Author: Nancy Shute / Source: Science News
The death of physicist Stephen Hawking on March 14 at age 76 sparked a global outpouring of admiration. In our appreciation, Science News physics writer Emily Conover calls him “a black hole whisperer who divined the secrets of the universe’s most inscrutable objects.
” He was also among the very few cosmologists (hello, Carl Sagan) to have written an international best seller; Hawking was also the subject of an Academy Award–winning biopic (SN: 11/1/14, p. 28).Hawking’s status as superstar scientist led us to ponder what other contemporary scientists people would immediately recall. Primatologist Jane Goodall came to mind, as did astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Also Bill Nye (who worked as a mechanical engineer for Boeing before heading off to TV-land) and string theorist Brian Greene.
After that, our water cooler discussion of scientists who excel both at science and at explaining it branched off in many directions. We named Lisa Randall (yet another articulate physicist); Dava Newman, a former deputy administrator of NASA; Anthony Fauci, an AIDS researcher and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; neuroscientist Christof Koch; economist Raj Chetty; geneticist George Church; physician and…
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