Hawking profile

At school right now we have something called the Feynman effect, that I
actually coined. It's an inside joke amongst the students. Sometimes, we
will be in class an understand every word and follow the math at every
instance that our lecturer would give. Afterwards, we would walk out of the
class asking..."what did we just learn?" I guess he had a remarkable talent
for clarity in the explanations but when I talked to people that took his
classes, the all found that as soon as they left his lecture hall they could
not repeat what he talked about.

BP

"RLL" wrote in message
news:hxb0d.239631$sh.18696@fed1read06...
An interesting observation ...

I am a Feynman fan and have his autobiography as well as his lecture
series
and some of his audio tapes. He is, to me, the consummate physicist.
Hawking, to me, is dealing in nearly a pseudoscience. He hypotheses on
cosmological theories that may never be proven or disproven in his
lifetime. Some of his theories in his first book, "A Brief History of
Time", seem as much conjecture as science.

Feynman was able to talk about nearly every segment of physics.
Admittedly,
science has exploded over the last decades, but I consider Feynman the
true
physicist.

A colleague of mine attended Cal Tech and took a retaping of part of the
physics classes Feynman taught. Apparently, Feynman didn't like the first
version, so he retaught portions of the classes. My friend said that
although he understood what Feynman taught in class, the homework was
nearly
impossible because there was no textbook. My friend has a Ph.D., but said
after the Feynman course, he decided he wasn't smart enough to get a Ph.D.
in physics; His Ph.D. is in EE. That legacy is one which Feynman should
not
be proud.

I have read other articles that noted his course was not well received by
the undergraduates, but as they disappeared from his class, the seats were
filled by grad students and other scientists who could more appreciate
Feynman's insight (and didn't have to do the homework).

I think that anything that may lead a child to a career in science is a
good
thing. Unfortunately, after my career in science, I can see how greed
seems to guide grad students to MBAs and careers adding no value as stock
brokers or political pundits. There are few heroes in science and it is
sad.

- Russ in Santa Barbara


"Peter Webb" wrote in message
...

"Wally Anglesea" wrote in
message
...
For those in Australia, the ABC has a documentary on Stephen Hawking,
on
Sunday 12th September at 8.30.



I noticed this advertised and decided to miss it.

The cult of personality around Hawking I find annoying. Whilst there is
no
doubt he is a great physicist, the only reason he is worshipped as a
science
god is because he is physically disabled. Talk to the general
population,
and they all know all about Hawking, but have never heard of (for
example)
Feymann, who made far broader contributions and (if this is what you are
after) seemed a more interesting person all round. One friend of mine
claimed that Hawking was the greatest physicist who ever lived, better
than
Einstein and Newton (the only other two she could name), because he
"discovered black holes".

Hawking doesn't need any more promoting. Furthermore, such uncritical
media
promotion (as all the other bio pieces on him have been) promotes a
freak
show image of physicists, unltimately detrimental to the field.

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 03:42:07 GMT, "Wally Anglesea"
wrote:


"Peter Webb" wrote in message
u...

"Wally Anglesea" wrote in
message
...
For those in Australia, the ABC has a documentary on Stephen Hawking, on
Sunday 12th September at 8.30.



I noticed this advertised and decided to miss it.

The cult of personality around Hawking I find annoying. Whilst there is no
doubt he is a great physicist, the only reason he is worshipped as a
science
god is because he is physically disabled. Talk to the general population,
and they all know all about Hawking, but have never heard of (for example)
Feymann, who made far broader contributions and (if this is what you are
after) seemed a more interesting person all round. One friend of mine
claimed that Hawking was the greatest physicist who ever lived, better
than
Einstein and Newton (the only other two she could name), because he
"discovered black holes".

Well, obviously he was sadly misinformed :-)

I dunno about a cult of personality. Whilst I admit the general media hypes
him up, we need good communicators (and that's not a pun), who can
demonstrate real thinking science, and a real scientist that can be looked
up to, otherwise we end up with a world where Honeydew and Beeker become the
most admired scientists - wait, didn't that just happen? - :-)




Hawking doesn't need any more promoting. Furthermore, such uncritical
media
promotion (as all the other bio pieces on him have been) promotes a freak
show image of physicists, unltimately detrimental to the field.

I have to disagree on that, we need a populist, the media hang onto and
promote the 15 second grab, and we end up as we are with the "science" of
Star Trek and X-files. Hawking is the one small balance to that.
Unfortunately there's no "Steve Irwin" of science. Unless someone can point
me to one to correct me


Carl Sagan. of course, he's dead. nowadays, the nearest guy that i
can think of as "populizer" would be Alan Alda of Scientific American
- The TV Show, even tho he's definitely not a scientist.

scary thought, but i can see the slide toward Bunsen Honeydew and
Beeker.

meeep meep to all.