Documentary about Hawkings contributions to science

[Aaron Maiwald]

Hello Community,
as mentioned above I am currently gathering information for a documentary about Stephen Hawking scientific contributions. According to "The Guardian" the most important are:
- Singularities in Gravitational Collapse
-Blackhole mechanics
-How Blackholes can vanish
-How Galaxies might arise
-Wave function of the universe
First of all, do you think any major contribution is missing? Secondly, which of these works do you think is best suited for a layaudience, that has mostly no scientific background? There isn't more required than a superficial explanation, but I am under the impression that some (for example the wave function of the universe) are much harder to explain in simple terms than others(Hawking Radiation).
I am excited to hear what you think!

 

[jedishrfu]

You need to mention the bet he had with Kip Thorne and how he paid it secretly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne–Hawking–Preskill_bet

 

[bapowell]

To add a little clarification on "How galaxies might arise": this refers I believe to his work on how primordial density perturbations evolved in the early universe to seed large scale structure like galaxies. Also, "How black holes might vanish" is really a corollary to the "black hole mechanics" topic which I presume covers Hawking radiation (this radiation slowly saps a black hole's mass causing it to slowly evaporate). Lastly, the topic "black hole mechanics" should perhaps be retitled to emphasize that he really worked to marry quantum and statistical mechanics with black hole mechanics.

 

[windy miller]

Surely his biggest contribution is the information paradox. Whatever the resolution to the paradox pointing out it will have a huge impact on physics, already has.