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)

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

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.