wavelength The distance from one wave crest to the next.
weak nuclear force One of the four fundamental forces of nature. The messenger particles (bosons) of the weak force are the W+, W–, and the Z°. The weak force is responsible for radioactivity, such as a type called beta radioactivity in the nuclei of atoms.
wormhole A hole or tunnel in spacetime, which may end in another universe or another part (or time) of our own universe.
References
PART I: 1942–1975
2 ‘Our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in’
1. Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 4.
2. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 9.
3. Ibid.
4. Professor Hawking’s Universe, BBC broadcast, 1983.
5. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 174.
6. John A. Wheeler, unpublished poem.
7. Feynman, p. 128.
8. Stephen W. Hawking, ‘Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?’, inaugural lecture as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Apri1 1980.
9. Stephen W. Hawking, ‘Is Everything Determined?’, unpublished, 1990.
10. Bryan Appleyard, ‘Master of the Universe: Will Stephen Hawking Live to Find the Secret?’, Sunday Times, 19 June 1988.
11. Murray Gell-Mann, lecture.
3 ‘Equal to anything!’
1. Stephen Hawking (ed., prepared by Gene Stone), A Brief History of Time: A Reader’s Companion, New York and London: Bantam Books, 1992, p. 24.
2. Except where otherwise noted, all quotations in Chapter 3 come from two unpublished articles by Stephen Hawking, ‘A Short History’ and ‘My Experience with Motor Neurone Disease’.
3. Hawking interview with Larry King.
4. Kristine Larsen, Stephen Hawking: A Biography, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007, p. 22.
5. Nigel Hawkes, ‘Hawking’s Blockbuster Sets a Timely Record’, Sunday Times, May 1988, p. 8.
6. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 4.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 9.
9. Ibid., p. 10.
10. Ibid., p. 13.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 12.
13. Larsen, p. 22.
14. All quotations from Isobel Hawking, in Hawking, Reader’s Companion, pp. 7, 8.
15. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 12.
16. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars: A Life with Stephen Hawking, London: Pan Books, 2000, p. 9.
17. Information about Majorca visit is from Larsen, p. 24.
18. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 23.
19. Ibid., p. 13.
20. Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, London: Bantam Books, 1994, p. 3.
21. Melissa McDaniel, Stephen Hawking: Revolutionary Physicist, New York: Chelsea House Publications, 1994, p. 28.
22. Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes, p. 3.
23. Judy Bachrach, ‘A Beautiful Mind, an Ugly Possibility’, Vanity Fair, June 2004, p. 145.
24. Larsen, pp. 25–6.
25. Michael Harwood, ‘The Universe and Dr. Hawking’, The New York Times Magazine, 23 January 1983, p. 57.
26. Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes, p. 46.
27. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 38.
28. Ibid., p. 36.
29. Ibid., p. 42.
30. Harwood, ‘Universe and Dr. Hawking’, p. 57.
31. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 38.
32. Ibid., p. 39.
33. Harwood, p. 57.
34. Ibid.
35. Gregg J. Donaldson, ‘The Man behind the Scientist’, Tapping Technology, May 1999, www.mdtap.org/tt/1999.05/1-art.html.
36. Larsen, p. 34.
37. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars, p. 11.
38. Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, London: Alma Books, 2008, p. 15.
4 ‘The realization that I had an incurable disease …’
1. Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 75.
2. Larsen, p. 39.
3. Denis W. Sciama, The Unity of the Universe, Garden City, NJ: Doubleday and Company, 1961, p. vii.
4. Stephen Hawking, ‘Sixty Years in a Nutshell’, in G. W. Gibbons, E. P. S. Shellard and S. J. Rankin (eds.), The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology: Celebrating Stephen Hawking’s Contributions to Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, (Stephen Hawking 60th Birthday Workshop and Symposium, January 2002), p. 106.
5. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 50.
6. For information about Stephen and Jane Hawking’s courtship I have relied on Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars and Travelling to Infinity, and on Hawking, ‘Short History’.
7. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars, p. 17.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 23.
10. Ibid., p. 25.
11. Ibid., p. 26.
12. Ibid., p. 29.
13. Ibid.
14. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 49.
15. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 53.
16. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars, p. 43.
17. Veash, Nicole Tuesday, ‘Ex-Wife’s Kiss-and-Tell Paints Hawking as Tyrant’, Indian Express, Bombay, 3 August 1999, p. 1.
18. Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, p. 43.
19. Ibid., p. 44.
20. Ibid.
21. Master of the Universe: Stephen Hawking, BBC, broadcast 1989.
22. Appleyard.
23. Jane Hawking, personal interview with the author, Cambridge, April 1991.
24. Larsen, p. 45.
25. Ibid., pp. 45–6.
26. Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, p. 56.
27. ABC, 20/20, broadcast 1989.
28. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars, p. 68.
5 ‘The big question was, was there a beginning or not?’
1. Hawking, ‘Short History’, p. 5.
2. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars (rev. edn, 2004), p. 80.
3. Larsen, p. 52.
4. Hawking, Jane, Music to Move the Stars (rev. edn), p. 91.
5. BBC, Horizon, ‘The Hawking Paradox’, 2005.
6. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars (rev. edn), pp. 113–14.
7. ABC, 20/20.
8. Bob Sipchen, ‘The Sky No Limit in the Career of Stephen Hawking’, West Australian, 16 June 1990.
9. Appleyard.
10. John Boslough, Beyond the Black Hole: Stephen Hawking’s Universe, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1984, p. 107.
11. Hawking, ‘Short History’, p. 34.
12. BBC, Horizon: ‘The Hawking Paradox’.
13. Bryce S. DeWitt, ‘Quantum Gravity’, Scientific American, vol. 249, no. 6 (December 1983), p. 114.
14. S. W. Hawking, ‘Black Holes in General Relativity’, Communications in Mathematical Physics 25 (1972), pp. 152–66.
6 ‘There is a singularity in our past’
1. Larsen, p. 54.
2. Hawking, ‘Sixty Years in a Nutshell’, p. 111.
3. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 42.
4. Stephen W. Hawking, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, March 1966.
5. S. W. Hawking and R. Penrose, ‘The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A314 (1970), pp. 529–48.
6. BBC, Horizon, ‘The Hawking Paradox’.
7. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 103.
8. Larsen, p. 57.
9. S. W. Hawking, ‘Gravitational Radiation from Colliding Black Holes’, Physics Review Letters 26 (1971), pp. 1344–6.
10. Jacob D. Bekenstein, ‘Black Hole Thermodynamics’, Physics Today, January 1980, pp. 24–6.
11. Kip Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, New York: W. W. Nort
on and Company, 1994, p. 427.
12. J. M Bardeen, B. Carter and S. W. Hawking, ‘The Four Laws of Black Hole Mechanics’, Communications in Mathematical Physics 31 (1973), p. 162.
13. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. vi.
14. Ibid., p. 105.
15. Stephen Hawking, personal interview with author, Cambridge, December 1989.
16. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 108.
17. Dennis Overbye, ‘The Wizard of Space and Time’, Omni, February 1979, p. 106.
18. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, pp. 93–4.
19. Boslough, p. 70.
20. Stephen Hawking, ‘Black Hole Explosions?’, Nature 248 (1974), pp. 30–31.
21. J. G. Taylor and P. C. W. Davies, paper in Nature 248 (1974).
22. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 108.
23. Boslough, p. 70.
24. Bernard Carr, ‘Primordial Black Holes’, in Gibbons, Shellard and Rankin (eds.), p. 236.
25. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 110.
26. Stephen Hawking, Hawking on the Big Bang and Black Holes, Singapore: World Scientific, 1993, p. 3.
27. J. B Hartle and S. W. Hawking, ‘Path-Integral Derivation of Black Hole Radiance’, Physical Review D13 (1976), pp. 2188–203.
PART II: 1970–1990
7 ‘These people must think …’
1. Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, p. 420.
2. Gerald Jonas, ‘A Brief History’, The New Yorker, 18 April 1988, p. 31.
3. E-mail correspondence: Jane Hawking to Alex Gallenzi, 24 February 2012.
4. Ellen Walton, ‘Brief History of Hard Times’ (interview with Jane Hawking), Guardian, 9 August 1989.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Jane Hawking, personal interview with author, Cambridge, April 1991.
8. Ibid.
9. Harwood, p. 58.
10. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars, p. 88.
11. Ibid., p. 178.
12. Master of the Universe, BBC.
13. ABC, 20/20.
14. Harwood, p. 53.
15. Master of the Universe, BBC.
16. ‘Hawking Gets Personal’, Time, 27 September 1993, p. 80.
17. Master of the Universe, BBC.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Robert Matthews, ‘Stephen Hawking Fears Prejudice against Fundamental Research Threatens the Future of Science in Britain’, CAM: The University of Cambridge Alumni Magazine, Michaelmas Term, 1995, p. 12.
22. Harwood, p. 58.
23. Information about the lead-up to the Hawkings’ year in California, including the choice and preparation of the West Road house and the decision to have graduate or postgraduate students live in to help Stephen, is available in S.W. Hawking, ‘In His Own Words: On Disability’, Abilities, Fall 2010, p. 35; Jane Hawking, Music pp. 233–6, 242–5, 273, 275; S.W. Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes, pp. 24, 25, 168; S.W. Hawking, Readers Companion, p. 113; S.W. Hawking, ‘My Experience with Motor Neurone Disease’, p. 3; Larsen, p. 69; White and Gribbin, pp. 166, 169–71; and the author’s experience of student/faculty housing in Cambridge.
24. Except where otherwise indicated, the information in these paragraphs about the Hawking family’s experiences in Pasadena, California, comes from Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars, pp. 249ff.
25. Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, p. 222.
26. D. N. Page and S. W. Hawking, ‘Gamma Rays from Primordial Black Holes’, Astrophysical Journal 206 (1976), pp. 1–7.
27. Hartle and Hawking, ‘Path-Integral Derivation’, p. 2188.
28. Faye Flam, ‘Plugging a Cosmic Information Leak’, Science 259 (1993), p. 1824.
29. Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, p. 232.
30. Ibid.
8 ‘Scientists usually assume …’
1. Information about the electric wheelchair is in Boslough, p. 23; Larsen, p. 74; Jane Hawking, Music, pp. 284–5. Information about S.H.’s journey to his office comes from the author’s knowledge of Cambridge and the routes through King’s College; photographs of him making the journey; the Horizon 1983 broadcast; Professor Hawking’s Universe; White and Gribbin, pp. 172–3; and Jane Hawking, Music, p. 85.
2. Information about the hiring of Judy Fella and her great value to Hawking and Jane Hawking is to be found in Larsen, pp. 74, 75, 88; and in more detail in Jane Hawking, Music pp. 281, 382–3. See also the extraordinary note of thanks to Fella in G.W. Gibbons, Stephen W. Hawking, S.T.C. Siklos, ‘Superspace and Supergravity: Proceedings of the Nuffield Workshop, Nuffield Foundation, 1981 and 1985’. For Jane’s taking up her thesis again see Larsen p. 74, and Jane Hawking, Music pp. 287 ff, where she discusses her work in detail. For Jane’s beginning her voice training, see Music, p. 292 and Larsen pp. 74–5.
3. Nigel Farndale, ‘A Brief History of the Future’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 2000.
4. See Larsen, pp. 76, 77; and Lisa Sewards, ‘A Brief History of Our Time Together’, Daily Telegraph, 27 April 2002. Jane Hawking has written in detail about Jonathan Hellyer Jones’s increasingly important and supportive role in the family in Travelling to Infinity, pp. 280–5.
5. Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, p. 285.
6. Sewards, quoted in Larsen, p. 96.
7. Information in this paragraph can be found in Larsen, p. 96, Sewards; Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, pp. 284–5, and comes also from e-mail correspondence between author and Jane Hawking, June and July 2011.
8. Larsen, p. 78; Jane Hawking, Music pp. 357–9.
9. S. W. Hawking and W. Israel (eds.), General Relativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. xvi.
10. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, pp. 151–2.
11. See Larsen p. 81; Jane Hawking, Music, p. 377. The change to limited home nursing is also mentioned in S.W. Hawking ‘My Experience with Motor Neurone Disease’, p. 3.
12. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars, pp. 410–12.
13. Ellen Walton, ‘A Brief History of Hard Times’, the Guardian, 9 August 1989.
14. Master of the Universe, BBC.
15. Dennis Overbye, ‘Cracking the Cosmic Code with a Little Help from Dr. Hawking’, The New York Times, 11 December 2001.
16. Kip Thorne in Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 120.
17. Story comes from Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War, New York, Boston and London: Back Bay Books, 2008, pp. 20–21.
18. Ibid., pp. 17–18.
19. Andrei Linde, ‘Inflationary Theory versus the Ekpyrotic/Cyclic Scenario’, in Gibbons, Shellard and Rankin (eds.), p. 801.
20. BBC, Horizon, ‘The Hawking Paradox’.
21. Tim Folger, ‘The Ultimate Vanishing Act’, Discover, October 1993, p. 100.
22. This example is paraphrased, with some modifications, from ibid.
23. BBC, Horizon, ‘The Hawking Paradox’.
24. ‘Out of a Black Hole’, lecture at Caltech, 9 April 2008.
25. Ibid.
26. ‘Out of a Black Hole’, lecture.
27. BBC, Horizon, ‘The Hawking Paradox’.
28. Leonard Susskind, Black Hole War, p. 340.
9 ‘The odds against a universe …’
1. Boslough, p. 100.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 101.
4. Ibid., p. 105.
5. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 133.
6. S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis, ‘The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in our Universe’, Astrophysical Journal 152 (1968), pp. 25–36.
7. Hawking, Brief History of Time, pp. 71–2.
8. Ibid., pp. 132–3.
9. Except where otherwise noted, the paragraphs about Andrei Linde and his inflation theory are based on Linde, ‘Inflationary Theory’, in Gibbons, Shellard and Rankin (eds.), pp. 801–2.
10. Ibid., p. 802.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Hawking t
alks about this in Brief History of Time, p. 131.
15. A. D. Linde, ‘A New Inflationary Universe Scenario: A Possible Solution of the Horizon, Flatness, Homogeneity, Isotropy, and Primordial Monopole Problems’, Physics Letters B108 (1982), pp. 389–93.
16. S. W. Hawking and I. G. Moss, ‘Supercooled Phase Transitions in the Very Early Universe’, Physics Letters B110 (1982), p. 35.
17. S. W. Hawking, ‘The Development of Irregularities in a Single Bubble Inflationary Universe’, Physics Letters B115 (1982), pp. 295–7.
10 ‘In all my travels …’
1. Stephen W. Hawking, ‘The Edge of Spacetime’, in Paul C. W. Davies (ed.), The New Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 67.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 68.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Jerry Adler, Gerald Lubenow and Maggie Malone, ‘Reading God’s Mind’, Newsweek, 13 June 1988, p. 59.
7. Hawking, ‘Short History’, unpublished, p. 6.
8. Master of the Universe, BBC.
9. Don N. Page, ‘Hawking’s Timely Story’, Nature, 332, 21 April 1988, p. 743.
10. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 174.
11. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 122.
12. Ibid.
13. Andrei Linde, in an e-mail to the author, 21 March 2011.
14. John Barrow, The Book of Universes, London: The Bodley Head, 2011, p. 202.
15. Ibid., p. 205.
11 ‘It’s turtles all the way down’
1. Hawkes, p. 8.
2. Information about the travels that summer and the phone call to Switzerland comes from Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity, pp. 350, 357–9.
3. Private e-mail correspondence, Jane Hawking to Alex Gallenzi, 24 February 2012.
4. Walton.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 155.
8. Matthews, p. 12.
9. Robert Crampton, ‘Intelligence Test’, The Times Magazine, 8 April 1995, p. 27.
10. Hawking, ‘My Experience with Motor Neurone Disease’, unpublished.
11. Jane Hawking, Music to Move the Stars (rev. edn), p. 443.
12. Bachrach, p. 149.
13. Hawking, Reader’s Companion, p. 161.
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