![\"\"](\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/hawking.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nA long post is brewing (breaking my month-long silence), but as I was working on it, the sad news arrived that Stephen Hawking passed away. There’s little I can add to the tributes that poured in from around the world: like chocolate or pizza, Hawking was beloved everywhere and actually deserved to be<\/i>. Like, probably, millions of other nerds of my generation, I read A Brief History of Time<\/i> as a kid and was inspired by it (though I remember being confused back then about the operational meaning of imaginary time, and am\u00a0still<\/em> confused about it almost 30 years later).\u00a0 In terms of a scientist capturing the public imagination, through a combination of genuine conceptual breakthroughs, an enthralling personal story, an instantly recognizable countenance, and oracular pronouncements on issues of the day, the only one in the same league was Einstein. I didn’t agree with all of Hawking’s pronouncements, but the quibbles paled beside the enormous areas of agreement.\u00a0 Hawking was a force for good in the world, and for the values of science, reason, and Enlightenment (to anticipate the subject of my next post).<\/p>\n I’m sorry that I never really met Hawking, though I did participate in two conferences that he also attended, and got to watch him slowly form sentences on his computer. At one conference in 2011, he attended my talk—this one<\/a>—and I was told by mutual acquaintances that he liked it.\u00a0 That meant more to me than it probably should have: who cares if some random commenters on YouTube dissed your talk, if the Hawk-Man<\/a> himself approved?<\/p>\n As for Hawking’s talks—well, there’s a reason why they filled giant auditoriums all over the world.\u00a0 Any of us in the business of science popularization would do well to study them and take lessons.<\/p>\n If you want a real<\/i> obituary of Hawking, by someone who knew him well—one that, moreover, actually explains his main scientific contributions (including the singularity theorems, Hawking radiation, and the no-boundary proposal)—you won’t do any better than this by Roger Penrose<\/a>. Also don’t miss this remembrance in Time<\/i><\/a> by Hawking’s friend and betting partner, and friend-of-the-blog, John Preskill. (Added:<\/b> and this<\/a> by Sean Carroll.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A long post is brewing (breaking my month-long silence), but as I was working on it, the sad news arrived that Stephen Hawking passed away. There’s little I can add to the tributes that poured in from around the world: like chocolate or pizza, Hawking was beloved everywhere and actually deserved to be. Like, probably, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5935,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions\/5935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}