Oh wow, I didn't realize he had recently died. His book Impossibility had a big impact on me growing up.

I do remember hearing a story about him, perhaps apocryphal. Apparently a grad student had been working on a paper and wanted to get Barrow's thoughts on it. With a great deal of trepidation, the student presented the draft to Barrow and Barrow said he'd take a look. A few days later Barrow returned the paper to the grad student with no changes, except for adding "John D. Barrow" to the author list. :)

That (and/or plagiarism, self- and not) is what tends to be behind somebody having "produced a stunning output of journal papers".

(There are exceptions, and I have no particular insight into this specific case.)

Since this mentions variation of the fine structure constant: studies of the Oklo reactor, which has recently come up again at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24739302 show no evidence of that over a relevant timescale.

I took John's class on theoretical cosmology while a master's student in Cambridge. He was remarkably old fashioned — he scribbled in his undecipherable handwriting on a bunch of transparent slides and used a projector to share things in class. He had a deep mellow voice and clearly had a supreme grasp of all areas of cosmology. It is a real shame he died so early.

Written by Paul Davies:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies

His book on SETI "The Eerie Silence" is fantastic btw. I don't agree with every assertion, but it covers the subject in amazing detail. I learned a lot.

Oh no. He was among the very first physics books I read as a youngster. What a sad departure.

This man had a profound impact on many diverse fields. A true Renaissance polymath.