It feels good to tear down others in order to boost your personal brand, especially if the others are dead. Doesn't it?
IMHO, it is important that somebody discusses these issues, because we should not glorify the intellect of individuals to such an extreme extent. Woit might hold some research-/community-related grudges, but I don't think this makes his post less relevant.
First of all, as the author acknowledges, his work actual scientific work brought huge steps (leaps, even) in the field of cosmology. To say he doesn't stand up to Einstein is probably wrong from both directions: that Einstein was an untouchable intellect, himself; but also that Hawking wasn't as brilliant, which I think is clearly debatable.
Second, Hawking's "brand" inspired generations of people to go into science. I have no doubt in my mind that we'd have fewer people in hard science if it weren't for him, his inspiring personal story, those books, and even his pop culture appearances.
What was the author's point here? That Hawking may have written less of those books than we think? That he wasn't the top theoretical physicist in the world at the end of his life? Sounds like this guy just wants to hawk someone's book.
Who said this, though?
> Hawking was a huge world-wide celebrity, widely considered by the public and the press to be the modern-day analog of Einstein, dominating the field of theoretical physics.
The implied message here and the rest of the article is that the public and the press are wrong about him.
If I were to read anything into the comparison, it's that - as also suggested in this thread - Einstein is perhaps also overblown compared to Einstein.