The man of value

The Great Voice has turned silent. Stephen Hawking is no longer with us. He was not only one of the greatest physicists who ever lived, he was a superior personality similar to no one who ever existed before or will ever exist in the history of human intellectual life. For more than 50 years he struggled with his deadly disease, writing great papers in theoretical physics and trying to enjoy life as a completely normal person. He never gave up!

The first time I met him was when he was visiting Moscow in 1981. At that time he could still speak by himself although only a few of his students could understand what he was saying. Our last encounter was in September of last year in Hereford where he would spend about a month each year in the company of his students and friends. We had a few discussions, in particular about Euclidean quantum gravity and quantum cosmological perturbation. This time it would take Stephen at least half an hour to compose one simple sentence on his computer. Nevertheless, under such conditions Stephen was still working very hard, producing excellent papers until the very end of his life.

In 1974, Hawking merged quantum theory with gravity to discover that small black holes should emit radiation. This became widely known as the Hawking effect. Unfortunately such small black holes for which this effect can be experimentally observed most likely do not exist in Nature. However, this paper by Hawking was crucial when in 1980 in my paper with G. Chibisov, and completely independently from the paper by Hawking, it was discovered that galaxies could originate from initial quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. The predictions of this theory were fully confirmed in the numerous experiments on cosmic microwave background radiation carried out in the last 20 years. I was very glad to share  the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award with Stephen in 2015 for this result.

Hawking’s popularity among the public can perhaps be compared only with the popularity of Einstein. It is hard to find anyone who has never heard of him. When two years ago I invited Stephen to Copenhagen, a few thousands tickets for his popular lecture were sold within a few minutes, and in the next half hour more than 50,000 people signed their names on the “waiting list.” Stephen’s contribution to the popularizing of science was tremendous.

Today, when he is not with us any more, I feel a deep sadness. The Great Man of exceptional courage and genius, the Man of Value has passed away.