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Originally Posted by David Sklansky
I just wonder if he was a little overrated due to his disease. His main theory was disproven was it not?
You often hear these sentiments about people with disabilities or who in some other fashion (gender, sexuality, ethnicity) are uncommon in their field. But in the real world the people that face these challenges are less likely to succeed, not more.
You might argue that his recognizability helped his
popular image as a great physicist, and that's probably true. But that took place after he was a very accomplished physicist. As I noted earlier it might have also given rise to the notion that his more speculative ideas where more accepted than they actually were. Still, that's one of the things that made him intriguing. Not only did he have very intriguing opinions and the intellectual weight to explore them, but he opened up venues of debate that have sparked tens of thousands of brilliant papers.
Theoretical physics can advance understanding greatly even in the cases where it is rejected, as it it not always about the result - but about the method, what data to look for and how it can be applied when said data is available. An ideal Hawking very much lived up to on the several occasions where he was both accepting and supporting of work that would show earlier papers by him to be likely incorrect.