I only met Stephen Hawking twice, both times in the same day. Hawking, who died a few hours ago, was one of the great physicists of any era. He wrote books, was the subject of a major movie about his early life, and of course survived longer than any other amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) sufferer, passing away at 76 while Lou Gehrig didn’t even make it to 40. We’re about to be awash in Hawking tributes, so I want to share with you my short experience of the man and maybe give more depth to his character than we might take away from the evening news.
Several years ago I was booked to speak at a (pre-Intel) Window River Systems event at the Claremont Hotel in Oakland. The Claremont, like the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, is a huge old hotel built entirely of wood. Creaky old elevators and creaky old staircases connect all the floors but stairs are faster and I was in a hurry to give my speech because Jerry Fiddler was waiting. So I took the stairs two at a time then burst through a set of double doors and straight into…
Stephen Hawking.
You know how in moments of great danger time seems to slow down? That’s what happened to me. I pushed both doors open at once and there, perhaps a foot in front of me, was Hawking. My feet weren’t even touching the ground and there was this startled looking little guy in an electric wheel chair surrounded by four beautiful women.
It may have been a matter of pride, then, that Hawking outlived Hugh Hefner, given that they had such similar tastes.
The women moved to protect their charge but I was already bounding over the chair, somehow managing not to kill the most famous physicist on Earth. While I say that Hawking was startled, our eyes locked and I didn’t see any fear. He was well defended after all.
It may surprise you to know that I once almost killed Dick Feynman, too, but that’s a different story for another time.
There was no time to waste so I went straight on to my speech where I told this same story before the paint even had a chance to dry.
Hawking was at the Claremont for a physics event and that evening I ran into him again (metaphorically, not literally) holding court in the bar. Still surrounded by his four comely assistants, Hawking was parallel parked at the bar drinking a double martini through a straw that was at least two feet long.
I apologized for almost killing him and bought Hawking another double martini for his trouble.
He drank it.
epic!
Thank you for not having killed prof. Hawking!
Twitter is full at the moment of people who almost killed Hawking by running into his chair. I think it must have happened a lot 🙂
An honest person telling this story would say he walked past Hawking. Con men, like our host, make that out to be a personal meeting.
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There was not a word spoken, other than a weak “sorry”. No different than the people you brush past on the sidewalk 10 times a day.
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Only thing interesting about the story is how a famous person, even a cripple, has hot babes attending him. Maybe now that he’s dead women will accuse him of Harvey Weinstein-like behavior /jk
That’s because beautiful young women have always been attracted to men of power….and still are. Hawking was pretty well-known for his “likes” in this area, although it’s probably good for him that he made it out of this world just as our society became so “unsafe” and toxic to great men like him.
s/Window River Systems/Wind River Systems/, at one moment briefly the owners of the FreeBSD trademark.
I had a very similar encounter with Hawking in what I think was 1986. I had traveled from Manchester in the UK to Cambridge to give a Computer Science seminar based on my research. After lunch I became separated from my hosts, but managed to find the lecture theater in which I was to speak. As I reached to open the door, it opened towards me and I had to step aside as Hawking was wheeled out having just completed his own lecture – presumably not on Computer Science. This did absolutely nothing for my confidence before beginning my talk as I kept thinking that my presentation would pale into insignificance compared to that of the previous speaker. It was a very brief, impersonal encounter, but one I still remember very clearly.
I can’t wait to hear the story of how you almost killed Richard Feynman.
And we can find out who Richard is ….. ? Next, google search …..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
I think the jury is out on what his condition was. It was certainly related to ALS, and likely an auto-immune disease, but but there’s evidence it wasn’t exactly ALS, which may have given him the advantage on Gehrig.
Stephen Hawking was a great scientist and incredible human. Godspeed.
Great to see a quick update about a famous person who you didn’t know either. I guess that means you are still alive. How about a post about those mine servers? (runs for cover)
How about you GFY?
We’re probably about 2 months away from a post promising an update soon about how the Mineservers are progressing.
“Physicists I Have Nearly Killed”, an occasional series by Bob Cringely.
So many people reporting a close and personal experience with Stephen Hawking. How did he have time to do any research?
>> … Hawking outlived Hugh Hefner…
It is a indeed a remarkable coincidence that in one year we lost the world’s two most prominent experts in black holes…
I was on stage with Stephen Hawking once, … although it was different than it sounds. He made a trip in the ’90s that took him thru San Jose. I bought tickets to see him give a talk. When we arrived at the auditorium we found it had been overbooked and the seating plan was all screwed up. To fix things, the management put a bunch of us in folding chairs, up on the stage off to the side of Hawking. I was about 15 feet away from him and being able to see him that closely, while also listening to the talk, is a great memory.
I actually have a somewhat similar memory about making it into a presentation by Hunter S. Thompson in the mid-1980’s (with a weird high-=tech connection), but it’s probably best left to another forum. Your post brought back that great memory, though!
Actually, the Hotel Del here in S.D. has been (fairly recently) rebuilt inside and although retains its original 1880’s construction, the elevators are much faster now! Not sure about the Claremont as I haven’t been there in years but they’ve also rebuilt the interior of The Mission Inn in Riverside in a similar manner. It’s actually a nice treat to visit these 100+ year old Victorian hotels….especially if you are into ghosts (literally).
Sad to hear of the passing of the great Stephen Hawking, but glad that he made it to such a “ripe old age,” much longer than originally expected. R.I.P.
[…] The Full Story […]
Hefner was born 16 years before Hawking and died one year earlier at age 91. Hawking died at 76. Hefner outlived Hawking. If an old man died today and a teenager died tomorrow, people wouldn’t say the teenager outlived the old man…
Don’t be so literal. I get the original point just fine.
I’d like to thank both of you for making me look it up: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outlive . Apparently there are two meanings: to live beyond or to live longer than.
Jerry Pournelle’s death was in September of last year, that was a rather tough one too. Sometimes I ask myself what, if anything, I’ve learned from reading various sites or authors or columns. Jerry’s writings (even the letters to him that he published) always seemed to yield some useful bit of information which sometimes grew into a whole new area of interest. I miss that quite a lot and haven’t found a new source for it.
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Though I’m sure if he could read this right now he’d point to his stack of books and ask if he didn’t quite leave enough for me to chew on as it is.
I remember Jerry Pournelle’s participation in the TWIT podcasts. He told a number of interesting tech stories, like how Microsoft’s hand-writing recognition worked perfectly for him “Well, Microsoft handwriting recognition works on my handwriting because it was developed in Moscow, and I visited there at just the right time: they needed samples of American handwriting so I let Stepan copy about 100 pages of my handwritten log.” Another interesting story was how he could easily reach Bill Gates by phone merely by calling the main Microsoft number after hours, no one else was around, so Bill would answer the phone himself.
Jerry Pournelle dead is more interesting than Bob Cringely alive.
Sometimes the comments on these articles are as good as the articles
Between the articles or comments there is usually some interesting information and points of view
I grew up when the computer press and software was big, I miss the mags, byte, Linux, programming mags
We have the internet but in the US we are loosing the press
Plus the internet is not as free as late Steve Barlow points out rip
I agree and I think another way to put it is that we’ve gained a lot of “information” and lost a lot of knowledge. There’s been such a bleeding out of people who have the advantage of having seen and known and have the intellect to analyze what they’ve seen in favor of people without that experience. When jobs no longer pay enough for people to make a living off them, who takes them? You have the unqualified who can’t find any better work on the one hand and the independently wealthy who don’t need the paycheck at all on the other. I refuse to romanticize the “old days” but the new times have definitely disappointed me.
There’s data, or information, and then there’s knowledge. And at yet another level, there’s wisdom.
“When jobs no longer pay enough for people to make a living off them, who takes them?”
Here’s a little research problem for you that might shed some light on the problem. What would
the federal minimum wage be if it had kept up with inflation? What would it be if it had kept up
with the growth in worker productivity?
As somebody who lived and worked in the “old days,” while it certainly wasn’t all wine and roses,
an entry-level, full-time minimum-wage job like dishwasher or gas station attendant provided a
living wage. To be sure, it was a spartan life, but it was possible. And most jobs paid a little over,
and/or had small pay hikes if you stayed on the job. With the generally growing economy, there
were usually opportunities for advancement.
Over the last thirty years or so, worker productivity in the U.S. has continued to increase — companies
earn more money per employee. Yet workers have not seen that reflected in their pay checks. The
gains have all gone to the C-suite and the shareholders. In turn companies have done everything possible
to deny wage and benefit increases to employees. There isn’t a single county in the entire country
where the federal minimum wage is a living wage.
…and you are both Physicist’s by education…and both of your went to school in England.
Physicist noun definition :
noun (fiz-uh-sist)
Someone who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge.
See also wizard, magician.
Dang it! Now Hawking will *never* get his Mineserver!
Well, there’s these people say it should be $21.16 an hour.
https://inequality.org/research/minimum-wage/
Most major cities have their own minimum wage at $15 an hour or higher. In Dallas/Ft. Worth suburbs where I live, people won’t work for less than about $9 an hour, and those are the high school kids. Most adults make over $11.00 an hour. If the economy does better, I think you could see the “defacto” minimum wage move closer to $15.00 an hour in urban areas.
I think it varies by market, and having a “national” minimum wage is a bad idea. In NYC, Boston, and San Francisco, it probably does need to be $20 an hour or maybe even $25. In rural Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi, or Tennessee, $10 an hour would probably get someone fed, housed, and a used car.
@netmouser, read “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman” by James Gleick: http://isbn.nu/9780679747048
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