenberg were pretty easy to call 2nd rate, I would say, especially when compared to Dirac or Fermi). There has not been a similar golden age since.

Hawking is definitely in the top tier now. I work in a similar field, and his contributions and expositions shine. Also not entirely impressed with his most recent paper, but it's a nice enough effort ; ) Definitely the public latches on due to his image, but that's ever the case. Same with Einstein. If you compare him to Dirac or Fermi he is also going to fall short scientifically. Sheesh, you're being such a hardass though. Stop comparing people to Dirac or Fermi, you're just setting them up for failure.

[SU3SU2U1]

Dirac in the 70s noted that back in the 20s and 30s, it was easy for a 2nd rate physicist to do 1st rate work (for example, Schrodinger and Heisenberg were pretty easy to call 2nd rate, I would say, especially when compared to Dirac or Fermi). There has not been a similar golden age since.

I would argue that physics is too crowded now- 2nd rate physicists no longer get to do physics for a living. I've had nobel winners in particle physics tell me that they would never have been able to make it in today's environment.

[doogly]

It is like a favorite bit of apocrypha:

Apparently, there was Asst Professor X at a provincial department Y, and he was up for tenure. Professor X's advisor was a famous Japanese mathematician Z at an Ivy League school. Naturally, he was asked for a letter, which he duly sent. The letter said:

X has a very nice body of work, he proved the following interesting theorems, extended such and such results, used such and such techniques... and so on for two pages. The last sentence was: all in all, X is a very good second-rate mathematician.

The committee was mortified, but figured that the rest of the letter was so good, they should call Z, since maybe since English was not his native language... So, call they did, and the phone conversation went about the same as the letter: did this, improved that, ..., all in all a very good second-rate mathematician.

The committee then said: look, we don't understand why you say he is second-rate!!!

to which Z replied: well, I really can't understand why that would be a problem -- after all, you are a third rate department.

[LaserGuy]

Without his work (which probably only a handful of people in history have understood 100% and which perhaps nobody else but him could've ever conceived of in the first place), we wouldn't have GPS, modern satellites, cell phones, probably hundreds of obscure industrial mechnisms that I can't name off the top of my head and all the many products they produce. Einstein's work literally and utterly shaped the world.

I think you vastly overestimate the influence of Einstein's work. While the influence of special relativity (SR) is really large, you don't need Einstein to work with this. If not Einstein, another physicist would have come up with SR and general relativity (GR). They would have different names and use different variables, so what. Maybe it would have been a decade later, maybe even more - but it would have been discovered.

Probably much sooner. Most of the key results in SR were developed independently by Lorentz and Poincaré (among others) at approximately the same time as Einstein. Likewise, much of the formulation for General Relativity was developed concurrently by Einstein and Hilbert.