Stephen Hawking (29 page)

If they did not travel with him to destinations all over the world, the family was certainly never forgotten. Penrose remembers one incident when their return flight was delayed and they had to spend several hours in an airport lounge. Hawking had spotted a cuddly toy in the display window of one of the shops. He told his friend that he wanted that particular toy to take home for Lucy. Commandeering Penrose to buy it for him, Hawking spent the rest of their wait with a large, pink fluffy animal perched on his lap, practically swamping his wasted body. Lucy was of course delighted with the gift.

When Hawking attended the groundbreaking cosmology conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican in 1981 (see
Chapter 11
), Jane went with him. The conference delegates and their partners spent a week in Rome. On a number of evenings, Stephen and Jane went out to restaurants, often sharing their table with Dennis Sciama and his wife, Lydia, as well as other friends who were also attending the conference. Jane remembers the trip as a happy time for the two of them. Between meetings and discussions, Stephen tried to make time for sightseeing, one of his favorite pastimes.

In his address to the conference, the Pope warned the physicists against delving too deeply into the question of how or why the Universe began, reminding them that this was solely a matter for theologians. He went on:

Any scientific hypothesis on the origin of the world, such as that of the primeval atom from which the whole of the physical world derived, leaves open the problem concerning the beginning of the Universe. Science cannot by itself resolve such a question; what is needed is that human knowledge that rises above physics and astrophysics which is called metaphysics; it needs above all the knowledge that comes from the revelation of God.
¹⁵

Hawking sat impassively in his wheelchair, listening as Pope John Paul II told them that he saw nothing wrong with modern cosmology and even believed that there may be some substance to the idea of the Big Bang. But that, he said, was where the line of demarcation should be drawn, and cosmologists should not try to look beyond it. Some of the older scientists in attendance were reminded of another conference held at the Vatican in 1962, when Pope John XXIII declared that he hoped they would all follow the example of Galileo! It was at the 1981 Vatican Conference that Hawking announced his controversial “no-boundary” theorem and the religious connotations accompanying it. It was received enthusiastically by the audience, but what the Pope thought of the idea has not been reported. If nothing else, Hawking certainly has a highly developed sense of occasion.

After the conference, the visiting physicists and their spouses were invited to an audience with the Pope at his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo. The building itself is unimposing but possesses a simple beauty. Visitors pass through the little village surrounding the grounds and up to the house via a
long driveway. The scientists from the Vatican were not the only guests of the Pope that afternoon, and security at Castel Gandolfo (and indeed in Vatican City) was as tight as could be expected. That year, 1981, will surely be remembered as the year of assassination attempts.

Six months earlier, ex-Beatle John Lennon had arrived at the Dakota Apartments in New York, where he lived with his wife, Yoko Ono. Moments later, he was senselessly gunned down by a psychopath, Mark Chapman, and millions of fans the world over were shaken at what they saw as the end of an era. In March 1981, the recently inaugurated President Ronald Reagan had been hit in the chest by a .22 bullet; and less than two months later, Pope John Paul II himself had nearly died when he was struck by four bullets from a 9-mm Browning, one of which lodged in his lower intestine. The audience at Castel Gandolfo was the Pope's first public appearance since the incident in St. Peter's Square that had almost taken his life.

Following a private meeting with the physicists, the Pope gave a speech in the main reception room, after which his guests were introduced to him in person as he sat on a raised chair upon a dais guarded by Papal security. The visitors entered from one side of the platform, knelt before the Pontiff, exchanged a few muttered words, and then left on the far side of the stage. When it was Hawking's turn, he wheeled onto the stage and up to the Pope. The other guests watched as the man who, only days earlier, had talked of the “no-boundary” concept and the fact that there could be no need for a Creator came face to face with the leader of the Catholic Church and, for millions, God's representative on Earth. Everyone, believer and cynic alike, was curious to know what would
be said. However, no one in the room could have been more surprised by what happened next. As Hawking's wheelchair came to a halt in front of the Pope, John Paul left his seat and knelt down to bring his face to Hawking's level.

The two men talked for longer than any of the other guests. Finally the Pope stood up, dusted down his cassock, and gave Hawking a parting smile, and the wheelchair whirred off to the far side of the stage. There were a number of offended Catholics in the hall that afternoon, misinterpreting the Pope's gesture as undue respect. Many of the non-scientists present were unfamiliar with Hawking's latest proposals, but his reputation as a scientist with irreligious views was well known. They simply could not understand why the Pope should kneel before him; to them Hawking's opinions were at the opposite end of the spectrum from orthodox Catholic doctrine. Why had John Paul not taken more interest in them, the faithful?

Back at the DAMTP, work continued as usual. Hawking's third book for Cambridge University Press was published soon after his return. However, this time things did not run so smoothly, and there was a whole series of arguments between Hawking and Simon Mitton before the book saw the light of day. It was to be called
Superspace and Supergravity
, aimed at about the same level as
The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime
, and was expected to sell in similar numbers to its predecessor—between five thousand and ten thousand copies over a period of years. The source of the dispute between Hawking and the publishers was the choice of cover for the book.

Hawking wanted a drawing from the blackboard in his office to be photographed and used on the dust jacket of the hardback edition, as well as on the cover when the book was issued in paperback. The trouble began when Simon Mitton realized that the picture, a bizarre cartoon covered with in-jokes and witticisms done by a group of colleagues after a recent conference at the DAMTP, had been drawn in color and required full-color printing. Hawking would not consider a black-and-white photograph of the illustration and was absolutely adamant about using a full-color representation.

Cambridge University Press insisted that they had never done a four-color cover for a book such as Hawking's, which, even accepting his international fame as a scientist, would not sell enough copies to warrant the expense. The cover, they stated, would make absolutely no difference to the number of copies the book sold. At this point Hawking saw red and declared that unless they agreed to use his cover he would withdraw the book completely. After a hastily convened editorial meeting, Mitton capitulated, but he'd been right—
Superspace and Supergravity
sold marginally less than
The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime
.

While the dispute with Cambridge University Press was in full flow and Hawking miraculously found time to work, travel, see his family, and engage in bureaucratic wrangles with the city authorities and university, the world at large was going through its usual turmoil. Riots hit British cities; there was intensified fighting in Beirut; and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt was brutally assassinated on October 6 during a military parade in Cairo. In December, doctors in the United States were alerted to a deadly new illness that appeared to
attack the body's immune system. But the news in 1981 was not all bad. In July an estimated 700 million TV viewers tuned in to see Prince Charles marry Lady Diana Spencer in St. Paul's Cathedral; England claimed a remarkable cricketing victory against Australia; and the New Year Honors List announced at the end of December included a wheelchair-bound Cambridge physicist who had pioneered important work on black holes—Stephen Hawking was made a commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

As the 1980s progressed, awards and honors continued to be bestowed on Hawking. In 1982 alone he was made honorary doctor of science by no fewer than four universities: the University of Leicester in Britain, and New York, Princeton, and Notre Dame universities in the United States.

The interest of the media intensified as Hawking's recognition grew. In 1983, a BBC
Horizon
program profiled him at work at the DAMTP. For the first time, the British public was given a chance to see Professor Hawking whirring around Cambridge in this wheelchair, talking in his strangely contorted way with his students and coworkers, at home on West Road with Jane and the children, and attending official functions. The public was captivated. One magazine article after another appeared in rapid succession. The London
Times
and
Telegraph
newspapers ran pieces about him, and in-depth interviews turned up in the
New York Times
,
Newsweek
, and
Vanity Fair
. A few short years into the decade, and “black hole” and “Stephen Hawking” had become synonymous in the eyes of the media and the general public.

Hawking has never been a man to shy away from publicity, and he thoroughly enjoyed his growing fame. However,
fame alone does not pay the bills, and in the early eighties there were intensifying financial pressures on the Hawking household. A professor's salary is not large compared with equivalent positions in industry or commerce, and occasional monies from prizes and awards were erratic and usually too small to make any real difference. With the strain of running a home and maintaining her own career, Jane was finding that the little nursing help they could afford was growing increasingly inadequate. She desperately needed more private nursing assistance, and that would be expensive.

That was not all. They had managed to finance their eldest son Robert's education at the fee-paying Perse School in Cambridge since the age of seven. He had been highly successful academically and was scheduled in a few short years to go to university. Grants were available, but they would not cover all the expenses of a three-year degree course. Coinciding with these problems was the fact that, in 1982, Lucy was in her final year at a junior state school, Newnham Croft. Stephen and Jane both wanted her to attend the Perse School as her brother had done. With Timothy growing and everyday family expenditures increasing, there seemed to be no way for them to afford school fees for two children.

And what of the future? Stephen's illness had been stable for a number of years, but things could begin to slide again at any time—that was the nature of the disease. If he could no longer work, the prizes would soon dry up and his pension from the university could not sustain them comfortably. There was another great fear: if Jane could no longer look after Stephen and earn a salary, what would become of him? They did not like to discuss the awful possibilities, but they were there and
had to be faced. They needed money, quickly. The last thing any of them wanted was for Stephen to end up in a nursing home, if his condition should degenerate further, simply because they could not afford to look after him at home.

Something had to be done, and fast. Hawking had the germ of an idea in the back of his mind. He had mentioned it to no one but had allowed it to grow and develop. Now, he realized, he would have to put his idea into action. It would be a number of years before Hawking's secret plan would come to fruition and, with one stroke, solve the family's financial problems. When it did, it was to change everything. But first there were intriguing developments to follow up in the field of inflationary cosmology.

13

WHEN THE UNIVERSE HAS BABIES

E
ven though Hawking has offered us an image of a self-contained Universe, with no boundaries and no edges, either in space or time, many people still wonder what might lie “outside” such a Universe. The analogy between the closed surface of the Universe and the closed surface of the Earth does, after all, encourage us to speculate that there might be other universes, just as there are other planets.

Within the framework of Hawking's no-boundary Universe, any such other worlds would have to be embedded in some strange form of space which has more than the three dimensions we are used to: the surface of a sphere, after all, is actually a two-dimensional surface wrapped around in the third dimension, but spacetime is four-dimensional; you always need at least one extra dimension to wrap up anything into a closed surface. But there is another model—or rather series of models—developed from the inflationary scenario which offers us another way to imagine many worlds coexisting, without having to try to wrap our brains around the higher geometries of five or more dimensions (four of space plus one of time). Although Hawking himself has expressed reservations about the idea, which goes by the name of continual inflation, it is in fact based on his dramatic breakthrough discovery from 1974: that black holes explode.