[Rick Lee]

Hawking is a celebrity because of what he's done despite his paralysis and always being told that he has another year or two to live. Like Carl Sagan, Hawking has been able to explain a lot of what we know about the universe in consise layman's terms. I believe Hawking's only major find was proving that black holes emit gamma rays. He's still working on his grand unified theory, which, if he lives long enough to see it pan out, will probably rival Einstein's theory of relativity. Though nothing could impress me as much as the fact that Einstein published that when he was in his early 20's.