The list of western personalities on Weibo just got bigger with a heavy weight name: Stephen Hawking. The world famous theoretical physicist wrote his first Weibo post early this morning, which was shared more than 172,000 times and has generated 327,000 likes at time of writing.

“In my physical travels, I have only been able to touch the surface of your fascinating history and culture. But now I can communicate with you through social media”, wrote Hawking.

His message has been well received by Chinese netizens and in only 40 minutes Hawking gathered a following of over 200,000 Weibo users. His launching a Weibo presence is even more notable considering he has yet to create a verified Twitter account.

To see the incredible support he’s receiving, one simply has to go to his Weibo page, take note of the ‘followers’ number, and hit refresh. In the span of minutes, his following can increase by thousands as seen below with him gaining 24,000 followers in 5 minutes. Less than 5 hours after his first post, he already gathered more than 950,000 followers.