Such a sad day. I hated reading this news this morning. It's a miracle he lived as long as he did in a chair with a degenerative disease. In my book, it is about his spirit and purpose that he lived as long as he did. He seemed almost invincible up until this day. He felt like our beacon or guiding light into the unknowns of the universe. I feel like the human race will kind of lose its way without him. At a minimum, the human race got stupider today with his loss. He made such an impact on everyone and for the betterment of mankind. So long and rest in peace.
Hawking should be celebrated for his ability to overcome a disability but not as much for his relatively inconsequential scientific discoveries.
With all due respect, I couldn't disagree more. I suggest you read this article about Professor Hawking. It's from Forbes Magazine. The title? How Stephen Hawking's Greatest Discovery Revolutionized Black Holes www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/03/16/how-stephen-hawkings-greatest-discovery-revolutionized-black-holes/
The title doesn't convince me of anything, but I'll take a look. Happy to change my mind. I studied under Fischler, Gleeson, and Weinberg at UT Austin. Maybe they're just a different school of thought. In my defense, Weinberg has a Nobel Prize in Physics. Hawking never got one.
I'm kind of in the same ballpark as you regarding his contributions. We've never been able to experimentally analyze a black hole to see if they do evaporate from Hawking radiation. That said it opened up the doorway to some very interesting thought experiments about whether information is fundamental or can be erased, what happens inside a black hole, if black holes are eternal or evaporate, and what the mechanisms are behind that evaporation if it does occur. Certainly more of a scientist than Bill Nye, I feel like he's been a very good spokesperson for the scientific community more than anything.
I'd also add his contributions to singularity, big bang theory and gravitational radiation, which profoundly changed modern physics. His work too often is reduced to black holes. His thesis is available online btw (seeing how you are in the field, a thesis would probably be best suited to change or reiterate your view, instead of seeing some mainstream articles). http://kicp.uchicago.edu/~mturner/XYZ4/PR-PHD-05437-HawkingPhD.pdf https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stephen-hawking-for-dummies-why-he-is-so-important-2018-03-14
Professor Hawking would enjoy the arguing about his legacy. I really think he would. While I lean towards Dr. Hawking's own view about religion and an afterlife, if he is, much to his own surprise, somewhere watching the reaction to his death, I would bet money that he's getting a kick out of it. He had a fine sense of humor to go along with that brilliant mind. One of the pleasures I've had when I need a break from having my head buried in a book (I carry around a small camping shovel in my little backpack so I can dig my head out when required) is to listen to one of the many lectures the man loved to give to students and colleagues. Given half a chance, he'd toss a joke in there, frequently at the expense of the French if the subject was Black Holes (and it often was). There was definitely a man behind the electronics that could have dehumanized Hawking, but he wouldn't allow it to. His humanity always shined through.
