5 ms·
> But I was struck by how unusual it was for a scientist to state publicly that their work warranted a Nobel. Did he say he wanted a Nobel? To me it sounded l
by wombatmobile 6y ago
> But I was struck by how unusual it was for a scientist to state publicly that their work warranted a Nobel.
Did he say he wanted a Nobel? To me it sounded like he made a joke.
> “People have searched for mini black holes… but have so far not found any,” he intoned with his trademark voice synthesiser. “This is a pity, because if they had I would have got a Nobel Prize.”
It shows a certain lack of context awareness to mark a guy down for vanity when he's spent most of his adult life in a wheel chair living a life that exists only in the mental sphere, with no prospects for physical release ever until the day he dies.
- RichardCA 6y agoI feel like the author of the article completely misapprehended what Hawking meant. We give Einstein credit because his theories met the benchmarks of prediction and testability. For example General Relativity made a prediction about the orbit of Mercury that gave a more precise answer then Isaac Newton. The issue with Hawking (based on my understanding as an enthusiastic novice) is that Hawking Radiation can't be measured because it would be necessary to find Black Holes that are significantly less than 1 Solar Mass, and such things don't exist in our Universe as far as we know. And this in turn is why Hawking Radiation can't be tested. But, it's also true that Einstein never won a Nobel for SR or GR.