I have no way of knowing whether Dr. Hawking’s contributions to cosmology and astronomy were as important as he is given credit for.
I only want to comment on three elements of the late scholar-celebrity’s life.
First, I suspect that a great deal of his notoriety was due to his ALS.
There is something about a disabled man with a supposed brilliant mind that is synergistic. The person becomes more important and brilliant the greater the disability. Call it the ‘wounded bird’ thesis as a close friend of mine who is a leader of the disability movement called it.
I told her I found her attractive but she is in fact quite the opposite curled up in her wheelchair. She said she gets that all the time from men. They have some inner need to protect and nourish a wounded bird.
I think some part of the Hawking fan base felt this way toward him, regardless of his intelligence or talent.
Second, I think his ALS combines well with a popular sense that really intelligent men are not really so much more outstanding than ordinary people. That their intelligence is offset by some accompanying failure. Hawking with ALS unable to speak would be a perfect example. Another popular scientist was John Nash who gained fame with the film A Beautiful Mind. He was severely disabled with paranoid schizophrenia. Got a film made about his genius.
These two men are in sharp contrast to Richard Feynman who is beloved by most real physicists for his genius. But Feynman was a prankster, drummer who loved good looking women. In other words a real man with a great mind.
My third point is that brilliance in science is subject to celebrity-hood. But comparable genius in the general world of knowledge is usually unrecognized.
Science has the advantage of the metaphor of steady linear progress, so a scientific contributor can be placed on a timeline of progress from others such as Galileo, Newton, Planck, Einstein, Heisenberg to Bohr….etc.
No such timeline exists for other greater geniuses such as Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Max Weber, George Orwell, John Cage and Mary Douglas.
These geniuses operated in fields where few people have the broad knowledge and context to appreciate the great leaps of understanding involved.
I am particularly conscious of this later group since my own original ideas are in fields that are relatively empty with few other people thinking about the subjects where I have been a pioneer.