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Stephen Hawking has died

bbc.com

371–380 of 468 posts

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. Who will take his place? Who will be the Stephen Hawking of my children's generation? As a society we should work hard to find, celebrate and give a platform to the Stephen Hawking-s and the Carl Sagan-s of tomorrow. The impact of such "celebrity scientists" (I do not use that term pejoratively) is far greater than the measure of the work they have done. It is how they inspire an entire generation…

Neil Degrasse Tyson is clearly vying for the slot but seems to make science seem more elitist, more pedantic (read literally any of his tweets) and thus appears to miss the point entirely

If your voice sounded as cool as his you would want to listen to yourself speak all the time too.

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#372

Sometimes the RNG of the Universe creates people with intelligence, innovation and insight that are one in a billion that make the world better than it was before in immense ways, Stephen Hawking is one of those mountain movers. People like Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Nikola Tesla and even Elon Musk today, that make us look up, innovate and think way out there, bring us together and remind us we are all on this plan…

Serious question, why is Elon Musk lumped in with Tesla, Hawking, and Sagan? Musk's achievements are assisted by the fact that he has tens of thousands of engineers at his companies and he gets credit for every one of their ideas, all their work, and all the life they give up for his dreams. He didn't found Paypal (his company merged with it), he didn't found Tesla (kicked out one of the original founders), and he di…

I also don't think Musk should be lumped in with those other luminaries, but Musk isn't the one doing that categorization, so nothing against him. It's just people and their penchant for hero worship

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil Degrasse Tyson is clearly vying for the slot but seems to make science seem more elitist, more pedantic (read literally any of his tweets) and thus appears to miss the point entirely

Tyson doesn't have the academic credentials that Hawking or someone like Richard Feynman does. The power of Hawking and Feynman is that they both were at the top of their fields, but took the time to make the foundations of their science accessible to the common man. Tyson has done great things, but he's not quite there.

What about Michio Kaku? Google always shows him along side when searching for Tyson.

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#376

For a second I just couldn't believe this was real. Stephen Hawking was one of those people that inspired me towards a career in science, as well as a pursuit of discovering what mysteries of the universe I could uncover within my (cosmically short) lifetime. He did this not through some major life-altering speech I heard from him (although his talks and lectures were quite interesting), or through some grand quote t…

I agree completely. Who will take his place? Who will be the Stephen Hawking of my children's generation? As a society we should work hard to find, celebrate and give a platform to the Stephen Hawking-s and the Carl Sagan-s of tomorrow. The impact of such "celebrity scientists" (I do not use that term pejoratively) is far greater than the measure of the work they have done. It is how they inspire an entire generation…

What the world needs now is someone in that role for climate change who can capture an interpretation of that body of science the way that Hawking and Sagan captured the public attention around the big bang and other highly complex abstract concepts in the physics of Astronomy & Cosmology.

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#377

For a second I just couldn't believe this was real. Stephen Hawking was one of those people that inspired me towards a career in science, as well as a pursuit of discovering what mysteries of the universe I could uncover within my (cosmically short) lifetime. He did this not through some major life-altering speech I heard from him (although his talks and lectures were quite interesting), or through some grand quote t…

I agree completely. Who will take his place? Who will be the Stephen Hawking of my children's generation? As a society we should work hard to find, celebrate and give a platform to the Stephen Hawking-s and the Carl Sagan-s of tomorrow. The impact of such "celebrity scientists" (I do not use that term pejoratively) is far greater than the measure of the work they have done. It is how they inspire an entire generation…

RIP Prof. Stephen Hawking.

I am not very optimistic about another Stephen Hawking or an Einstein. How many of the best minds of our generation are attracted to Physics or Mathematics or Astronomy especially graduate level / Phds ? Some of the folks are getting into computer science but that doesnt help discoveries in cosmology.

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#378
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tyson doesn't have the academic credentials that Hawking or someone like Richard Feynman does. The power of Hawking and Feynman is that they both were at the top of their fields, but took the time to make the foundations of their science accessible to the common man. Tyson has done great things, but he's not quite there.

What about Michio Kaku? Google always shows him along side when searching for Tyson.

He's already 71, so he's still a face to the same people as Hawking was.

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#379
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-prepared is exactly how most obituaries are written. Newspapers keep such pre-prepared obituaries of famous people on-hand so that they can publish them instantly if that person happens to die. Any newspapers who don't do this will lose the all-important race for publication to newspapers that do.

And because obituaries are pre-prepared, they're sometimes mistakenly pre-published.

On at least one occasion that I can recall, an obituary for Steve Jobs was published prematurely. As you can imagine, this caused a minor panic before retraction.

Re: Stephen Hawking has died

#380
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tyson doesn't have the academic credentials that Hawking or someone like Richard Feynman does. The power of Hawking and Feynman is that they both were at the top of their fields, but took the time to make the foundations of their science accessible to the common man. Tyson has done great things, but he's not quite there.

What about Michio Kaku? Google always shows him along side when searching for Tyson.

I've heard he's not very personable[0], and that's important for pop-scientists.

[0]: https://youtu.be/EnMMirZBMlc

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