Instant Genius - Remembering Stephen Hawking - the Galaxy's best known scientist

Episode Date: March 21, 2018

In this episode, we chat to four scientists who spent time with Professor Stephen Hawking, to find out more about his life, his work, and his legacy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to the Science Focus podcast. I'm Alice Sipscomb Southwell, the production editor of VPC Focus magazine. This month, the world lost a giant. Professor Stephen Hawking, the galaxy's best-known scientist and most unlikely cultural icon, died on Wednesday the 14th of March at his home in Cambridge. We spent the day since speaking to those who knew Hawking and one clear theme emerges. Hawking was a stubborn man. Of course, he was funny and smart. That was clear for the world to see. But perhaps, to those of us watching from afar, his radiance hid the vital ingredient to his genius. True grit. But as the number of words he could communicate per minute dwindled, his jokes never did. It was the same resolve that would drive him, sometimes the exasperation of his colleagues,

to spend years writing and rewriting his books so that he could share the elegance of the universe with others. And ultimately, it was the sheer strength of will, rather than a single eureka moment, that would propel him through the maths that underlined his work. Here, we speak to four people who knew Professor Stephen Hawking to tell us about his life, his work and his legacy. First up, Daniel Bennett, the editor of BBC Focus magazine, chats to physicist Leonard Melodino. Leonard worked with Hawking on two books,

a briefer history of time and the grand design. How did you first come to meet Stephen and work with him? I met him was at Princeton in the 70s when he gave a talk, but he could still speak. And he, you know, I'm a physicist. I guess you know, I'm a physicist. So I was just at a regular talk that he gave. And he had a graduate student who would stand next to him in translate because even though he could speak, it was kind of garbled. But we got working together after he read my first book, Euclid's window, and he liked it, apparently, and was looking for.

someone to work with that he liked the way they wrote and who also was a physicist. So there's not many of them, I guess. But anyway, he liked the book. And so he contacted me and asked him to work with him. So I didn't have to think too long about that one. And so what was your work with him like? How did you work together? Well, we would do certain things apart.

and then we would be together for other times and sit side by side really elbow to elbow and go over every every word so you know he came I'm in I was at the time of the faculty at Caltech and he comes to Caltech every year or he used to for I mean obviously he used to but he used to until his last few years of his life he came I would say four weeks roughly speaking about a month a year, every year. So we'd work pretty intensely for that month. And then I would go out to Cambridge. I don't remember two or three times a year every quarter, let's say, for roughly a week, usually. And we'd do the same thing there. And we would just start in the morning and sit there until, you know, like to quit about 8 p.m. and go have dinner and together. And so when, you know,

When we would, when we were apart, we would each have our assignment to write a certain section or, you know, and then when we were together, we would go over each other's stuff. And, you know, that was kind of the process. So what was he like to write with as a writing partner? Well, I'm just, I think that's a two-hour answer, but let's see. There's a lot of angles to. First of all, there's the, you know, the experience of working with him. So because of the way he communicated at the time, for most of the time when we were together, there was about six words a minute.

It started out at six and went down to like one or two. Then he changed his method of communication, went back up to about six and gradually went down again. So I'm sure you know how he communicated. I don't have to go into that. But so, you know, it would take minutes for each words. I mean, at first I would sit there and, you know, I'm getting used to it. I don't know what to do. I'm daydreaming.

I'm, I don't know, you know, while I'm waiting for his answer. And then I realize I'm sick, sit right next to him, really close to him. I can actually see his screen and he didn't seem to mind that. So then before he would finish the sentence, I could answer it if I knew what he was saying, or more importantly, I could start thinking about what he's saying before he said it. So, you know, when you and I are speaking, we speak, we are, we don't think. we, I mean, we, you know, we, we just give thoughts off the top of our head, more or less. There may be something beneath that in our head somewhere that it's coming from, but we answer

immediately. And with him, you could get a few minutes to think, you know, as his, what he was going to say, started to take shape, you could start thinking about it. So it was a totally, you know, much deeper, more like profound discussions because you actually contemplate things. So that's, you know, I got used to that. And it was, that was very different, very good. And, you know, at other times, if I, I could just sit there and also get into a very zen-like state, you know, you just got very relaxed with it.

And so that was, you know, that was interesting. And he, even though everything was so difficult for him, it was striking how he, he did not let anything go. I mean, we would argue over, over individual words. And, you know, for me, the argument. wasn't that hard to do because I'm speaking, but, you know, he would have to go through a lot of work to present his side. So, but he never gave up. I mean, he, he was, you know, he, as he said, one of his best and worst qualities was stubbornness. So, you know, and I think he could have got through life if he wasn't stubborn. Look at all that barriers he had, physical barriers to, to existence,

you know, and the other major quality was humor. He had an amazing sense of fear. He could still smile. He had a really big smile. He was very expressive with his face. So you could give yes or no questions. He had expressions he gave for yes or no. I mean, he had one of them. I've quoted this in my book. I don't remember exactly what his assistant said, but, you know, it was something like that steely, steely look of disdain or something if he really didn't like what you said. I mean, he could, he could, it wasn't just yes or no. He could definitely, you'd a super yes and a super no supernova yeah so yeah you really knew when you said the wrong thing yeah yeah exactly um right either either sometimes because it well there was there was one face

for what you said was stupid which i don't know if he did that on purpose but you could tell that he was thinking that there's another face for what you said irritated him something that's just struck me in what you said there given you know how much, you know, so he said he was obviously a kind of stubborn, in a positive way, you know, he stuck to his guns. So he always put a lot of time and thought into what he said. Would you only talk about the work? Or what other things do you talk about? No, no, we talked about everything, you know, from the Israel situation, American politics, British politics, you know, we did it. We, we went to movies together, you know, just talked about whatever.

So it was like, you know, because we kind of became friends. Well, we definitely became friends. So, you know, and so, yeah, he would talk about anything. And he, you know, sometimes he'd be sitting next to him and waiting for some profound or some very heated argument and it would come out as a joke. he's waiting five minutes. You know, and it's like, oh, it's a joke. Some punchline.

Yeah. And then you could play 20 questions. Oh, one thing that you're at, we have to get the knack of, you know, you could answer his questions or his comments before he finished them because he was writing them, and that was a good thing. And, you know, if you were right, it was a good thing because it saved him happy to finish, you know, writing it out.

On the other hand, if you were wrong, that, you know, would be annoying to him. So, you know, you see him typing and I go, oh, you're saying, da, da, da. And if he's not saying that, you know, I remember, you know, when I was first like trying that method, I would get, like, get it wrong three times in a row. He would, like, roll his eyes. Like, stop up or something. Occasionally, he would hit the wrong thing and a random sentence would come out.

Or sometimes a computer, which is generate random, put random things together. I think it was, I don't. remember anymore, but I think it was maybe the, you know, the stuff he had deleted would be all there in some cash and it would just start reading that. But you'd be talking to him and it would, you know, you'd say so, yeah, so are we going to the curry place for dinner tonight? Or you want to eat at your house? And he'd go, and the answer would be, you know, the tree frog of the supernova exploded Aristotle. It could be pretty hilarious sometimes. Yeah. I mean, yeah, do you have, like, what are some of your, and this is a really, you know, on the spot question.

And, you know, I'm sure you'll go away and come up things. But what are some of your, you know, when you think about him, some of your favorite memories? One was the night we finished grand design, we had been working on it for four years. And, you know, he showed no sign of wanting to finish it. through those four years and we kept pushing the deadline. I mean, I think we originally were supposed to do it in a year and a half. And finally,

the publisher just told us we're publishing it. You know, we're announcing it for next, whatever. I don't remember when it came out. We're announcing, I think, for next September.

So we expect to have, you know, it's like an ultimatum, really, but they didn't say it in a bad way. They just kind of very matter of fact. We said, you know,

we put it on the schedule for next. So if it's not there by May, 15th at 8 p.m. or something. It's go. Yeah, it's, I don't know what they said, but something like that, you know. So we finished at 8 p.m. on May 5th, whenever they said exactly the minute. And I remember we had a little fight down to the minute about some little thing and we managed to, you know, and he's, yeah, I don't know. And then when it's, you know, when it fell over, he says, I'm saying, oh my God, you know, because I was thinking,

many times, we would never get to finish this book. This is just going to be my lifetime project. Of course, I was doing stuff in between, and he was. But, you know, he had no, absolutely no, you know, he, and I've ever brought up, hey, you know, we got to finish his book sometime. Shouldn't we be, like, pushing on, you know, and not like massaging this chapter for, you know, and I'm a major rewriter. I rewrite 47 times, but, you know, he's even worse.

Well, it's also because he, you know, he's so slow at it because of his, you know, illness. So, you know, his answer would always be, nope, doesn't matter when it's done as long as it's good, So then after, you know, after, you know, that hour tick by and we literally, on that minute, which, you know, I'm sure we could have got an extra 10 minutes after four years, but on that minute we finished. You know, he kind of like steered the ship so that on that minute we would agree on the final point. And then he says to me, I said, wow, I can't believe we ever, we made it. He said, then he says, good thing we had the deadline or I would have never stopped. I'm thinking, why didn't you tell me this two years ago? I don't have had to give us a deadline.

Was that because he just was enjoying it? Or because he just was like a rewriter? Well, I think he was enjoying it and he's a perfectionist. But I think both, yeah. I was enjoying it too, but I was also going nuts because, you know, had to make a living and I had other stuff to do. And, you know, going back and, you know, I was just kind of, you know, It seemed like my, it just seemed like this would be a permanent position, you know,

but at some point, I'm paid. I mean, you get in advance, but, you know. You've been done. Well, eventually, I guess they're going to ask for the money back if you don't ever turn in the book, you know. You know, it's like, but, you know, when you're, you know, Stephen, so they, you know, I mean, that was, we spent more than double what we were supposed to spend on it. And, hey, it all turned out good.

But, yeah, it was, uh, anyway, so that was. anyway, so that was one. Another good story was we went, one of his carers asked me if I wanted to go punting down to Cam, which I guess I don't have to tell you what that means. But here in the States, I always have to explain, take most of the stories explaining what that means. So we, you know, so I asked Stephen if you wanted to come thinking, you know, thinking it was a long shot because, you know, for obvious reasons. So he said, sure. So the next day, we went, we went, we, We did that and, you know, that involved parking the wheelchair up at the top of this long, I don't know I'm called a staircase, a long trail of wooden, of stone steps, right?

Gosh, yeah. And it's not wheelchair accessible. So we have to park it up at the top, carry him down all these steps to the, you know, where the boats launch. And I started out carrying him because I could carry him myself, you know. I forgot what he weighed like 95 pounds or something. And so, but then they didn't like the way, you know, it's hard. I mean, I would carry him sometimes in his office, like to the couch or something. But to carry him down all that is a bit of a, you know, exercise.

And, you know, you have to have his head right. You guys can't have his head flopping around. So his car says, no, no, no, put him down. We're going to do it. You don't know what you're doing. So they had these two kids, you know, so he's like 95 pounds. They're each like 95. pounds. Here I am like 185 pounds and I'm, you know, fairly muscular. At least I work out,

lift weights and stuff. And they give me their purses to hold, one of which was pink. So I have these two little women carrying this guy down this thing, followed by a guy holding a pink purse. And, you know, we get down to the, you know, thing. And, you know, and you know how that works. The guy, I forgot who was doing. I don't think they supplied the purse. And I think one of us, One of the group was doing the pole, whatever you call it. That's called the punting. And, you know, you could, like, I said, oh, you try. I stood up there.

I'm, oh, my God, I got to fall off. And they said, yeah, and the boats can tip over, too. And it's a flat boat. And he, you know, if it's tipped, oh, I kept thinking, my God, if we tip this over, he's dead. I mean, there's nothing you can do. I mean, like, even if a normal person's hard to save a person who can't, I'm totally left. How are you going to do that?

So, you know, and, you know, he's fine. He has his head on one of their laps and they're turning. You know, he can't, when he look, when his eyes go to the right, they turn his head to follow his eyes. His eyes go to the left, he turned his head. And I don't know, there were strawberries and champagne. It was a very nice time. But, I mean, I'm thinking that, of course, you know, he wanted to go up into space and he went on the vomit comet, and he was very intrepid. So it was very interesting because to me, that was a very vulnerable situation.

You could have dropped them. He could have fallen off the boat or the boat tipped over or I don't know. One of the things that it's been quite interesting is, so with all the, you know, he did, he had his science and that was a, he's had his science, a bit of a simple way to put it, but, you know, he had his work, which is kind of quite, what do you think it was about, and maybe, you know, what is it for you, uh, that makes you want to write about science and share it with people? Well, when I was writing about physics, it's because I just thought it was so beautiful and fascinating, interesting, that everybody would love it, that they just could understand what we're talking about. And so I just felt like the drive to always felt the drive to tell people about this beautiful stuff. And, you know, so they, you know, yeah. And I wanted them on some more intellectual level, I wanted them to understand what is science about. How do we know these things?

not only what what do we know, but how do we know? What's our, you know, why do we think we believe this? You know, why is it good to follow these things? And why should you believe it today, of course, in our American, you know, ridiculous, you know, culture here right now. You know, you're defending science. You're going, no, you can't just say, oh, it's no, there's no global warming or, you know, to understand what, you know, or the anti-evolution people who, you know, send up these people with ridiculous arguments that, you know, and people buy it. You know, you know, you know, what is the, you know, what is the difference between pseudoscience and science?

So that's just another, another, you know, like something that I think Stephen and I both felt strongly about that, that we wanted people to, you know, to know the difference between pseudoscience and science so they don't get misled. and so people don't make the wrong decisions. And yeah, so I think, and I think Stephen felt the same way. He felt that people would find science beautiful, and it was beautiful and deep and important to the human experience. But there wasn't a lot of, there weren't a lot of people making it accessible. And especially when he started, I mean, he was not, you know, he's not just a pioneer in black holes. He was a pioneer in explaining science to the public. Because in 1980s, when he wrote that book, there were very few popular science books.

So people writing broadly about science is really the key. And that's what Stephen did. I mean, he wrote about his own work or his own field, I should say. See, he wrote about his own field, not just not about his own work. So that's the difference. So a lot of people will write about their own little corner of what they did and try to make it, ground earth shattering, but Stephen wrote about the whole field, right? So like a brief history of time, it wasn't a brief history of my work. It included his work, but it was about,

you know, it was some beautiful big topic. And, you know, and so anyway, that was all those tangents. So that's probably that really relevant. But I'm just saying that there are many books. I mean, that's that's about 50% of what we're talking about how his book, his passion for sharing what he loved. Well, he was, so he was one of the people, you know, him and Stephen Weinberg and Carl Sagan, you know, they were the ones in back then who were the pioneers who started this huge, like, you know, deluge of popular science books that we have today. And they all came from those guys, you know, doing it back then. And it showed, you know, that people saw and Feynman eventually a little bit later, I think, you know, but not that long later with his anecdote books. So they all showed people, oh, people, you know.

show the publishers, I guess, and the other potential authors that people would be interested in this stuff. And, you know, I don't think they have high hopes for it. I know I heard stories about the brief history of time that they didn't have, you know, huge hopes for it. I mean, they didn't, you know, totally dismiss it because I think he got a decent advance for it, but they didn't have huge hopes for it either. They just thought, you know, this is something to try and it would be interesting, but they didn't expect it to be nearly what it turned. out to be, who could expect that. But, so, you know, so I think that he helped really to pave the way, you know, to, to, you know, for, for the, you know, what we have today.

And just touch on something you said earlier that you've remembered it. So someone else we talked to said, the part of the strength of that book was its clarity. It was just so clear. A brief history of time. Yeah. That's it. Yes. This is like...

Well, Stephen did not feel that way. Let me just say that. Really? Really. Yeah. In fact, that's why we wrote a briefer history of time. Right. He said, yeah, he said that, yeah, and it's, you know, the beginning of a brief history of time was pretty clear.

And it got hard to understand after that, which is why Stephen kind of himself said, you know, that it's like the, I think he said, I forgot how he put it. it, but the, you know, book that sold the most and was read the least, you know, the average person found it tough going about after I forgot, you know, the first hundred pages or so, it started to get hard for people. Yeah, I'm one of those people. That's specifically why he asked me to write a briefer history with him. That's kind of funny. And that's why it's called a briefer. It's not really briefer. You know, we had debated calling it a clearer history of time, but. So it's about the same length, but it's, we worked on making it, you know, more understandable.

And then that experience was so, such a good experience. Then I proposed to him that we write the second book, the grand design, because that book was based on his, his new, new ideas in the time, I think we started running around 2006. It was work he had done just over the last, oh, five or six years. and his work was developing as we were writing the book, which made it hard too, because at one point we had written, you know, like a whole passage of like five or six pages, and then I'm going to see him and where we're supposed to moving on

and he wants to make these changes. And I say to him, but Stephen, we went over this last time. This is how it works. He says, like, I've discovered it doesn't work that way. Oh, gosh. I suppose that's a nice problem to have. have, at least you know, you've got to write. No, no, it wasn't a nice problem to have.

A nice problem, no, it's not a nice, no, no, no, no, no, no nice would have been, oh, we finished that, let's move on. And was that, so was that always, was that what was driving him, really, you know, when he's taking this time, it, it, I like the idea of him as someone, and like you said yourself, as a person who writes and rewrites and rewrite, you know, I think sometimes there's an image of a writer that just they sit down at the keyboard and just, you know, it comes out first time. That's, I think my friend Michael Shermer called that the Amadeus myth for Mozart, you know, because they say that about Mozart too. And when you look, and I did some research on Mozart,

actually for the for Elastic. And, and the truth is he wrote and rewrote and rewrote and he constantly looking for places, the pianos, the play. the stuff on. He, you know, and he had to, I forget this, I forget all the details, but he had to find another, for a while he didn't have a piano, he couldn't write, he had to go find, you know, borrow some, I mean, he was, you know, I forgot the story about how the myth happened, and it's not really relevant for, for this, I guess, but, but, but, oh, actually, I do remember now, it was some, some later writer made it up.

Right. And, somehow got into that, you know, and, and, but they've done great detailed studies of his letters and, you know, they found, no, it. wasn't like that. And, you know, I'm not saying that there is nobody in existence who's like that, but that's image people have, just like the stupid movies, like this movie about Stephen, which I was very, I was invited to the premiere in Hollywood. And, you know, even though the movie was like, as Stephen said, broadly accurate, I think, was his comment. You know, and people thought that that was a, you know, that he was endorsing the movie, which I guess he was. But I also know

Stephen, and I know when he says broadly accurate, he also means not necessarily accurate in the details. That was a good, I was a perfect Stephenism, you know. That was physicist Leonard Mladenow. Next, James Lloyd, staff writer at BBC Focus, talks to Christoph Galford. Hawking was Christoph's supervisor while he worked on his PhD at Cambridge University, studying black holes and the origin of the universe. So, Christoph, first of all, I was wondering, what was? was your connection to Stephen Hawking and when did your connection with him start? I was Professor

Hawking's PhD student from 1999 or 2000 actually until 2006 in the applied mathematics and theoretical physics department at Cambridge University. And I met him after my, what was called the part three of the mathematical tripos, which is a mathematical and the last year and undergrad, slash grad course at Cambridge University. So during that year, we're a few hundred students from pretty much everywhere on Earth studying mathematics. And that's where we all kind of had the chance of seeing Stephen from now and then. And then at the end of the year, there is an exam, and if you're lucky, say, you get to work with some of the professors for you automatically get a grant for to study for a PhD at Cambridge.

And so I got that and then you get to meet all the professors. And I met Stephen and he offered me to become his PhD students. And so what was he like to work with? Did you get to spend much time with him? Well, yes, a lot of time. Yes, indeed. The first year, not so much because he was writing a book, but his philosophy was to spend as much time as possible with the people who worked with him, and that includes his students, his PhD students.

We pretty much were with him all the time. When he was traveling, when he was at Cambridge, when he was everywhere, he would bring us along, and we would work with him everywhere. And how did that feel? Was it daunting? Here you were a new student and obviously Stephen Hawking obviously has this almost a celebrity kind of status. Was it daunting or did it feel like he was more approachable? Well, the celebrity side of the thing, we actually didn't quite feel that. Except when we were, these were just glimpses of his life.

It took more and more of his time with the, with the, years, but in the beginning, that really was a side thing. So the daunting part was not the celebrity thing, because in academia, you didn't really, well, that was not the point. We didn't care or were not interested in that, basically. And the daunting part was that he was extremely, extremely hard to work with in the sense that he didn't really, he wasn't interested in, in small talks, in science at all. He only wanted to discuss or tackle the big problems, the big questions. And that really was something daunting for his students because we all were juniors in the beginning.

Not so much at the end, but in the beginning we were juniors. And we had to tackle, yeah, the hardest problems in theoretical physics. So what kind of problems were these then that he was concerned with and that you were working on? Well, for instance, I believe a couple of students before me and that few after me, we all had the same with the same PhD topic to begin with, which was called m-peory cosmology. And roughly speaking, that means figuring everything out if you wanted to translate that in plain English.

And so obviously that that was an attempt. involve goal or maybe it was but none of us was good enough I don't know was this kind of a theory of everything then essentially that was trying to combine what cosmology and quantum physics and the theory that doesn't exist right that that's the point um theory is something that is m is for magical or whatever it's something that or mother it's a theory a theory in string theory that encompasses the five known string theories, and we have absolutely no clue whether that theory might be. And to do cosmology in a theory that we do not know anything about is a bit hard. Because cosmology is about our universe and its history and rewriting the whole history of the universe.

But anyway, that was the topic that we were assigned or agreed to work on when we were naive in a a few months. And then we got specialized in different topics all of us and I became specialized in what we call the black hole information paradox, which is a problem

that's been lingering around since Stephen discovered in the 1970s that black holes have a temperature and that they radiate stuff which apparently and first calculations, the calculations, the

calculations that he made in the 1970s basically said that what radiates out of black holes is absolutely independent of what fell in in the first place. And that means that the black holes kind of bleach cosmic history. It's gone. It was there. Got swallowed by a black hole. Black holes radiate that stuff away, but that stuff has nothing to do with what came in. So part of our universe's memory was gone forever, not changed, just gone.

And scientists don't like that, because that means that physics is not the right way to write or find out the history of the universe. And that problem is called the Black Hole Information Paradox. Nowadays, pretty much everyone is convinced that somehow what fell in comes, out, but no one has really managed to figure out exactly how. Right. That's still a mystery. So did Hawking admit he was wrong then with that in the end? Yeah, he did.

That was actually what my PhD was about. And I was against him admitting he was wrong. But he did anyway. I don't think the problem is settled. I think he liked to be wrong because he kind of, was wrong on all his bets. But he wasn't wrong that often, was he, in the big things, in the big... No, of course not. Of course not.

The thing is, one of the qualities that I would give him that I didn't see so many out there, is that he had been intuition. He could see beyond the maths. He did not just rely on the mathematics to, to... saw what might exist beyond. And that's a very rare quality. Only a handful of scientists have that quality every century, I would say. You got extremely good technicians, much better ones than Stephen, most probably.

You get a lot of those. And that's absolutely brilliant. But Stephen had something different, this intuition, the feeling that something right or wrong. He was obviously a very good mathematician as well, but he went beyond that, I believe. So he could kind of see the bigger picture beyond the nitty-gritty of the mathematical equations themselves. That's right. And not just that, but any time you would show him some new research or new results, he would immediately know where to point the finger, where the problem was, where it would hurt.

say or where it would be interesting beyond what was written in a paper. He could feel that immediately. I was also wondering what he was like as a person. You mentioned that he didn't do kind of scientific small talk. Did he do any kind of small talk at all? Because when we hear him speaking generally, it's in quite grand statements. Did he, you know, did he kind of talk about the weather and about what he was having for dinner and things like that? That's why I specified scientific small talks before, because yes, he did. It was very lively to be around him. He made jokes and had fun, and we were discussing many different things, including movies and stuff to do outside, restaurants to go to,

where he would bring me for my birthday to give an example of the kind of thoughts he might have for other people. it's not just me, even the other students as well, and how he would, no, he was, he was generous with his thoughts and time and, and in his joy of life, say. And did you say he took you out somewhere for your birthday? Yeah, yeah, he did that many times. It was usually the time of the year we were in the United States around Santa Barbara or California, because he, he had. an office there and I think that for his health it was good for him not to spend the winter in England so I don't know exactly or it was just because he liked to be in California

at that time of the year and it just happened that it was my birthday every year around that so he took me to nice places do you have a favorite memory I was wondering of your time that you spent with Stephen well there have many I really have many I mean it was probably the five six years I spent with him non-stop were probably the richest and fullest years I've spent in my life maybe for different reasons than now but to you know when you're at the start of something that's always when it's the most fulfilling when you begin to understand when you suddenly understand when someone's there to sometimes hold your hand and

show you the way after that he was the last person i i had in my history personal history that was holding my hand after him i was on my own basically and so he showed me the path of thoughts and way of life and never to give up and just oneself. I know it's abstract. I can sound very abstract what I say now, but it's a whole. It's a bit hard to just pick out one memory. That was Christoph Godf. For the next interview, Daniel Bennett, the editor of BBC Focus, chats to physicist and author Jim Alcalili. He was the inaugural winner of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, which was presented to him by the man himself. Did you ever meet Stephen? Yes, yes, on a number of occasions. I think the first time

I met him properly and managed to have a conversation with him was in 2010 or 2011. I'd have to look it up. He gave a lecture at the Royal Albert Hall and I was asked to introduce him. So that was quite something. I don't know five, six thousand audience. and the going out then remember going out out just before we went out

on stage I said to see well good luck break a leg and his nurse said oh don't say that I could

well I might push him off the stage or something you know tempting fate but but I mean and it was

the first time I I messed to have a conversation with him when I first started talking to him I hadn't realized

that you know he has his you know he twitches you know his cheek muscle and eyebrows

for yes and cheek muscles for no or something like that. And, you know, with most people when they meet him, because he doesn't respond, you sort of fill in the gap with blabbering on yourself. Yeah, especially with someone you admire. Yeah, exactly. So you just sort of fill in the gaps, you know, space, and just talking. And then his nurse said, did you, you know, you spoke to him before you, do you know what he was saying?

And I said, oh, well, sorry, no. She said, well, there were lots of yeses and nos in there. you were talking but you probably missed them so yeah so that was a very very nice occasion he was incredible

he gave a lecture he was up on stage 6,000 people you could hear a pin drop for an hour and a half or so and he was talking about cosmology and talking about his life and so on and he could have sat on stage

and just someone just played a recording of his voice but he was obviously adamant for it not to be impersonal so although it was pre-recorded you know every paragraph you know, he had to activate it to get it going. Right, yeah, of course. So, you know, he was controlling what he was saying,

rather than just sitting there on stage to be, you know, almost looked at helplessly immobile while his mechanized voice rang out. You know, at least in some sense he was delivering a lecture. Slides. Then, of course, the second time I met him was when I was the recipient of the inaugural Stephen Hawking Medal. you know he was there on stage to

to award me with it as it were you know, obviously someone else had to physically give me the medal, so I was very very honored you know, there was a lot of big names and you know, in science there in the audience and on stage so it was quite something apparently he chose it, he'd watched one of my TV

documentary, my quantum two-parte of quantum mechanics and he liked the way I'd explain things and that had Swade him. I don't know who else he had in mind, but I know the second year, Neil deGrasse Tyson won it, so I beat Neil deGrasse Tyson to the title of Science Communicator. What does that feel like, getting an award like that? From someone who I imagine must have been

someone you had inspired you. Yeah, very strange, because, you know, if you think about it, you know, the recipient of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, it should surely be Stephen Hawking. in as much as a brief history of time sold, you know, more copies than the Bible or whatever that the number is, you know, I still work as an admission student at the field department here at Surrey. And, you know, so I read all the personal statements of all the, you know, the students.

And invariably in their personal statements, you know, they got switched onto visits because they read a brief history of time. Now, I don't know whether to some extent, and this has been the case, you know, for the last 20 plus years, 30 years since it came out, whether people feel they, that's what they should say they. Yeah, well, you know, anyone who wants to do physics surely must have read a brief history of time and it just becomes something. But I suspect, no, these students, these teenagers continue to be inspired by his book. So, you know, I might make the TV documents and so on, but, you know, I'm not reaching and inspiring as many, anything you're like, the orders of Magnetius Stephen Hawke is doing.

You know, just being a character in The Simpsons, for goodness sakes, reaches out to, you know, areas of society that no one else could not even know. Brian Coxers of this world can do. So, yeah, so it was some things. You know, it meant a lot to me to be, to get to be a recipient of that award, to be awarded it by Stephen Hawking himself. It was pretty special. So one of the things, one of the reasons I thought it would be great to talk to you is, you know, you both, to me anyway, for someone looking from the outside,

share this desire to share science with people, just as much as you love science. research and the work itself, it seems to be just as important to you to share it with people and to explain it to people. You know, why is that so important to... Yeah. You're right.

You know, there aren't that many scientists. I mean, there are scientists who communicate, you know, who enjoy communication. But there aren't that many who would, you know, it's what I would say. I'm sure it's what Stephen would have said, derive as much pleasure, sheer pleasure out of finding something out for yourself and then telling everyone else about it. I couldn't imagine finding out something bump for it and then

keeping it to myself or publishing it in a paper that half a dozen people are going to read and then forget about. You know, I want to shout it from the rooftops and that's what Stephen liked to do. He was endlessly curious about the universe and, and, and, and his desire to tell people how endlessly curious he was about the universe was just as strong. So, yeah, we do have that in common. You know, there's, there are, you know, Brian Cox obviously is another example, but, you know, going back into history, you know, people like Carl Sagan, of course, is another example of someone who, you know, it's not enough just to learn about how the universe works.

You know, what's the point of learning about how the universe works if you don't tell everyone else about it? You know, if you derive pleasure out of your curiosity about the world, then surely it should give you pleasure seeing other people also, you know, amazed by this fact. And that's what he did. Great answer. And then just finally, you know, you mentioned earlier you work in the admissions for science for Surrey. For those students who are reading his book and being inspired about it, you know, and they're just starting their career or maybe they're in their career and they'd like to, you know,

go and do what you do, talk to people at science. What can they learn from his approach to his work and his life? I think Stephen changed the rules of the game when it came to explaining, communicating science, the wider audience. I remember, you know, I was an undergraduate in the 80s. I was an undergraduate before a brief history of time came out. And, you know, there were the popularizers of science around, you know, sort of John Gribbon, Frank Close,

Paul Davis, John Barrow. But popular science books were niche. They were there for the people who were interested in science, had an image, but looked out for them. When British History of Time came out, it just changed the rules of the game. As you know, famously, everyone wanted to have a copy on their coffee table, even if they didn't read it.

And since then, there's been this explosion in, science communication and in the respectability that science communication got. Because until then, you know, you were either the scientist who does the research and win Nobel Prizes and so on, or you were the communicator. There were very few people, you know, maybe people like Richard Feynman and one or two others, who excelled at both being the great thinkers and the great explainers. And Stephen Hawking was the great thinker and explainer of our generation, of his generation. And so he made it possible for people to think, yeah, okay, I want to do the science,

but I also want to explain it to other people. And that's also a valid thing to do. That's also a respectable thing to do. Until then it was pretty much, you know, if you're smart, do the smart stuff, which is learning and, you know, discovering and doing the research, leave all the communicating of science to those who haven't got it in them to do the research, as though it is a lesser thing. And Stephen changed that, just with the publication of one book. Of course, once he was in the public eye, and it helped, you know, his disability in that sense

made him a focus of attention. But he made use of that. And, you know, that was it. He became the most famous scientist since Albert Einstein. But in terms of communicating, yeah, I think he changed the game. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it like that as well. I think just hearing you speak about it, it made me realize as well that it was a bit of a turning point

in that it also became something that had currency and that was quite cool. Yeah, that's right. It became cool to have a science book about cosmology and the nature of space and time. Before that, that was not a thing. No. That didn't exist. We really might not have, you know, such a great wealth. You know, when you look at the science shells now,

there's an incredible wealth of great writers and great books. Yeah, absolutely. Any publisher, nonfiction publisher, will tell you, brief history of time changed the game. They realize there's a huge market here. Suddenly, everyone is writing. I mean, I think about all my mates and science communication and so on. I'm forever reading books and we're sort of adding, you know, blurb words of, you know,

greatest things since sliced bread type things that go on the back of the book. Everyone's writing a popular science book. You know, that wasn't the done thing before, brief history of time. Now it is. That was physicist and author Jim Alcolili. Finally, Jason Goodyer, the commissioning editor of BBC Focus, talks to the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, who was two years behind Hawking at Cambridge University. Obviously, you knew Stephen for a very long time.

I believe you were at university around the same time. Yes, well, I was two years junior to him, and I joined the research group when he was already starting his third year, doing his PhD. So did he make much of an impression on you at that point? Well, I got to know him, and that was the time when he realized he got this fatal disease, He was rather low

And many people Didn't think he would even finish his PhD When he finished his PhD And when he got married What was he like at this point? What was his personality like? Well, then and always throughout his life In that the wide interest

Enjoyed travel disarmament Palestinians and the National Health Yeah, I mean was there any evidence At this early point that he would go on To be such a great scientist? Well, I think he had a good start in that he and I were both Sharma, who was very observational and theoretical, and the advice he gave to Steve, who had been developing new,

when there was no special, Stephen went to these lectures, and his early papers, some of them with them, Roger Penrose, were really using these new techniques, stimulus from Roger Penrose, who was a really great figure in the subject, and also he was fortunate young people to be starting in this subject. So what qualities do you think that he had that made him, you know, such a great thinker and such a great scientist? Well, he clearly had great mathematical ability and insight and great determination. And as I say, he was lucky in going into a subject that was a well-matched to those he had.

Sure. And as well as being known for his science work, he also was very well-known and still is well-known. for being a great science communicator and a champion of science? Yes, of course. And that breakthrough came when his book published in 1987 became a huge best. Made people interested in not only him as a personality and in someone who, despite a stimulus, to engage in outreach events.

Sort of looking back now on his body of work, What do you think his long-term legacy will be, scientific or otherwise? Well, I think scientifically he will rate as one of the understanding of gravity in the last 50 years, and in particular for understanding Black from 1974, which was Einstein's theory of gravity. And what do you think, say, young scientists who were looking up to people like, Stephen as a raw model can learn from his life? Well, I think one can learn that there are huge satisfaction, even someone with his disadvantage of a four younger generation.

That was the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees. Thanks for listening to the Science Focus podcast. Look out for a special edition about Professor Stephen Hawking, brought you by BBC Focus and BBC History magazine, on sale on the 18th of April. In our March issue, which is on sale now, we look at the effects of loneliness on our mental health, investigate the ways you can stress-proof your life, and find out if we can ever prevent natural disasters. And of course, there's much more inside.

Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Focus magazine team. We're the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your actual. store. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, Name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at Name Audio.com.

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