Hawking vs Newton

The link between Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking is unusually direct. Both held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge, the chair Newton occupied from 1669 and Hawking from 1979. And both are honoured at Westminster Abbey, where Hawking's ashes were interred in 2018 close to Newton's grave. Few scientists are so neatly bracketed by history.

What Newton did

Newton, who lived from 1643 to 1727, has a fair claim to being the most influential scientist of all time. He formulated the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, showing that the same force governs a falling apple and an orbiting Moon. He invented calculus, the mathematical language of nearly all physics since, and transformed the study of light and optics. Newton essentially created the framework of classical physics that would stand unchallenged for more than two centuries.

What Hawking did

Hawking's universe is the one that emerged after Newton's was found to be incomplete. Newton's gravity was superseded by Einstein's general relativity, which Hawking then pushed to its limits, into the realm of black holes and the origin of the universe. Where Newton described a clockwork cosmos of forces and orbits, Hawking worked at the stranger frontier where gravity meets quantum mechanics, producing results like Hawking radiation that Newton could not have imagined.

An honest verdict

By the measure of sheer foundational impact, Newton stands alone with Einstein at the summit of physics; he built the ground others walk on. Hawking himself would not have claimed that stature, and was characteristically modest about his place in history. What the two share is not equal magnitude but a remarkable symmetry: the same Cambridge chair, the same final resting place, and a shared willingness to ask the largest questions their eras allowed. For more on where Hawking sits among the greats, see Hawking vs Einstein.