Facebook’s Newest Member Is Smarter Than You, Because His Name Is Stephen Hawking

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, longtime mathematics professor, honorary Royal Society of Arts fellow, lifetime Pontifical Academy of Sciences member, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Stephen Hawking has added a new item to his impressive and ever-growing list of credentials: Facebook member.
The 72-year-old Hawking joined the social network on October 7, and as of Friday night, Jacob Kastrenakes of The Verge said that his page was “already approach 1 million followers after being publicized just six hours ago.” Since then, it had surged past that mark and over the 1.15 million mark.
According to the page itself, the professor’s team will handle most of the day-to-day operations of the his social media activities – though Hawking himself will contribute to the page on occasion, and those posts will be marked with his initials, ‘-SH’. While Kastrenakes noted that the new Facebook page “in part appears to be a marketing move for the upcoming Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything,” it was still “an exciting moment for science enthusiasts.”
In his first post, Hawking wrote: “I have always wondered what makes the universe exist. Time and space may forever be a mystery, but that has not stopped my pursuit. Our connections to one another have grown infinitely and now that I have the chance, I’m eager to share this journey with you. Be curious, I know I will forever be. Welcome, and thank you for visiting my Facebook Page. –SH”
The page also features nearly two dozen photos, a video of an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that he made along with his family several months ago, and a message supporting the aforementioned Focus Features biopic, which according to Mashable’s Josh Dickey “became an instant Oscar contender when it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival” last month.
Dickey noted that the producers of the film, which stars Eddie Redmayne as Hawking and Felicity Jones as his wife Jane, said during a question and answer session following its Toronto premiere that Hawking had a tear in his eye following a private screening of the film. He also reportedly briefly commented that the film was “broadly true.”
Despite the clear tie-in with the forthcoming motion picture, Wired’s Issie Lapowsky, who quips that Hawking is “Facebook’s smartest new member,” said that the theoretical physicist “doesn’t strike us as the type to join Facebook just to cash in on the buzz surrounding the movie… He generates a substantial amount of buzz on his own.” Lapowsky added that “fans from Pakistan to Canada flooded his page with welcome messages and notes about what an inspiration the 72-year-old scientist is.”
Hawking’s most recent post on Facebook came on Friday, and in it he wrote that he “greatly enjoyed the STARMUS festival. It is a combination of science and rock music, both of which I love.” He noted that he was “interested in the talks by the astronauts and why the Soviet Union didn’t beat Neil Armstrong to the Moon,” but said that he would have to “read the transcript” later because he “didn’t understand the translation.”
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.