My Nephew has two PHD’s from the University of Chicago. One is in physics and the other in something similar called Cosmology I think. (It may be spelled differently).
We were discussing Hawking and he and several of his friends who also were in the same PHD program said he was not considered all that great within the profession. Yes he is intelligent but nothing out of the ordinary for physicists.
You know, I might be wrong and doing the man a disservice here, but I think there is an element of trying to "recapture past glories" with Hawking today. The simple fact is that science is a youngsters game. As you get older your mental powers decline - you are still as smart but it takes a little longer to get to the conclusions, to work things out in your head, and so on. And for a long time you can counter that with greater experience and wisdom, but eventually you just cannot keep up. And, in all fields, very early success leads to a higher expectation for the future, which it is almost impossible to match. In Hawkings case he also has the obvious and marked deterioration in his physical condition too.
I think he might be trying too hard to make another "big splash".