Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo Galilei‘s death (8 March 1942), and died on the anniversary of Albert Einstein‘s birth (14 March). Having both reached the age of 76, Hawking actually lived a few months longer than Einstein, in spite of his health problems. By the way, what do you call it when a set of unrelated facts match up like that? That’s right: coincidence!
While Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time” is apparently “the most popular book never read”, I own it and have read it. While it’s definitely not easy-going, he did have a good stab at making the complex physics understandable, and I found it very worthwhile – a fascinating read.
I think Hawking was a great scientist because he came up with grand ideas, but was quite happy to be disagreed with. Often the matter wouldn’t be settled for decades, and once it was, he was also quite happy to concede if he was wrong. Sometimes he’d even even declare himself wrong on one of his own earlier hypotheses. This approach is an excellent example of how science advances. Explanations can be improved, proven wrong, or strengthened through observations and calculations. Many complex matters cannot be proven “correct” directly, so a hypothesis can often only be disproven – that is, when an observation is made that doesn’t match the hypothesis, and that observation is repeated by others and thus validated, then either the hypothesis needs to be tweaked, or discarded.
Hawking was also an excellent role model for many young students as apart from his excellent attitude towards scientific research and good sense of humour, he was a key example of how having a serious disability does not necessarily preclude one from doing great things. He was also adventurous, and sometimes quite reckless driving his wheelchair.
Melbourne artist, Mitchell Toy, has produced a beautiful image to commemorate Hawking’s passing.
The material is much more interesting. When I discussed a topic later in the term, I found that the students…
Laura Davidson, Teacher