Audience members with a stronger background in the field further lauded Hawking.
"He has some of the seminal ideas in the nature of quantum mechanics and relativity," said Raoul Bott, Graustein professor of mathematics and former master of Dunster House.
Indeed, Hawking drew a crowd because of his fame. Bound to a wheelchair for his adult life, he has overcome his handicap to become the world's foremost expert on theoretical physics. Each of his lectures took 30 hours to prepare, and he still managed to write another paper during his one-week stay at Harvard.
Hawking has worked to publicize his esoteric field with user-friendly books like A Brief History of Time.
"He's the Albert Einstein of popular culture," said Emily S. Lin '02.