It has been said that Cambridge is the only true university town in England. Oxford is a much larger city and has, lying beyond the ring road, heavy industrial areas nestling next to one of Europe’s largest housing estates. Cambridge is altogether quainter and more thoroughly dominated by academia. Although evidence suggests that the University of Cambridge was established by defectors from Oxford, both seats of learning were created at around the same time in the twelfth century, using as their model the University of Paris. Like Oxford, Cambridge University is a collection of colleges under the umbrella of a central university authority. Like Oxford, it attracts the very best scholars from around the world and has a global reputation, paralleled only by its great rival and historical twin a mere eighty miles away. And, like Oxford, it is steeped in tradition, drama, and history.

Having just returned from abroad, Stephen Hawking, B.A. (Hon.), arrived in Cambridge in October 1962, exchanging the scorched, barren landscape of the Middle East for autumnal wind and drizzle across the darkening fields of East Anglia. As he traveled past the

meadows and gently rolling hills toward his new home that rainy morning, a darkening shadow hung skulking behind the peace and calm of the “only true university town in England,” and indeed behind every other human dwelling elsewhere on the planet, for the world was in the terrifying grip of the Cuba crisis.

It really did seem as though the world could end in a blaze of nuclear fury at any moment. In those relatively calm post-glasnost days, it is perhaps hard to imagine the atmosphere of the time, the insecurity, and the uncertainty. Hawking was no different from the next man in experiencing a sense of hopelessness in the face of events over which he had absolutely no control. Old idols, the beautiful and the good, were fading and falling; new heroes stood on the sidelines, ready to emerge. Marilyn Monroe had died in August that year, John F. Kennedy had little more than twelve months to live, and the Beatles were poised on the brink of huge international fame unparalleled in the history of popular culture.

Despite the overbearing threat of imminent annihilation, life in Cambridge went on pretty much as usual. Students began to settle into their new homes and find their feet in a strange city, the townsfolk continued about their daily business as they had done for the thousand years during which the city had existed. In the days leading up to his move to Cambridge, with the world outside looking set to tear itself apart, Stephen Hawking was gradually becoming aware of an inner personal crisis. Toward the end of his time at Oxford he had begun to find some difficulty in tying his shoelaces, he kept bumping into things, and a number of times he felt his legs give way from under him. Without a drink passing his lips he would, on occasion, find his speech slurring as though he were intoxicated. Not wanting to admit to himself that something was wrong, he said nothing and tried to get on with his life.

Upon arriving in Cambridge another problem arose. When he had applied to do a Ph.D. at the university there were two possible

areas of research open to him: elementary particles, the study of the very small, and cosmology, the study of the very large. As he has said himself:

I thought that elementary particles were less attractive, because, although they were finding lots of new particles, there was no proper theory of elementary particles. All they could do was arrange the particles in families, like in botany. In cosmology, on the other hand, there was a well-defined theory—Einstein’s general theory of relativity.¹

However, there was a snag. He had originally chosen to go to Cambridge University because at the time Oxford could not offer cosmological research and, most important, he wanted to study under Fred Hoyle, who had a worldwide reputation as the most eminent scientist in the field. But instead of getting Hoyle, he was placed under the charge of one Dennis Sciama, of whom he had never heard. For a while this turn of events struck him as disastrous, but he came to realize that Sciama would be a far better supervisor because Hoyle was forever traveling abroad and could find little time to play the role of mentor. He soon discovered too that Dr. Sciama was himself a very fine scientist and a tremendously helpful and stimulating supervisor, always available for him to talk to.

Hawking’s first term at Cambridge went rather badly. He found that he had not studied mathematics to a sufficiently high standard as an undergraduate and was soon struggling with the complex calculations involved in general relativity. He was still operating in his somewhat lazy work mode, and his research material was becoming increasingly demanding. For the second time in his life he was beginning to flounder. Sciama (who died in 1999) recalled that, although his student seemed exceptionally bright and ready to argue his point thoroughly and knowledgably, part of Hawking’s problem was finding a suitable research problem to study.

The difficulty was that a research assignment had to be sufficiently taxing to meet the requirements of a Ph.D. course, and, because relativity research at that level was fairly new and unusual, the right sort of problem was not easy to find.

Sciama believed that at that time Hawking came close to losing his way and flunking the whole thing. This was a situation which persisted for at least the first year of his Ph.D. Things would begin to resolve themselves only through a complex series of events initiated by changes already unfolding inside Hawking’s own body.

When Stephen returned to St. Albans for the Christmas vacation at the end of 1962, the whole of southern England was covered in a thick blanket of snow. In his own mind he must have known that something was wrong. The strange clumsiness he had been experiencing had occurred more frequently but had gone unobserved by anyone in Cambridge. Sciama remembered noticing early in the term that Hawking had a very slight speech impediment but had put it down to nothing more than that. However, when he arrived at his parents’ home, because he had been away for a number of months, they instantly noticed that something was wrong. His father’s immediate conclusion was that Stephen had contracted some strange bug while in the Middle East the previous summer—a logical conclusion for a doctor of tropical medicine. But they wanted to be sure. They took him to the family doctor who referred him to a specialist.

On New Year’s Eve the Hawkings threw a party at 14 Hillside Road. It was, as might have been expected, a civilized affair with sherry and wine; close friends were invited, including school friends John McClenahan and Michael Church. The word passed around that Stephen was ill, the exact nature of the disease unknown, but something picked up in foreign climes was the general impression. Michael Church remembers that Stephen had difficulties pouring a

glass of wine and that most of the liquid ended up on the tablecloth rather than in the glass. Nothing was said, but there was an atmosphere of foreboding that evening.

A young woman named Jane Wilde, whom Stephen had previously known only vaguely, had also been invited to the party. A mutual friend formally introduced him to her during the course of the evening. Jane also lived in St. Albans and attended the local high school. As the dying hours of 1962 trickled away and 1963 began, the two of them began to talk and to get to know each other. She was in the upper sixth and had a place at Westfield College in London to begin reading modern languages the following autumn. Jane found the twenty-one-year-old Cambridge postgraduate a fascinating and slightly eccentric character and was immediately attracted to him. She recalls sensing an intellectual arrogance about him, but “there was something lost, he knew something was happening to him of which he wasn’t in control.”²From that night their friendship blossomed.

He was due back in Cambridge to begin the Lent term later in January, but instead of resuming his work there he was taken into the hospital to undergo a series of investigatory tests. Hawking recalls the experience vividly:

They took a muscle sample from my arm, stuck electrodes into me, and injected some radio-opaque fluid into my spine, and watched it going up and down with X-rays, as they tilted the bed. After all that, they didn’t tell me what I had, except that it was not multiple sclerosis, and that I was an atypical case. I gathered, however, that they expected it to continue to get worse, and that there was nothing they could do except give me vitamins. I could see that they didn’t expect them to have much effect. I didn’t feel like asking for more details, because they were obviously bad.³

The doctors advised him to return to Cambridge and his cosmological research, but that, of course, was easier said than done.

Work was not going well and now the ever-present possibility of imminent death hung over his every thought and action. He returned to Cambridge and awaited the results of the tests. A short time later he was diagnosed as having a rare and incurable disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, known in the United States as Lou Gehrig’s disease after the Yankee baseball player who died from the illness. In Britain it is usually called motor neuron disease.

ALS affects the nerves of the spinal cord and the parts of the brain that produce voluntary motor functions. The cells gradually degenerate over a period of time and cause paralysis as muscles atrophy throughout the body. Apart from this the brain is unaffected, and the higher functions such as thought and memory are left untouched. The body gradually wastes away, but the patient’s mind remains intact. The usual prognosis is gradual immobility, followed by creeping paralysis, leading eventually to death by suffocation or pneumonia as the respiratory muscles seize up. The symptoms are painless, but in the final stages of the disease patients are often given morphine to alleviate chronic depression.

One of the amazing ironies of the situation was that Stephen Hawking just happened to be studying theoretical physics, one of the very few jobs for which his mind was the only real tool he needed. If he had been an experimental physicist, his career would have been over. Quite naturally this was little compensation to the twenty-one-year-old who, like everyone else, had seen a normal life stretching ahead of him rather than a death sentence from a neurological disease. The doctors had given him two years.

Upon hearing the news, Hawking fell into a deep depression. Fleet Street legend has it that he locked himself away in a darkened room, plummeting into heavy drinking and listening to a great deal of high-volume Wagner while wallowing in a drunken haze of self-pity. However, he has gone on record as saying that the stories of

excessive drinking are exaggerated but that, feeling a somewhat “tragic character,”⁴ he did shut himself away for a while and listened to a lot of music, especially Wagner.

Reports in magazine articles that I drank heavily are an exaggeration. The trouble is, once one article said it, other articles copied it, because it made a good story. Anything that has appeared in print so many times must be true.⁵

The truth may never be known, but Hawking’s recollection of events rings true. The idea of getting totally smashed and staying that way to nullify the mental pain strikes one as an eminently reasonable thing to do in the circumstances. Furthermore, there is evidence to support his assertion. Dennis Sciama, for one, once said that he has no recollection of Hawking disappearing for a long period, as the tabloids have implied. Being used to seeing his students every day during term time, he would have been the first to have noticed Hawking’s absence.

However, there is little doubt that he was deeply shocked by the news and experienced a time of deep depression. There seemed very little point in continuing with his research because he might not live long enough to finish his Ph.D. For a while he quite naturally believed that there was nothing to live for. If he was going to die within a few years, then why bother to do anything now? He had never been attracted by religion or any thought of an afterlife, so there was no crumb of comfort to be found there. He would live his span and then die. That was his fate. Being no different from the next person faced with any form of personal tragedy, he kept thinking, “How could something like that happen to me? Why should I be cut off like this?”⁶

He tells of an experience while he was undergoing tests that made a great impression on him and helped him through those nightmare days back in Cambridge:

While I had been in hospital, I had seen a boy I vaguely knew die of leukemia, in the bed opposite me. It had not been a pretty sight. Clearly there were people who were worse off than me. At least my condition didn’t make me feel sick. Whenever I feel inclined to be sorry for myself, I remember that boy.⁷

He was experiencing some disturbing but poignant dreams at the time. In hospital he dreamt that he was going to be executed. He suddenly realized that there were a lot of worthwhile things he could do if he were to be reprieved. In another recurring dream he thought that he could sacrifice his life to save others: “After all, if I were going to die anyway, it might as well do some good,” he dreamed.⁸

After Hawking had dragged himself out of his depression and back to work, his father decided to pay Dennis Sciama a visit. He explained the situation and asked if Stephen could complete his Ph.D. in a shorter time than the three-year minimum because his son might not live that long. Sciama, knowing perhaps better than anyone what his student was really capable of, told Frank Hawking that any idea of finishing in less than three years was impossible. Whether Sciama realized at the time that Hawking would need his work to help him through is another matter; but he knew the rules, and despite the fact that his student may have been dying, they could not be bent to suit him.

Most people believed that the medical predictions were correct and that Hawking had a very short time to live. John McClenahan vividly remembers that, on the eve of his departure to work in America for a year, Hawking’s sister Mary had said to him that, if he decided not to return within a year, he would probably never see his friend again. Once it had taken a grip, the disease developed quickly. Jane met Stephen again soon after he was released from the hospital and found him confused and lacking the will to live.

However, there is little doubt that her appearance on the scene was a major turning point in Hawking’s life. The two of them began to see a lot more of one another, and a strong relationship developed. It was finding Jane that enabled him to break out of his depression and regenerate some belief in his life and work. Meanwhile, the Ph.D. progressed at a painfully slow rate.

He was not the only student working with Sciama. A South African, George Ellis, had been the supervisor’s first student when Sciama had taken up his post in 1961. A year later Hawking arrived, followed the year after by two other students who would, along with Ellis, become lifelong friends and colleagues—Brandon Carter and Martin Rees. Together with a number of others they formed a small group of relativists and cosmologists, all working on slightly different areas within the same field.

They became good friends as well as co-workers, often relaxing in one of the city’s pubs in the evening or going to concerts, plays, and films together when they had had enough of talking physics over a pint of beer. There were common interests other than their work. Ellis was always very interested in politics and vehemently antiapartheid. In Hawking he found a sympathetic set of attitudes, and they would often talk politics. Sitting beside pub fires in the winter and in gardens on summer evenings, the two of them would discuss anything, from the Vietnam War to Black Power. They were all introduced to Jane, of course, and when she made the trip to Cambridge on weekends the whole group would often go out together to eat or to picnic by the river, watching the punts glide by.

During Hawking’s first year he worked with the other students and supervisors in the Phoenix Wing of the Cavendish Laboratory, which had been set up by James Clerk Maxwell in the 1870s. In the early 1960s the head of the physics department, George Batchelor, managed to persuade the university to establish a separate mathe-

matics and theoretical physics department in what used to be known as the Old University Press Building in Silver Street. It became known as the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP).

The system at Cambridge is such that both undergraduate and postgraduate students are enrolled in one of the colleges yet work in university buildings with others in the same field but from different colleges. Hawking was a student of Trinity Hall and would eat there in the evenings and be assigned accommodation by the college, but he did not work in Trinity Hall buildings or exclusively with Trinity Hall students and academic staff.

The atmosphere in the physics department was very informal, and Ph.D. students had no rigid timetable or course to follow. The job of the supervisor is to suggest a set of problems or targets and discuss with the student plans of attack and give guidance where necessary. Sciama remembered how, on a number of occasions, he would dash into Hawking’s office with a new idea for something his charge was working on, and they would then thrash out the scheme together. At other times Hawking would go to see Sciama in his office, a fondly remembered place, the walls covered with modern art prints between the shelves of books and papers.

As well as attending lectures at the university, all the Ph.D. students at the DAMTP attended regular seminars, where thirty or forty people would listen to talks given by one of the teaching staff or a visiting lecturer. These would be followed by a general discussion. But the most important place for conversation and exchanging ideas was in the Tea Room. In the twice-daily ritual, well established at the Cavendish and carried over to Silver Street, everyone would meet at 11 a.m. for coffee and 4 p.m. for tea to exchange their latest thoughts and ideas. Students shared offices, and their doors were nearly always open to all—there was never any feeling of working secretly or keeping ideas to oneself. It was in this atmos-

phere of free communication that Hawking happened to stumble upon his first significant project during his early years as a Ph.D. student.

Fred Hoyle was a very big name in the physics department of Cambridge University, widely known for his ideas about the origins of the Universe. An inveterate self-publicist, he was very good at manipulating the media and was of the breed of scientist who would on occasion publicly express unrefereed and unverified theories. His justification for this was simple. He was not an egomaniac or intellectual cowboy, but to acquire funds for his research he needed to make a public splash, to be internationally famous. Publicity was of the utmost importance to him.

Hoyle had not always been in such an elevated position. The son of a Yorkshire textile merchant, he had entered Cambridge in the 1930s on a full scholarship and had been hardened by the experience of feeling socially inadequate because of his background and strange accent. Although he proved himself intellectually superior to most of his contemporaries, he was changed by the experience and emerged as a difficult customer to deal with. For much of his time as a professor at Cambridge he was engaged in fierce arguments with the authorities as well as many of his colleagues. Soon after the move to Silver Street, Hoyle set up his own institute in Cambridge but still used the brains and help of many at the DAMTP.

During the arguments and upheavals at Cambridge, Hoyle was very much involved with the steady state theory of the Universe. He had developed the idea with the mathematician Hermann Bondi at King’s College, London, and the astronomer Thomas Gold, but at the time it was simply the more scientifically evolved of two contending theories. He detested the alternative theory of a spontaneous creation of the Universe, which he once described as a party girl jumping out of a birthday cake—it just wasn’t dignified or ele-

gant. Much to his later amusement, he became the creator of the term “Big Bang,” a phrase coined deliberately to ridicule the idea and dropped into a radio program in which he was propounding his own steady state theory.

As well as developing his theory of the origin of the Universe, Hoyle acted as supervisor to a select group of students. One of his charges was a graduate student named Jayant Narlikar. Narlikar had been assigned the task of working through some of the mathematics for Hoyle’s theory as part of the research material for his Ph.D. He also happened to occupy the office next to Hawking’s. Hawking became very interested in Narlikar’s equations. Without too much persuasion, Narlikar shared the research material he was working on and Hawking began to develop the theories further. During the next few months Hawking spent more and more time walking between his friend’s office and his own, clutching pages full of mathematical interpretations in one hand and leaning heavily on his newly acquired walking stick with the other.

At this point it should be emphasized that Hawking had no malicious intent toward Hoyle or, indeed, Narlikar. He was quite simply curious about the material and was floundering with his own projects. The equations and their meaning were fascinating and perhaps initially more stimulating than his own research. Besides which, the whole approach within the department was one of shared goals and ideals.

Before too long things came to a head. Hoyle decided to make a public announcement of his findings at a meeting of the Royal Society in London. Although it was certainly not without precedent, some of his colleagues considered that he was being overly keen in doing this because the work had not been refereed. Hoyle gave his talk to around a hundred people; at the end there was warm applause and the usual post-lecture hubbub of conversation. Then he asked if there were any questions. Naturally Hawking had

attended and had followed the arguments closely. He stood up slowly, clutching his stick. The room fell silent.

“The quantity you’re talking about diverges,” he said.

Subdued murmurs passed around the audience. The gathered scientists saw immediately that, if Hawking’s assertion were correct, Hoyle’s latest offering would be shown to be false.

“Of course it doesn’t diverge,” Hoyle replied.

“It does,” came Hawking’s defiant reply.

Hoyle paused and surveyed the room for a moment. The audience was absolutely silent. “How do you know?” he snapped.

“Because I worked it out,” Hawking said slowly.

An embarrassed laugh passed through the room. This was the last thing Hoyle wanted to hear. He was furious with the young upstart. But any enmity between the two men was short lived—Hawking had demonstrated himself to be too good a physicist for that. But Hoyle considered Hawking’s action to be unethical and told him so. In return, Hawking and others pointed out that Hoyle had been unethical in announcing results that had not been verified. The only innocent party, who no doubt had to bear the full brunt of Hoyle’s anger, was the middleman, Narlikar.

Although Hoyle is every bit Hawking’s intellectual equal, on this occasion the younger man turned out to be absolutely correct: the quantity Hoyle had been talking about did indeed diverge, which meant that the latest component of his theory was wrong. Hawking wrote a paper summarizing the mathematical findings that had led him to realize this. It was well received by his peers and established him as a promising young researcher. While still trying to sort out his own Ph.D. work with Sciama, Hawking was already beginning to make a name for himself within the rarefied atmosphere of cosmological research.

During his first two years at Cambridge, the effects of the ALS disease rapidly worsened. He was beginning to experience enormous difficulty in walking and was compelled to use a stick in order to move just a few feet. His friends helped him as best they could, but most of the time he shunned any assistance. Using walls and objects as well as sticks, he would manage, painfully slowly, to traverse rooms and open areas. There were many occasions when these supports were not enough. Sciama remembered clearly, as do his colleagues, that on some days Hawking would turn up at the office with a bandage around his head, having fallen heavily and received a nasty bump.

His speech was also becoming seriously affected by the disease. Instead of being merely slurred, his speaking voice was now rapidly becoming unintelligible, and even close colleagues were experiencing some difficulty in understanding what he was saying. Nothing slowed him down, however; in fact, he was just getting into his stride. Work was progressing faster and more positively than it had ever done in his entire career, and this serves to illustrate his attitude to his illness. Crazy as it may seem, ALS is simply not that important to him. Of course he has had to suffer the humiliations and obstructions facing all those in our society who are not able bodied, and naturally he has had to adapt to his condition and to live under exceptional circumstances. But the disease has not touched the essence of his being, his mind, and so has not affected his work.

More than anyone else, Hawking himself would wish to underplay his disability and to concentrate on his scientific achievements, for that is really what is important to him. Those working with him, and the many physicists around the world who hold him in the highest regard, do not view Hawking as anything other than one of them. The fact that he cannot now speak and is immobile without the technology at his fingertips is quite irrelevant. To them he is friend, colleague, and, above all, great scientist.

Having come to terms with ALS and found someone in Jane Wilde with whom he could share his life on a purely personal level, he began to blossom. The couple became engaged, and the frequency of weekend visits increased. It was obvious to everyone that they were sublimely happy and immensely important to each other. Jane recalls, “I wanted to find some purpose to my existence, and I suppose I found it in the idea of looking after him. But we were in love.”⁹ On another occasion she said, “I decided what I was going to do, so I did. He was very, very determined, very ambitious. Much the same as now. He already had the beginnings of the condition when I first knew him, so I’ve never known a fit, able-bodied Stephen.”¹⁰

For Hawking, his engagement to Jane was probably the most important thing that had ever happened to him: it changed his life, gave him something to live for, and made him determined to live. Without the help that Jane gave him, he almost certainly would not have been able to carry on or had the will to do so.

From this point on his work went from strength to strength, and Sciama began to believe that Hawking might, after all, manage to bring together the disparate strands of his Ph.D. research. It was still touch and go, but another chance encounter was just around the corner.

Sciama’s research group became very interested in the work of a young applied mathematician, Roger Penrose, who was then based at Birkbeck College in London. The son of an eminent geneticist, Penrose had studied at University College in London and had gone on to Cambridge in the early fifties. After research in the United States he had begun in the early sixties to develop ideas of singularity theory that interfaced perfectly with the ideas then emerging from the DAMTP.

The group from Cambridge began to attend talks at King’s College in London where the great mathematician and cocreator of the steady state theory, Hermann Bondi, was professor of applied mathematics. King’s acted as a suitable meeting point for Penrose (who traveled across London), those from Cambridge, and a small group of physicists and mathematicians from the college itself. Sciama took Carter, Ellis, Rees, and Hawking to the meetings with the idea that the discussions might spark applications to their own work. However, there were times when Hawking almost failed to make it to London.

Brandon Carter remembers one particular occasion when the group arrived late at the railway station and the train was already drawing in. They all ran for it, forgetting about Stephen, who was struggling along with his sticks. It was only after they had installed themselves in the carriage that they were aware he was not with them. Carter recalls looking out of the window, seeing a pathetic figure struggling toward them along the platform and realizing that Stephen might not make it before the train pulled away. Knowing how Hawking was fiercely against being treated differently from others, they did not like to help him too much. However, on this occasion Carter and one of the others jumped out to help him along the platform and on to the train.

It would have been an odd twist of fate indeed if Hawking had not made it to at least one of those London meetings because it was through them that his whole career took another positive turn. Over the course of the talks at King’s, Roger Penrose had introduced his colleagues to the idea of a space-time singularity at the center of a black hole, and naturally the group from Cambridge was tremendously excited by this.

One night, on the way back to Cambridge, they were all seated together in a second-class compartment and had begun to discuss what had been said at the meeting that evening. Feeling disinclined

to talk for a moment, Hawking peered through the window, watching the darkened fields stream past and the juxtaposition of his friends reflected in the glass. His colleagues were arguing over one of the finer mathematical points in Penrose’s discussion. Suddenly, an idea struck him, and he looked away from the window. Turning to Sciama sitting across from him, he said, “I wonder what would happen if you applied Roger’s singularity theory to the entire Universe.” In the event it was that single idea that saved Hawking’s Ph.D. and set him on the road to science superstardom.

Penrose published his ideas in January 1965, by which time Hawking was already setting to work on the flash of inspiration that had struck him on the way home from London to Cambridge that night after the talk. Applying singularity theory to the Universe was by no means an easy problem, and within months Sciama was beginning to realize that his young Ph.D. student was doing something truly exceptional. For Hawking this was the first time he had really applied himself to anything. As he says:

I . . . started working hard for the first time in my life. To my surprise, I found I liked it. Maybe it is not really fair to call it work. Someone once said, “Scientists and prostitutes get paid for doing what they enjoy.”¹¹

When he was satisfied with the mathematics behind the ideas, he began to write up his thesis. In many respects it ended up as a pretty messy effort because he had been in something of a wilderness for much of the first half of his time at Cambridge. The problems he and Sciama had experienced in finding him suitable research projects left a number of holes and unanswered questions in the thesis. However, it had one saving grace—his application of singularity theory during his third year.

The final chapter of Hawking’s thesis was a brilliant piece of work and made all the difference to the awarding of the Ph.D. The

work was judged by an internal examiner, Dennis Sciama, and an expert external referee. As well as being passed or failed, a Ph.D. can be deferred, which means that the student has to resubmit the thesis at a later date, usually after another year. Thanks to his final chapter, Hawking was saved this humiliation and the examiners awarded him the degree. From then on the twenty-three-year-old physicist could call himself Dr. Stephen Hawking.