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1992-09-22
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REVIEWS, Page 88BOOKSEinstein's Inspiring Heir
By LEON JAROFF
TITLE: Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science
AUTHORS: Michael White and John Gribbin
PUBLISHER: Dutton; 304 pages; $23
THE BOTTOM LINE: He is bound to a wheelchair, but his mind
explores the universe.
He is almost totally paralyzed, speechless and
wheelchair-bound, able to move only his facial muscles and two
fingers on his left hand. He cannot dress or feed himself, and
he needs round-the-clock nursing care. He can communicate only
through a voice synthesizer, which he operates by laboriously
tapping out words on the computer attached to his motorized
chair. Yet at age 50, despite these crushing adversities,
Stephen Hawking has become, in the words of science writers
Michael White and John Gribbin, "perhaps the greatest physicist
of our time." His 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, has sold
1.7 million copies around the world.
Hawking's choice of career was most fortunate, for himself
as well as for science. Rejecting the urging of his physician
father to study medicine, Hawking chose instead to concentrate
on math and theoretical physics, first at Oxford and then at
Cambridge. But at age 21 he developed the first symptoms of
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- also known as Lou
Gehrig's disease -- a disorder that would inevitably render him
paralyzed and incapable of performing most kinds of work. As the
authors note, theoretical physics was "one of the very few jobs
for which his mind was the only real tool he needed."
He has used that tool with consummate skill. While still
a graduate student, Hawking became fascinated by black holes,
the bizarre objects created during the death throes of large
stars. Working with mathematician Roger Penrose and using
Einstein's relativity equations, he developed new techniques
proving mathematically that at the heart of black holes were
singularities -- infinitely dense, dimensionless points with
irresistible gravity. He went on to demonstrate that the entire
universe could have sprung from a singularity and, in his 1966
Ph.D. thesis, wryly noted that "there is a singularity in our
past."
Gathering momentum as a fellow at Cambridge, Hawking
calculated that the Big Bang, which gave birth to the universe,
must have created tiny black holes, each about the size of a
proton but with the mass of a mountain. Then, upsetting the
universal belief that nothing, not even light, can escape from
a black hole, he used the quantum theory to demonstrate that
these miniholes (and larger ones too) emit radiation. Other
scientists eventually conceded that he was correct, and the
black-hole emissions are now known as Hawking radiation.
Engrossed as Hawking is with his work, the authors say,
"ALS is simply not that important to him." He certainly does
not dwell on his handicap. His succinct, synthesized-voice
comments are often laced with humor; he enjoys socializing with
his students and colleagues, attends rock concerts and sometimes
takes to the dance floor at discos, wheeling his chair in
circles. But he can be stubborn, abrasive and quick to anger,
terminating a conversation by spinning around and rolling off,
sometimes running one of his wheels over the toes of an
offender.
Hawking can also be wrong. In 1985, for example, he
brashly proclaimed that when and if the universe stopped
expanding and began to contract, time would reverse and
everything that had ever happened would be rerun in reverse.
Eighteen months later, he sheepishly admitted his mistake.
Earlier, after trashing another scientist's notion that the 19th
century theory of thermodynamics could be applied to black-hole
theory, he recanted and began applying it himself.
Without his wife Jane, Hawking has always emphasized, his
career might never have soared. She married him shortly after
he was diagnosed with ALS, fully aware of the dreadful,
progressive nature of the disease, giving him hope and the will
to carry on with his studies. They had three children in the
early stages of their marriage, and later, as he became
increasingly incapacitated, she devoted herself to catering to
his every need.
After years of apparently harmonious marriage, however,
rifts began appearing. As the accolades and awards poured in for
Stephen, Jane -- competent and intelligent herself -- began to
resent living in his shadow. Deeply religious, she was also
offended by his apparent atheism. Particularly galling to her
was his concept, enunciated first before the Pope at a
scientific meeting at the Vatican, that the universe might be
completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, no
beginning or end. If that were true, he asked provocatively,
"What place, then, for a creator?" Still, friends were shocked
in 1990 when Hawking abruptly ended their 25-year marriage,
moving in with one of his nurses.
What this book brings to the already crowded domain of
Hawking lore is a rather successful merger of biography and
physics. As it traces the course of Hawking's life, it pauses
occasionally to prepare the reader for the mind-boggling
complexities of relativity theory and the even more bizarre
notions of quantum physics -- twin pillars on which Hawking has
constructed his theories -- which he is currently attempting to
unite in an all-encompassing theory. The authors characterize
their early review of Newton's classical theory of gravitation,
for example, as "a gentle workout in the foothills before we
head for the dizzy heights."
The exercise works. By the time the higher elevations are
reached, such strange notions as Einsteinian curved space-time
and the quantum uncertainty principle, heavy meals indeed, seem
not so difficult to digest.
Still, it is the man, more than the science, who dominates
this book, with his triumph over a terrible affliction, his
courage, his humor and his admirable lack of self-pity. As
Hawking's computer voice declared during the final scene in a
BBC TV show, "I have a beautiful family, I am successful in my
work, and I have written a best seller. One really can't ask for
more."