RIP Stephen Hawking

[Amor de Cosmos]

I kinda think he would have liked that.

[Kevin S]

A shame it was cut so quickly, as it was working nicely IMO.

[MsD]

That's brilliant.

[San Bernardhinault]

John Humphreys asked Brian Cox whether Prof Hawking was “cut some slack” due to his disability.

I think “cut some slack” isn’t quite the right phrasing, but I do think he was often placed in the “pantheon” of great physicists because of it. He was a very good physicist, but (as I understand it) his research and theories are nothing like as elementally important as, say, Newton or Einstein or Bohr or Clark Maxwell or whoever. The narrative of Overcoming to become the Greatest was too tempting for the popular imagination. Overcoming to be very, very good is more true, but less rewarding.

[hobbes]

Oh I don't know, SB.
He described something that lays the foundational theory for all the mass in the universe. He's got a radiation named after him n'all.
Not being Newton or Einstein doesn't mean you're not one of the greats.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

setting the bar for Scientific great as being the person who says "Everything you understand about physics, is just a special case of this wider set of underlying rules" is setting it a wee bit high. That only happens once in a while, and is a much a reflection on the wider state of science than anything else. We might have arrived at Newton's theories a lot sooner, if more than six people in the world could read and only two of them were in communication with each other, and you couldn't fit all scientific and mathematical knowledge into a single book.

[Nefertiti2]

Zoe Williams on the difficulties that would face a Stephen Hawking today

[San Bernardhinault]

setting the bar for Scientific great as being the person who says "Everything you understand about physics, is just a special case of this wider set of underlying rules" is setting it a wee bit high.

Sure. But Hawking is often placed in that category, rather than just "one of the best of our generation". And I think that's to do with the challenges he overcame, because it makes such a great story.

[G-Man]

As such, I'm never comfortable with a term so rooted in the religious concept of the afterlife as 'Rest in Peace/RIP' being used on their death.

Yeah, when used by atheists, I suppose it's a bit of a quaint turn of phrase. On the same level as "I'm blessed" (or, indeed, saying "bless you" to somebody who has sneezed).

I suppose Hawking would say that in the nothingness he expected, he will indeed RIP, no harm done. And if he turned out to be wrong about the afterlife bit, he might say: "Ooof, yeah, thanks. Turns out, I needed those well-wishes."

[ChrisJ]

Puzzled by the RIP thing. It's just a universally understood expression of sentiment towards someone recently died isn't it? I mean atheists (of whom I count myself one) generally have no problem with bless you for sneezes, (good)bye, Happy Christmas, Easter eggs, cussing connected with hell or damn... Culturally, there's a whole lot of everyday English that originated in a more pious past.

Edit - G-Man would it only be religious Austrians who'd say grüß Gott?

It's not a hill I'd die on, but seems an odd quibble.

[Snake Plissken]

https://twitter.com/jim_reed/status/973850555901767681

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Rest in peace is apparently papist superstition.

My point about hawking, einstein and newton is that you can't make revealing the next layer of the physics onion the test of whether someone is a scientific great. that sort of event comes along every couple of hundred years. People think he's a great primarily because he was able to apply General relativity theory to cosmology. Everyone was very impressed.

[Patrick Thistle]

I suppose Hawking would say that in the nothingness he expected, he will indeed RIP, no harm done. And if he turned out to be wrong about the afterlife bit, he might say: "Ooof, yeah, thanks. Turns out, I needed those well-wishes."

There's been enough obnoxious religious types declaring that Hawking now knows there's a god, or saying worse things about his eternal destination.

[Femme Folle]

Puzzled by the RIP thing. It's just a universally understood expression of sentiment towards someone recently died isn't it? I mean atheists (of whom I count myself one) generally have no problem with bless you for sneezes, (good)bye, Happy Christmas, Easter eggs, cussing connected with hell or damn... Culturally, there's a whole lot of everyday English that originated in a more pious past.

Edit - G-Man would it only be religious Austrians who'd say grüß Gott?

It's not a hill I'd die on, but seems an odd quibble.

This. I never say it with any religious intention. It's just a thing that's said when people die. Actually, not just people, I've said it for dogs and cats, too.

[Femme Folle]

He outlived his diagnosis by over 50 years which seems like a good innings. <doffs hat >

Absolutely this. I'm gutted at the loss of a great human being (even more than great scientist), but the knowledge that he lived to his mid-70s when he wasn't even expected to make his mid-20s is a nice thought to hang on to.

Yes, it's inspiring in a lot of ways. I know he has credited the NHS, and rightly so, but part of his longevity had to be down to his own stubbornness and refusal to let it defeat him.

[Various Artist]

https://twitter.com/jim_reed/status/973850555901767681

That's sodding brilliant, laughed my arse off reading that three times in a row. Thanks Snake, and RIP Prof Hawking indeed... atheist or not.

It's such a strange thing to say about someone whose existence in this world was so fragile he shouldn't by most reckonings have lived past his mid-20s, yet Stephen Hawking's sudden departure feels quite shocking: he seemed oddly immortal. Perhaps it was a subliminal effect of always seeing him wired up to so much hardware, as though he actually (as the jokes in his Futurama, Comic Relief etc appearances had it) were some sort of cyborg, but having sailed a half-century and more past his initial prognosis with his mind still reaching onward out into the cosmos, it felt like he ought to live forever.

It's that for someone so withdrawn, physiologically, into his own body, he was so present: not just an utterly distinctive voice, but one he readily lent to speaking out on all manner of subjects both scientific and humane, from the environment to human spaceflight to the NHS. It's only last week that the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series started featuring him as the voice of the Guide mk.II, something that seemed so perfectly apt it's amazing it hadn't happened decades ago.

He will certainly be missed as a communicator as much as a scientist: his ability to synthesise (no pun intended) vast and mindbendingly complex subjects with clarity and a certain grace was extraordinary, both in terms of how he could marshal it all mentally without being able to actually 'do' the science in a conventional sense, and in terms of how he put things across to the layman. I haven't read my copy of A Brief History of Time since the other side of the millennium (it's a lovely '10th Anniversary' hardback edition from 1998) but today's sad news has only reminded me that I really must get around to it again.

[Femme Folle]

It's such a strange thing to say about someone whose existence in this world was so fragile he shouldn't by most reckonings have lived past his mid-20s, yet Stephen Hawking's sudden departure feels quite shocking: he seemed oddly immortal. Perhaps it was a subliminal effect of always seeing him wired up to so much hardware, as though he actually (as the jokes in his Futurama, Comic Relief etc appearances had it) were some sort of cyborg, but having sailed a half-century and more past his initial prognosis with his mind still reaching onward out into the cosmos, it felt like he ought to live forever.

This! I'm half expecting someone to boot up his computer one day to discover that he had uploaded his consciousness into the hard drive.

[Ray de Galles]

Yeah, when used by atheists, I suppose it's a bit of a quaint turn of phrase. On the same level as "I'm blessed" (or, indeed, saying "bless you" to somebody who has sneezed).

I suppose Hawking would say that in the nothingness he expected, he will indeed RIP, no harm done. And if he turned out to be wrong about the afterlife bit, he might say: "Ooof, yeah, thanks. Turns out, I needed those well-wishes."

I know “R.I.P.” is generally used as a meaningless platitude but it just seems a jarringly facile term to use with regard to someone who so expressly rejected the notion of an afterlife. Why write something that so contradicts Hawking’s beliefs and work when trying to show respect for him? It seems perverse, better to take a few minutes to think of something more fitting, surely? It’s a bit “thoughts and prayers”.

I know if it were used about me I’d be annoyed, though obviously I’d then be dead, plunged in to everlasting nothingness and have no way of knowing. I’d be similarly fucked off by anyone telling my they were praying for me before death, mind.

[G-Man]

G-Man would it only be religious Austrians who'd say grüß Gott?

It's a standard greeting, also in southern Germany, especially southern Bavaria and including Munich, and in German-speaking Switzerland. In many places it has been compacted to "Gruezi" (Bavaria) or "Grützi" (Switzerland).

[ChrisJ]

It's a standard greeting, also in southern Germany, especially southern Bavaria and including Munich, and in German-speaking Switzerland. In many places it has been compacted to "Gruezi" (Bavaria) or "Grützi" (Switzerland).

Thanks, thought that was the case.

So long as they don’t say it to Ray. <smiley thing >

[Muukalainen]

My point about hawking, einstein and newton is that you can't make revealing the next layer of the physics onion the test of whether someone is a scientific great. that sort of event comes along every couple of hundred years. People think he's a great primarily because he was able to apply General relativity theory to cosmology. Everyone was very impressed.

Am I reading you correctly, that the discoveries of the likes of Hawking are going to be made anyway, therefore there's nothing particularly fantastic about any of their works?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

oh god no, quite the opposite. I mean my point is entirely the opposite. His achievement was extraordinary, and downplaying it because it lacked the historical public impact of newtonian physics or the theory of general relativity is to punish him for having been born in the mid 20th century.

[WOM]

I’d be similarly fucked off by anyone telling my they were praying for me before death, mind.

I used to be the same, but now I'm more like 'hey, if that help you, have at it. No harm to me.'

[Muukalainen]

Ah, that makes more sense. I was struggling with the concept of great scientific discoveries and inventions being down to Buggins' turn, and was pretty sure you didn't mean that without being able to see what you did mean. Agree entirely with you, Hawking was a colossus of science who stood easily alongside the likes of Newton and Einstein.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

yeah, if you turned up to some grove of academe with the answers to three Hilbert question, no-one is going to say a) what took you 116 years and b) well half the serious mathematicians in the world have pissed away a ridiculous amount of their time on this, someone was bound to get there eventually. They would immediately worship you as a fucking god. They'd do that if you solved one.