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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

I've thought Hawking was being a bit over-marketed since the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode where they place him next to Newton and Einstein as three great physicists in history. That scene was a lot of fun and I'm glad they did it. But there's a lot of room for being a great physicist without being a Newton or an Einstein, and that does seem to apply to Hawking, even if you agree completely with this article.

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I agree that it's hard to compare people's intellect, especially dead vs living. However Newton and Einstein were humen as well, and not unlikely had their importance subject to exaggeration, misrepresentation and misunderstanding. When you become a celebrity other factors than significance comes into play, sometimes out of the control of the person.

True. But Newton and Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the universe in a way that a Feynman, Hawking or Gell-Mann didn't. I doubt these gentlemen would have disagreed with that.

I'd be much more willing to put Gell-Mann on that list than Hawking or Feynman. To me, his discovery of the ability to make accurate predictions about the existence of fundamental particles based on symmetry groups forms a pillar of theoretical particle physics and the composition of the Standard Model, in the same kind of way that Einstein's application of differential geometry to the concept of space-time does.

Newton will sort of always stand apart in that he was "the first", but I think that grouping Gell-Mann (no pun intended) with Hawking and Feynman, who although both brilliant and huge personalities, weren't the same level of "giant upon whose shoulders others stand" that Einstein and Gell-Mann's work ended up being is somewhat unfair.

According to the book "When Einstein Walked with Gödel" Einstein was not comfortable with all the attention and adoration he was receiving.

One of the reason Einstein and Gödel spent a lot of time together was that he did not care how famous Einstein was, and was not afraid to disagree. He was also not shy about sharing his own work with Einstein.

Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his "own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del

Well, Newton and Hawking did both hold the same chair. If Cambridge is willing to put them beside each other Im not going to complain about Star Trek doing the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasian_Professor_of_Mathemat...

Its not as if those are the only two to hold it.

There are only so many seats at a poker table.

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