Re: Er

Cynical much? :)

I'm sure he's not displeased at receiving a big ol' pile of cash, but I still applaud Milner for rewarding people who actually deserve it - unlike, say, the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS* the 'mericuns throw at their athletes just for running fast.

* Some big number. Not precisely 1E9

Re: Er

"Cynical much? :)

... I still applaud Milner for rewarding people who actually deserve it - unlike, say, the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS* the 'mericuns throw at their athletes just for running fast."

Milner is mainly (with some exceptions thrown in as an afterthought) rewarding string theorists for speculative ideas that have failed, for 40 years and more, to yield falsifiable predictions or any point of contact with reality. That they "deserve" to be rewarded is a _very_ dubious proposition. And cleverly, these advocates of a completely failed research program will decide where the next round of prizes go - thereby insuring that the prizes continue to go to advocates of their failed research program. Do you think that the chance of winning a $3 million prize is not going to have an distorting effect on the progress of physics theory?

And, by the way, how do the salaries of American athletes compare to football players in Europe and the rest of world?

Ignoramus much?

Apparently so.

So he has made (and sometimes later withdrawn)

You seam to have missed one of the fundamental properties of science.

Re: So he has made (and sometimes later withdrawn)

No, not at all - I understand that perfectly well. What I'm not aware of is where he has made a properly verified fantastic scientific discovery...

You're suggesting theoretical physics is not "real science"?

When it's down to the level of completely unprovable and probably unfalsifiable conjecture, yes - I'm saying it's not real science. Philosophy, certainly - which has its place - but not useful science.

@Neil B

'Course it's not "real science". No airships, no robots, no doomsday devices, no jet packs.

Hawking is of no use whatsoever in the field of mad real science.

Re: @AJ Macleod

Nope, he's saying what Stephen Hawking is a Philosopher rather than a Scientist.

By my understanding though there's a lot more maths involved in what Stephen Hawking does than what's involved in traditional Philosophy.

Some of that maths even proves or disproves things, apparently, it's beyond my ken.

Just because I don't understand it doesn't make it unscientific though, possibly it is in fact the distillation of science to it's purest form, depending on who you ask.

The physicist frowns at the chemist who in turn frowns at the biologist, which of them is the most "science-y"

Perhaps in the same way that Technology can appear as magic to the uninitiated, Theoretical physics can appear as philosophy to the uninitiated (which is quite a large percentage of the population, myself included)

@Christopher Michaelis Re: @AJ Macleod

Odd, that you know how to write, but not how to read.

Given that these awards have previously been given to string theorists

who have made even fewer concrete predictions than Hawking, I don't think the aim is "truly useful", "practical" achievements -- which would, by the by, rule out almost the entirity of science. Do you think that Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Dirac, Einstein et. al should have their Nobel prizes revoked simply because, at the time they developed quantum theory, there were absolutely zero practical consequences of any type, useful or not? They weren't to know that within half a century the laser and the transistor would come from quantum theory, and that within a century the world would be pushed in an entirely new direction. I'm not saying that there will be consequences on the level of the transistor or the laser from string theory or from Hawking's work - that would be silly - but let's be fair, Nobel prizes were given for things with zero "truly useful", "practical" achievements.

In a quick answer, the main things Hawking has developed are the singularity theorems, covariant fluid mechanics, and the existence and nature of Hawking radiation. While I would probably agree that he's somewhat overrated by the general public, that's more a comment that the likes of Roger Penrose and George Ellis are not given the credit they deserve than a comment against Hawking, who has had a profound impact on theoretical physics. Indeed, one could argue that there have been few great developments in theoretical physics in the latter half of this century, and that Hawking remains the man who has contributed the most tangible progress towards quantum gravity. Hawking radiation is the only main addition to general relativity that I can immediately think of, and is at least in principle observable, even if it's in laboratory analogues of black holes rather than literal gravitational black holes.

Re: @AJ Macleod

The physicist frowns at the chemist who in turn frowns at the biologist, which of them is the most "science-y"

http://xkcd.com/435/

That's a bit unfair....

Is he not a part of society then?

Re: That's a bit unfair....

You seem to think that "one particular Russian billionaire' is somehow equivalent to 'the whole of society".

Re: That's a bit unfair....

Well what is "the whole of society then"?

Re: That's a bit unfair....

If he gave it to some girls at spearmint rhino we'd see just as much negativity.

He can give his money to whomever he likes, just because he didnt give any to you, you get all shirty

Knock yourself out: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html put "Hawking" in the search field and go. I'd link to the result but the URL is a mile long.

Re: mail.ru?

Exactly. I expect that in order to claim the prize all he has to do is send them a £600 bank payment clearance fee by Western Union transfer...