Stephen Hawking and I get off to a bad start when the questions I send him ahead of the interview are returned with a note: ”I want shorter, better focused, numbered questions, not a stream of consciousness.”
A man for whom it takes 20 minutes to express a single thought, who, since the age of 21, has been told he is living on borrowed time is, of course, allowed to be curt. But if his success tells us anything, it is the folly of reading him solely through his condition. I re-send the questions, stripped of extraneous detail, and repair to Cambridge to meet him.
At 63, Hawking has already ex-ceeded his life expectancy by about 40 years. His fame is as much a function of his illness as his science and he plays up to it good-naturedly, providing the voiceover for his cameo in The Simpsons, illustrating his books with cultish, Where’s Wally-type photos of himself flying through space in his wheelchair and suffering the condescensions of the press with relative equanimity. With so little to go on, a personality has been created for him, based largely on assumptions of childish good humour. And although his ex-wife has called him a tyrant, and his second wife been accused of maltreating him (the complaint was dropped), the romance of Hawking’s image as a butterfly mind trapped in a diving bell body overrides all others.
The first thing you notice when you enter his room in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, is white steam puffing out of a dehumidifier concealed in an ornament on his desk. Hawking sits in the middle of the room attended by a nurse, one of the 10 who look after him.
His mobility is so limited now that he can only use his finger to operate his computer when he is feeling particularly strong. Otherwise he relies on his right cheek, targeted by an infrared beam, which he twitches to move a cursor through his dictionary, completing a whole statement before sending it to his voice synthesiser. It is the same, agonisingly slow process whether he is speaking or writing and might explain why his latest book, A Briefer History of Time, is a rehash of the earlier blockbuster.
I ask him if there is enough new material in this second, easier version for people who bought the first one to buy it again. Hawking looks at me, then looks down at his screen and grimaces. There is a beep as he sends his pre-prepared answer to the voice synthesiser.
”My first popular book,” he says, ”A Brief History of Time, aroused a great deal of interest, but many found it difficult to understand. I decided to write a new version that would be easier to follow. I took the opportunity to add material about new developments and I left out some things of a more technical nature.”
There is a long pause, two more beeps and a lot of strenuous cheek movement as he sends the next block of text. ”I would hope that people who have difficulty with A Brief History will try A Briefer History and be pleasantly surprised.”
A Briefer History of Time is not exactly String Theory for Dummies. The book’s range is a little eccentric, lurching between explaining what a scientific theory is (”a model of the universe”) and going into quantum mechanics in the kind of vertiginous detail that makes you open your eyes very wide as you read.
It is fascinating, up to a point. There are new sections: string theory — the unproven idea that the universe is made up of lots of tiny, vibrating strings — has apparently moved on since the first book was written, although it is still controversial. This suits Hawking’s purpose: he understands that no one, scientist or otherwise, can resist an unanswerable question. When he refers to God it is, as he puts it, in the ”impersonal sense”, rather as Einstein referred to the laws of nature. It is a euphemism and also a smart bit of marketing, anchoring the unsexy, techie bones of his subject — he once said the best hope for a theory of everything was n=8 supergravity — with the philosophical questions everyone likes to have a stab at.
What one forgets is that the area of cosmology he works in has been partly influenced by his motor neurone disease. He was diagnosed in his first year as a PhD student at Cambridge and, as his condition worsened, it became harder and, eventually, impossible to write down equations and so work in pure maths. He must, by necessity, work with problems that can be translated into geometry, which he can then picture in his head, such as the 11 dimensions of string theory.
I ask him what he visualises when he talks about string theory — I am ashamed to admit I see cheese strings. Hawking’s cheek twitches and he hits the wrong button –”maybe” he blurts, and then twitches again to scroll back.
”Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren’t equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it’s just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.”
I gather this is not a question he is very interested in, possibly because he has been asked it before and also because it addresses the inadequacies of people to whom the ”purely mathematical point of view” is not one they are ever likely to take.
I ask him how, if string theory was proved to be correct, it might impact on people’s daily lives. ”When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.”
Both Hawking’s parents were at Oxford University — he did his undergraduate degree there and soon afterwards married his first wife, Jane, whom he left 15 years ago for his nurse, Elaine. In the past he was asked how he managed to father three children and replied: ”The disease only affects voluntary muscle.” In the memoir Jane wrote after the break-up of their marriage, she accused him of having a God complex. He has certainly never wanted for confidence.
Hawking lost his speech in 1985 after he fell ill with pneumonia and had to have a tracheotomy. His life became one long exercise in patience. His assistant tells me that when it comes to an interview he can always outlast his questioner and I will find this to be true when we get to the live part of the interview. I will also discover that, when there is a half-hour lag between question and answer, the scope for clarification is extremely limited. But for now we are still reading from the script. I ask if he gives two hoots that there aren’t many top women scientists, and if he has an idea as to why.
”In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.” Twitch, bleep. ”It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics. Of course, these are differences between the averages only. There are wide variations about the mean.”
The problem with Hawking’s voice synthesiser is that there is not much tonal variation; I assume the map-reading, spatial-awareness thing is a joke. The women-being-less-good- at-science thing is clearly not; it is a widely held but rarely admitted-to assumption that, if not itself chauvinistic, is always made so by its corollary — that science and maths are ”harder”, more rigorous and ultimately more relevant disciplines than flaky ”women’s” subjects.
There is one last question from the script. Does it depress him to think that human life is so short, so none of us will ever know how the story ends?
Two beeps. ”If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered.”
Behind his shoulder, his assistant nods. There will now be some time for live questions. Stupidly, given that I have read all about it, I fail to realise just how arduous and time-consuming the process of live communication is. If I did, I wouldn’t squander the time on asking a joke, warm-up question. I tell him I have heard he has six different voices on his synthesiser and that one is a woman’s. Hawking lowers his eyes and starts responding. After five minutes of silence the nurse sitting beside me closes her eyes and appears to go to sleep. I look around. On the windowsill are framed photos stretching back through Hawking’s life. There are photos of one of his daughters with her baby. I notice Hawking’s hands are thin and tapering. He is wearing black suede Kickers.
Another five minutes pass. There are pictures of Marilyn Monroe on the wall, one of which has been digitally manipulated to feature Hawking in the foreground. I see a card printed with the slogan: ”Yes, I am the centre of the universe.” I write it down and turn the page in my notebook. It makes a tearing sound and the nurse’s eyes snap open. She goes over to Hawking and, putting her hand on his head, says, ”Now then, Stephen” and gently wipes saliva from the side of his mouth. Another five minutes pass. Then another.
Hawking’s assistant, who sits behind him to see what is going on on his screen, nods slightly. Here it comes: ”That was true of one speech synthesiser I had. But the one I use normally has only one voice. It is 20 years old, but I stick to it because I haven’t found better and because I’m known by it worldwide.” That’s it? The fruit of 20 minutes’ effort? This man is a Hercules.
I had planned to ask about his wife Elaine’s alleged treatment of him, but in the face of these logistics I lose my nerve. Instead, I ask: it’s been said, primarily by your ex-wife, that you have nothing but contempt for the arts, in particular medieval Spanish poetry [her PhD subject]. Is that true? Hawking stares at me and gets on with it. Is it polite to remain silent while he labours? Or should one talk? One of his assistants told me he got the job partly because Hawking was impressed by how natural he was during the silences. He also told me the worst thing you can do is to try to second-guess Hawking — he grinds his teeth to show disapproval.
After another 20 minutes, Hawking says: ”Not entirely. An awful lot of the arts world is mediocre or sham. But there are a few great works that have a direct effect on people.” These two questions have taken almost three-quarters of an hour to answer. I ask: ”If you could go back in time, who would you rather meet, Marilyn Monroe or Isaac Newton?” and after 10 minutes he says in that voice that makes the blandest statement sound profound: ”Marilyn. Newton seems to have been an unpleasant character.”
I am defeated. I get up to go. Hawking stares at me and smiles, with something steelier than mischief. — Â