"could try harder.."

Stephen Hawking was (ceremonially) buried at Westminster Abbey today. His memorial slab is next to that of Newton and Darwin, which if you ask me, is quite some achievement. Many will debate whether or not his impact on our understanding of our universe will turn out to be as impactful as that of his two co-interns but in many ways that's a fairly irrelevant point. In my view, what matters is that he overcame enormous impediments to achieve fantastic advances in his particular field of study. On the normal-distribution of academic scholarship he was definitely at the extremity of the bell-curve, I can't comment on the substance of his theories as to be perfectly honest I don't understand most of them, my academic record consisted mainly of teachers commenting things like "could be clearer" and "could try harder" in the margins of my (in comparison to Hawking's) pedestrian efforts.