The Hawking Effect

Stephen Hawking (2018), Brief Answers to the Big Questions, John Murray, pp. 220

“Newton gave us answers. Hawking gave us questions.'

                     Kip S. Thorne, Memorial Service of Stephen Hawking

One year ago, to this day, on International Pi Day and Albert Einstein’s birthday, Stephen Hawking, internationally renowned cosmologist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University passed away. Arguably, the most celebrated and well-known living scientist of his time, Hawking broke frontiers in our understanding of the universe while blazing personal triumphs against a degenerative disorder. This volume of brief answers to the big questions is drawn from Hawking’s enormous and meticulously kept personal archives with a foreword by his on-screen alter ego Eddie Redmayne, introduction to his life and work by his long-term collaborator Kip Thorne of Caltech (US) and an afterword by his daughter Lucy. It is a volume celebrating his life, work and the inspiring person that Stephen Hawking was.

Questions and Answers

During his lifetime, Hawking was constantly queried by experts, world leaders, fellow scientists, business people and lay folk alike on everything from religion to science and the future of our planet. This book brings together ten such very big questions and Hawking’s responses to them. True to the eclectic nature of this exchange, only two out of the ten questions directly concern his discipline, cosmology. The rest include the stuff of science fiction like time travel and extra-terrestrial life to the future of humankind including prospects of colonizing space and being outsmarted by artificial intelligence. Stephen’s responses are detailed and scientific, his vision bold and daring, his spirit courageous and optimistic, his tone witty and self-deprecating. It also shows a remarkable openness to ideas, a child-like curiosity and a sense of wonder at everything around, profound respect and regard for the work of peers and intellectual forefathers, a constant awareness to privilege women (with his consistent use of the feminine pronoun throughout the book to refer to humankind), and silent pride in the achievements of humans over the last three centuries aided by science.

I went to the same college in Cambridge, Gonville & Caius, where Hawking was a fellow. I was at the King’s Parade (the iconic centre-town of Cambridge) with fellow Caians and people from all over the world as Cambridge bid adieu to its beloved professor. As to Caius and the rest of the world, his absence is not easily overcome. But we can take strength from his example and continue on the magnificent vision he shared with us.