R.I.P. Stephen Hawking

HughFreakingDillon

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

brianlux said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

DewieCox said:

Amazing what he did on the face of such adversity. Massive respect for his impact and influence, though I gather he’s not as revered within his field. 

he's not?

I've heard that also.  Not sure it's true or not though. In any case, he tenacity will never be denied.  I can't imagine going as long as he did with ALS.  Pretty amazing.

this shocks me. he is, what I thought, universally considered one of the most intelligent men in our lifetime, our Einstein. how is he not revered within his field?

I feel like it's just about attitude, not his actual work or knowledge or genius. I've always have the impression that some of his peers kind of resented him for being such a public, well-known figure in the field who tended to simplify things for the sake of the general public's understanding.

I was wondering if that's what it was. they all were jealous he was on the Simpsons. LOL

PJ_Soul

HughFreakingDillon said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

brianlux said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

DewieCox said:

Amazing what he did on the face of such adversity. Massive respect for his impact and influence, though I gather he’s not as revered within his field. 

he's not?

I've heard that also.  Not sure it's true or not though. In any case, he tenacity will never be denied.  I can't imagine going as long as he did with ALS.  Pretty amazing.

this shocks me. he is, what I thought, universally considered one of the most intelligent men in our lifetime, our Einstein. how is he not revered within his field?

I feel like it's just about attitude, not his actual work or knowledge or genius. I've always have the impression that some of his peers kind of resented him for being such a public, well-known figure in the field who tended to simplify things for the sake of the general public's understanding.

I was wondering if that's what it was. they all were jealous he was on the Simpsons. LOL

Lol, yeah, I think so! Basically, it's scientific snobbery at work, lol, along with envy. They should all be thanking him though. Few are able to bring such topics into the public eye and inspire interest amongst the normals like Hawking did.

tempo_n_groove

First Craig Mac now Steven Hawking.  That's horrible.

mca47

Brilliant man.  Sad indeed.

lastexitlondon

He went to st.Albans boys school. I live in st.Albans . So he is very popular here

RogueStoner

How sad but inspiring...what a beautiful and determined mind can do and how long it can will an ailing body to live. R.I.P.

BIGDaddyWil

A Great Human Being!

brianlux

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

brianlux said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

DewieCox said:

Amazing what he did on the face of such adversity. Massive respect for his impact and influence, though I gather he’s not as revered within his field. 

he's not?

I've heard that also.  Not sure it's true or not though. In any case, he tenacity will never be denied.  I can't imagine going as long as he did with ALS.  Pretty amazing.

this shocks me. he is, what I thought, universally considered one of the most intelligent men in our lifetime, our Einstein. how is he not revered within his field?

I feel like it's just about attitude, not his actual work or knowledge or genius. I've always have the impression that some of his peers kind of resented him for being such a public, well-known figure in the field who tended to simplify things for the sake of the general public's understanding.

" He is, as most of us know, the greatest physicist since Einstein.

Except that he isn’t. “Rubbish,” Hawking himself responded, when I posed this proposition to him during a 1993 interview. “It’s mere media hype.” It’s undeniable that Hawking has made key contributions to both relativity and quantum physics. He came up with the insight that the Big Bang emerged from a singularity, a point so small and dense that the very laws of physics can’t describe it. He figured out what happened when black hole merge. He also came up with the startling and counter-intuitive notion that black holes can evaporate, slowly at first, then faster and faster until they explode—an idea that was at first ridiculed, but which is now mainstream. “This result,” says Bernard Carr, one of Hawking’s former PhD students, “unified relativity and quantum theory and thermodynamics.”

That would be positively mind-blowing—if true. But it’s really not: the so-called “Hawking radiation” that should emerge from black holes draws on those disparate areas of physics, but “unify” means something else entirely. Unifying relativity and quantum physics is something Einstein tried to do for the last two decades of his life, and failed. The best bet for unification these days is string theory—assuming it turns out to be correct, which we may never know."

http://time.com/3531/hawking-myth-or-legend/

PJ_Soul

brianlux said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

brianlux said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

DewieCox said:

Amazing what he did on the face of such adversity. Massive respect for his impact and influence, though I gather he’s not as revered within his field. 

he's not?

I've heard that also.  Not sure it's true or not though. In any case, he tenacity will never be denied.  I can't imagine going as long as he did with ALS.  Pretty amazing.

this shocks me. he is, what I thought, universally considered one of the most intelligent men in our lifetime, our Einstein. how is he not revered within his field?

I feel like it's just about attitude, not his actual work or knowledge or genius. I've always have the impression that some of his peers kind of resented him for being such a public, well-known figure in the field who tended to simplify things for the sake of the general public's understanding.

" He is, as most of us know, the greatest physicist since Einstein.

Except that he isn’t. “Rubbish,” Hawking himself responded, when I posed this proposition to him during a 1993 interview. “It’s mere media hype.” It’s undeniable that Hawking has made key contributions to both relativity and quantum physics. He came up with the insight that the Big Bang emerged from a singularity, a point so small and dense that the very laws of physics can’t describe it. He figured out what happened when black hole merge. He also came up with the startling and counter-intuitive notion that black holes can evaporate, slowly at first, then faster and faster until they explode—an idea that was at first ridiculed, but which is now mainstream. “This result,” says Bernard Carr, one of Hawking’s former PhD students, “unified relativity and quantum theory and thermodynamics.”

That would be positively mind-blowing—if true. But it’s really not: the so-called “Hawking radiation” that should emerge from black holes draws on those disparate areas of physics, but “unify” means something else entirely. Unifying relativity and quantum physics is something Einstein tried to do for the last two decades of his life, and failed. The best bet for unification these days is string theory—assuming it turns out to be correct, which we may never know."

http://time.com/3531/hawking-myth-or-legend/

I never thought of him as comparable to Einstein. Somehow I'm just seeing that comparison for the first time in this thread. I guess I was under a rock for that one, lol. He is just Stephen Hawking. No need to compare him to someone else.

brianlux

PJ_Soul said:

brianlux said:

PJ_Soul said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

brianlux said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

DewieCox said:

Amazing what he did on the face of such adversity. Massive respect for his impact and influence, though I gather he’s not as revered within his field. 

he's not?

I've heard that also.  Not sure it's true or not though. In any case, he tenacity will never be denied.  I can't imagine going as long as he did with ALS.  Pretty amazing.

this shocks me. he is, what I thought, universally considered one of the most intelligent men in our lifetime, our Einstein. how is he not revered within his field?

I feel like it's just about attitude, not his actual work or knowledge or genius. I've always have the impression that some of his peers kind of resented him for being such a public, well-known figure in the field who tended to simplify things for the sake of the general public's understanding.

" He is, as most of us know, the greatest physicist since Einstein.

Except that he isn’t. “Rubbish,” Hawking himself responded, when I posed this proposition to him during a 1993 interview. “It’s mere media hype.” It’s undeniable that Hawking has made key contributions to both relativity and quantum physics. He came up with the insight that the Big Bang emerged from a singularity, a point so small and dense that the very laws of physics can’t describe it. He figured out what happened when black hole merge. He also came up with the startling and counter-intuitive notion that black holes can evaporate, slowly at first, then faster and faster until they explode—an idea that was at first ridiculed, but which is now mainstream. “This result,” says Bernard Carr, one of Hawking’s former PhD students, “unified relativity and quantum theory and thermodynamics.”

That would be positively mind-blowing—if true. But it’s really not: the so-called “Hawking radiation” that should emerge from black holes draws on those disparate areas of physics, but “unify” means something else entirely. Unifying relativity and quantum physics is something Einstein tried to do for the last two decades of his life, and failed. The best bet for unification these days is string theory—assuming it turns out to be correct, which we may never know."

http://time.com/3531/hawking-myth-or-legend/

I never thought of him as comparable to Einstein. Somehow I'm just seeing that comparison for the first time in this thread. I guess I was under a rock for that one, lol. He is just Stephen Hawking. No need to compare him to someone else.

I agree.  Just let him be who he was, nothing more, nothing less.  There was a lot of hype about Hawking and even he himself (as evidenced by the quote) understood that.  Modern society loves to hyperbolize (if there is such a word) popular figures.  

dankind

R.I.P.

https://youtu.be/sI66hcu9fIs

hauntingfamiliar

Here here Mr. Hawkins

https://youtu.be/mh6be1tz6Os

rgambs

He just had a ton of expectations around him when he was young and he never lived up to the grand dreams that people had devised for him.  There are people like Feynman who accomplished more in the field without the hype.

I'm not knocking Hawking at all, that's just the way some see it.

PJ_Soul

rgambs said:

He just had a ton of expectations around him when he was young and he never lived up to the grand dreams that people had devised for him.  There are people like Feynman who accomplished more in the field without the hype.

I'm not knocking Hawking at all, that's just the way some see it.

Yeah, that little ALS thing kind of got in the way of some of those other people's fantasies about him, I'm sure. The fact that Hawking did what he did with such a profound disability is absolutely incredible. But his main legacy is what he did to bring science closer to mainstream consciousness, and got regular people interested in questions about the universe... Every scientist in the world should be grateful for that.

lastexitlondon

PJ_Soul said:

rgambs said:

He just had a ton of expectations around him when he was young and he never lived up to the grand dreams that people had devised for him.  There are people like Feynman who accomplished more in the field without the hype.

I'm not knocking Hawking at all, that's just the way some see it.

Yeah, that little ALS thing kind of got in the way of some of those other people's fantasies about him, I'm sure. The fact that Hawking did what he did with such a profound disability is absolutely incredible. But his main legacy is what he did to bring science closer to mainstream consciousness, and got regular people interested in questions about the universe... Every scientist in the world should be grateful for that.

Agreed. Please explian not living up to grand dreams??the man was the Einstein of our generation WITH ALS!!. Wow what more can a human do to become a legend.

lastexitlondon

lastexitlondon said:

PJ_Soul said:

rgambs said:

He just had a ton of expectations around him when he was young and he never lived up to the grand dreams that people had devised for him.  There are people like Feynman who accomplished more in the field without the hype.

I'm not knocking Hawking at all, that's just the way some see it.

Yeah, that little ALS thing kind of got in the way of some of those other people's fantasies about him, I'm sure. The fact that Hawking did what he did with such a profound disability is absolutely incredible. But his main legacy is what he did to bring science closer to mainstream consciousness, and got regular people interested in questions about the universe... Every scientist in the world should be grateful for that.

Agreed. Please explian not living up to grand dreams??the man was the Einstein of our generation WITH ALS!!. Wow what more can a human do to become a legend. And by hype you must mean gaining recognition for his achievements whilst everyday not being able to move a muscle and still be positive for 50 odd years

lastexitlondon

Tough crowd

HesCalledDyer

A truly brilliant mind. He was a harbinger of curiosity; he influenced me from afar - at a young age - to never stop asking questions and seeking answers to the unknown.

rgambs

lastexitlondon said:

PJ_Soul said:

rgambs said:

He just had a ton of expectations around him when he was young and he never lived up to the grand dreams that people had devised for him.  There are people like Feynman who accomplished more in the field without the hype.

I'm not knocking Hawking at all, that's just the way some see it.

Yeah, that little ALS thing kind of got in the way of some of those other people's fantasies about him, I'm sure. The fact that Hawking did what he did with such a profound disability is absolutely incredible. But his main legacy is what he did to bring science closer to mainstream consciousness, and got regular people interested in questions about the universe... Every scientist in the world should be grateful for that.

Agreed. Please explian not living up to grand dreams??the man was the Einstein of our generation WITH ALS!!. Wow what more can a human do to become a legend.

People legitimately thought that he would deliver the Unified Theory.  He did not.  He wasn't the Einstein of our generation though, that was Feynman (string theory).  Einstein was a game changer, a paradigm shifter, a trailblazer...like Newton before him, he changed physics in a fundamental way.
Hawking did not do that.  He did utterly brilliant work in established fields more than he established fields of his own.
As PjSoul pointed out, his greatest achievement in science was the inspiration and enthusiasm he created.  His spirit was clearly indomitable and his contributions to theoretical physics were huge, he is certainly a legend.

Thoughts_Arrive

I'm interested in buying a copy of 'a brief history of time' but I read that it is difficult to finish. Has anyone read it?
I've always been fascinated by the universe but physics is too complex for me.