How many scientists do you know in real life?

The death of physicist Stephen Hawking on March 14 at age 76 sparked a global outpouring of admiration. In our appreciation, Science News physics writer Emily Conover calls him “a black hole whisperer who divined the secrets of the universe’s most inscrutable objects." He was also among the very few cosmologists (hello, Carl Sagan) to have written an international best seller; Hawking was also the subject of an Academy Award–winning biopic (SN: 11/1/14, p. 28).

Hawking’s status as superstar scientist led us to ponder what other contemporary scientists people would immediately recall. Primatologist Jane