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Is Stephen Hawking really a great mind on par with the likes of Einstein, Newton or Heron of Alexandria or is he just someone who's really smart with a human interest story who is game to appear on Futurama, Simpsons, Star Trek: TNG among other popular culture establishments?
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I would have to say he is a great mind who happens to be charismatic and a great humor. He credits his knowledge to those who went before him but furthered science with his own contributions.
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[Random thought]
Every time I hear someone say "That wheel-chair guy", it makes me wonder how long Einstein was known as "That crazy hair guy" before his name became common knowlege...
[/random thought]
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Did Walter Matthau make a great movie Einstein or what?
One of my favotite comdies actually. (IQ).
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Heron who?Originally Posted by dodecahedron
I donīt think heīs on par with Einstein, Newton and Hawking. Even among the Hellenes there were brighter minds. Harnessing the power of steam could be within the grasp of anyone with the slightest interest in the empirical reality, which the Greeks generally abhorred.
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"He's dead, Jim?"Legacy
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Not that I've heard.
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I think Apollonius of Perga deserves more to be on the list than Heron of Alexandria, with Archimedes of Syracuse kicking both they donkeys.
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I think his impact on science is more than just his impact directly. He's one of the few scientists whose had the ability to transcend the boundary between 'science guys' and 'layman.'
He's had a cultural impact (Like Einstein and Madona) no matter what you say about his theories.
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No. He's obviously a very bright guy and a great science popularizer, but the new Einstein he isn't. Or new Newton, which isn't necessarily that bad thing considering what kind of person Sir Isaac was.
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Me, too.Every time I hear someone say "That wheel-chair guy", it makes me wonder how long Einstein was known as "That crazy hair guy" before his name became common knowlege...
Don't blame Newton, therapy hadn't been invented yet. :;-):Or new Newton, which isn't necessarily that bad thing considering what kind of person Sir Isaac was.
Last edited by KaiYeves; 2008-Oct-11 at 07:54 PM.
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Don't think he would have gone even if it had been. Brits generally aren't too keen on therapy. It's just so....American
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Well it depends on what Einstein and Newton had that you don't see in Hawking.
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Mr. Hawking makes me sad that stem cell research is being so thoroughly shot down by the current administration. Just think of what else this man could contribute if we'd had something that could delay or cure his current condition. He may not be remembered as a god of science, but he'll definitely be at least a demigod. I was given one of his books when I was a youngster... "A brief history of time". I still have it around here somewhere.
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It's currently on HBO on demand. We watched it yesterday (only because you had referenced it). Not a bad movie, not bad at all.
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I suspect that as a field matures (in the sense of being an enterprise), it is progressively more difficult for one individual to make such towering impacts. There will be more minds working on a given set of problems, so that what Galileo or Newton or Einstein had all to themselves will later be spread among various people, each with a piece of the puzzle. The really memorable contributions are, say, those insights which might have waited a generation for someone else. As an example - other physicists were knocking at the door of special relativity (it's painful to read Lorentz's 1904 book on electrodynamics - the Lorentz transform is there, but over and over it was as if he was on the wrong side of a wall). In contrast, as one commentator said, it might have taken decades for someone else to see the geometric interpretation of what became general relativity.
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Well, there's an article on CNN that includes an interview with Hawking.
Here's a quote from it:
I like that they credit "the Simpson's" with part of his fame. It's really the other way around--the Simpson's wouldn't have had him in an episode if people didn't know who he was.Hawking is one of the few scientists known to a wide audience outside academia thanks to his best-selling books, a guest spot on "The Simpsons" and an ability to clearly explain the complexities of theoretical physics.
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I would have credited him to Futurama.
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He was on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" years before he was on either "The Simpsons" or "Futurama."
So based on what Fazor said:
It was really "TNG" that made him popular.
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probably Newton and Einstein would have had the option of going on the Simpsons and TNG etc if they had been around then.
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Sir Isaac Newton was in a Simpsons episode (his legs were, at least. You should always have a backup generator for your time-teleportation devices).
I can't recall if Einstein himself was ever in an episode, but he's certianly been referenced.
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Funnily enough, Einstein and Newton were both in the same episode of TNG that Hawking was.
Hawking played himself, though - the other two were played by actors.
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