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The first words spoken by Stephen Hawking’s computerized voice when Leonard Mlodinow arrived in Cambridge were not reflections on the universe or the nature of time. It wasn’t even a simple greeting, although Mlodinow had flown 6,000 miles to be there.
Hawking was sitting in his famous wheelchair. With a twitch of his cheek, which the sensors of his glasses turned into cursor movements on a computer screen, he uttered a word: “banana”.
Put out, Mlodinow realized that it was a request for food only when a caregiver, Sandi, took action. Hawking was necessarily parsimonious with his words and the greeting “Welcome to DAMTP”, the famous department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University, came later.
Everyone, it seems, already has a broad sense of Hawking’s life: the scientific prodigy trapped in a wheelchair by an advanced motor neuron disease, the physicist who studied the properties of black holes, the success of his best-selling books. . There is a biopic, The theory of everything, his memoir and several biographies.
Even so, this hugely entertaining book looks fresh and compelling. Instead of the enchanted exaltation of a great mind, Stephen Hawking it is a human and intimate portrait of a brilliant scientist. While full of affection, he does not hesitate to describe Hawking’s intense intellectual drive, the mundane difficulties of his daily life, the emotional trials suffered by his two wives and the quarrels between his small army of caregivers.
It is also written from a privileged point of view. Mlodinow, a talented theoretical physicist and author, spent several years working with Hawking, co-writing two books, A history shorter than time is The great design, a scientific history of the universe. Their work sessions form the narrative backbone of this emotionally satisfying and intellectually stimulating memoir.
Describing the meals they share, the phrases they discuss, and the hair-raising expeditions, such as a boat trip on the River Cam with strawberries and champagne, Mlodinow conveys the joy that so many people have clearly felt around Hawking. His rebellious zest for life was contagious.
Mlodinow also communicates a sense of the thrill of scientific discovery, a thorough history of physics, and a well-balanced assessment of Hawking’s scientific achievements. Casual readers may not come any closer to understanding the mind of the universe, but they will know the exceptional mind of a scientist who perhaps did.
Hawking was the most celebrated physicist of his generation and is sometimes seen as Albert Einstein’s successor, a notion he rejected. However that does not diminish what Hawking has achieved, not least his fame and the millions he has earned from his best-selling books, in particular A brief history of time.
Media stardom may have annoyed some of Hawking’s cosmological colleagues, but help was needed to fund the entourage of assistants he needed to survive. “Stephen’s fame didn’t go to his head. He had always had a certain arrogance, “writes Mlodinow.” The book changed Stephen’s physical life, however, because his newfound celebrity sucked up so much of his time. “
The reward of working so closely with Hawking could be life-affirming; not so the intense requests, the necessary reserves of patience and the frequent exasperations. Mlodinow starts smoking at some point. And it is surprising that both of Hawking’s wives had deep religious faith, even though her theories postulated that God was not necessary for the creation of the universe (a deliberately delicate formulation which, in my view, leaves open the possibility that God could having done so).
What Hawking believed, as Mlodinow shows, was the human spirit. In an exciting moment, after a particularly grueling writing session lent to extra intensity by contact with Mlodinow’s death following a recent medical complication, he escapes to a pub where the bartender begins to explain the nature of black holes.
As he gets away with it and the owner’s wife rolls her eyes at his quibble – “most of it is correct” – Mlodinow reflects on Hawking’s legacy. His work transformed black holes from cosmological strangeness to popular knowledge, transforming not only physics but culture in general. The thought added to the feeling, Mlodinow muses, that despite his frailty, “Stephen was indestructible” – a graceful synthesis of the granite spirit behind Hawking’s lopsided smile.
Stephen Hawking: Friendship and physical memory, by Leonard Mlodinow, Allen Lane, RRP £ 20, 240 pages
John Paul Rathbone is FT’s executive opinion editor
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