bummed about this one. My dad gave me back my copy of "A brief history of time" during Christmas (I forgot he even had it from a decade back) and just by chance I've been rereading it since. I wish we celebrated minds like his the way they deserve everyday, but we don't. A brilliant mind and able to convey immense concepts so even a mongo like me could understand it.
The "we" you speak of is decreasing every day. There are so many who praise his theories, even if they don't understand them. If anything, he continued the spark of Carl Sagan's fascinations of the Titans that came before him (Aristostle, Newton). Today we have scientific celebrities like Bill Nye, Michio Kaku, Neil degrasse fuckin Tyson. Of which their collective discoveries have resulted in nameless and countless technological developments. Of which, we use primarily to kill each other in digital fashion.
this will start to get a bit philosophical, but the truly intelligent people in the world can't really be famous anymore. it's very much the tesla vs edison situation. edison didn't invent the light bulb, tesla did. edison just figured out how to make money off the idea. the current world really rewards the edison's and punishes the tesla's. i would argue that the AMOUNT of hawking's, tesla's, etc, are the same, it's just that they are perfectly happy sitting around inventing and/or exploring ideas in relative peace and quiet.
The question is, during Tesla and Edison times, were they really famous ? I mean, did the common people knew about them ? For us, now, we know that they were incredible, but back then, maybe outside of the university circle jerks, they were maybe pretty unknown ?