Witches of Technoscience

Rafael R. Deustúa
INTERNACIONAL.- Urging us to leave the planet is one of the last warnings made by physicist Stephen Hawking before he died. Some might say that he exaggerated but just in part, just enough to get a newspaper headline and draw attention to the global warming reality. The scientific genius knew how to give a constructive purpose to his fame.

Actually, the skill to manage that fame is one of the reasons why he acquired it. As scientific geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are the top of the list, both in physics; the latter expanding the work of the former.

Both trying to explain how the universe works and where we come from. Both were also public figures in life, thanks to their scientific achievements and in the case of Hawking also for overcoming his disability, which some colleagues believe helped him to create his theories. As his paralysis progressed, the scientist lost the ability to write and, therefore, to do the mathematical calculations with which theoretical physicists test their ideas.

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For them being able to express mathematically a phenomenon is the difference between science and philosophy. The equations also help them sort their thoughts, keeping them within a scheme and that is what Hawking lost access to in the late sixties. Terribly independent, Hawking did not accept any help. Like a secretary who wrote the equations he dictated - then he could still speak. To replace the equations, Hawking developed compensatory visual methods such as conceiving the equations in geometric terms.

The physicist Werner Israel compared this achievement to Mozart composing an entire symphony in his head. Hawking thought that he was a scientist first and a scientific popularizer afterward. In fact, he writes “A Brief History of Time” when his paralysis is so advanced that it jeopardizes his work and the economic future of his three children, as a way to secure their future.

That determination distinguished him from notable communicators such as Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, very prolific but with few scientific achievements. As his paralysis progressed, the scientist lost the ability to write and, therefore, to do the mathematical calculations with which theoretical physicists test their ideas.

For them being able to express mathematically a phenomenon is the difference between science and philosophy. The equations also help them sort their thoughts, keeping them within a scheme and that is what Hawking lost access to in the late sixties. Terribly independent, Hawking did not accept any help.

Like a secretary who wrote the equations he dictated - then he could still speak. To replace the equations, Hawking developed compensatory visual methods such as conceiving the equations in geometric terms. The physicist Werner Israel compared this achievement to Mozart composing an entire symphony in his head. In 1972, Hawking believes that Black Holes ignore the Second Law of Thermodynamic when he met Jacob Bekenstein.

The young graduate tells him that the thermodynamic laws do apply to Black Holes, and use Hawking’s earlier work to show him how. Hawking refuse to believe it and once back home try to prove him wrong. Instead, he completes the equation and shares the credit with Bekenstein. Hawking thought that he was a scientist first and a scientific popularizer afterward.

In fact, he writes “A Brief History of Time” when his paralysis is so advanced that it jeopardizes his work and the economic future of his three children, as a way to secure their future. That determination distinguished him from notable communicators such as Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, very prolific but with few scientific achievements. Although respected in the scientific world, Hawking was a contemporary of scientists with achievements as valuable as his own but without popular recognition.

For example, Richard Feynman (Quantum mechanics and fluid dynamics), Paul Dirac (Quantum mechanics) and Murray Gell-Mann (theory of elementary particles), all of them Nobel winners. Hawking has died, Who is the new king? If there were a new Stephen Hawking already, we would not have to ask, since he would be a well-known figure, as well as a successful scientist. Among hundreds of great scientists today, few are popular.

An example is Alexander Polyakov, who received the prize in fundamental physics in 2013 -and three million dollars - for his research in the theory of strings and the quantum field, but is unknown to the popular culture. A Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Robert Huber, is another of the most distinguished current scientists. Thanks to his work, is better known how photosynthesis works.

Molecular biologist Phillip Allen Sharp discovered with Richard J. Roberts how to splice RNA to cut “unnecessary” sequences in DNA, which he called introns. They received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1993.

By founding modern surface chemistry, which explains how fuel cells produce unpolluted energy, how catalytic converters work and even why iron rusts, Gerhard Ertl is another of the great living scientists. The Nobel Prize is the beacon thanks to which we see the work of many scientists.

Although, to reach it they depend on groups that promote their cause to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Hawking never won the Nobel because - as himself acknowledged - his main scientific contribution, the prediction that Black Holes emit radiation, can not yet be proven. In conclusion, Stephen Hawking is and will remain irreplaceable.