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My Brief History, by Stephen Hawking
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Stephen Hawking has dazzled readers worldwide with a string of bestsellers exploring the mysteries of the universe. Now, for the first time, perhaps the most brilliant cosmologist of our age turns his gaze inward for a revealing look at his own life and intellectual evolution.
My Brief History recounts Stephen Hawking’s improbable journey, from his postwar London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. This concise, witty, and candid account introduces listeners to a Hawking rarely glimpsed in previous books: the inquisitive schoolboy whose classmates nicknamed him Einstein; the jokester who once placed a bet with a colleague over the existence of a particular black hole; and the young husband and father struggling to gain a foothold in the world of physics and cosmology.
Writing with characteristic humility and humor, Hawking opens up about the challenges that confronted him following his diagnosis of ALS at age twenty-one. Tracing his development as a thinker, he explains how the prospect of an early death urged him onward through numerous intellectual breakthroughs, and talks about the genesis of his masterpiece A Brief History of Time—one of the iconic books of the twentieth century.
Clear-eyed, intimate, and wise, My Brief History opens a window for the rest of us into Hawking’s personal cosmos.
- Sales Rank: #5361600 in Books
- Brand: imusti
- Published on: 2013
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.19" h x .79" w x 6.18" l, .64 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
Features
About the Author
Stephen Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years. He is the author of several books, including the worldwide publishing phenomenon A Brief History of Time, A Briefer History of Time (written with Leonard Mlodinow), The Universe in a Nutshell, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time, and the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universes.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
9780345535283|excerpt
Hawking / MY BRIEF HISTORY
1
Childhood
My father, Frank, came from a line of tenant farmers in Yorkshire, England. His grandfather—my great-grandfather John Hawking—had been a wealthy farmer, but he had bought too many farms and had gone bankrupt in the agricultural depression at the beginning of this century. His son Robert—my grandfather—tried to help his father but went bankrupt himself. Fortunately, Robert’s wife owned a house in Boroughbridge in which she ran a school, and this brought in a small amount of income. They thus managed to send their son to Oxford, where he studied medicine.
My father won a series of scholarships and prizes, which enabled him to send money back to his parents. He then went into research in tropical medicine, and in 1937 he traveled to East Africa as part of his research. When the war began, he made an overland journey across Africa and down the Congo River to get a ship back to England, where he volunteered for military service. He was told, however, that he was more valuable in medical research.
My mother was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, the third of eight children of a family doctor. The eldest was a girl with Down syndrome, who lived separately with a caregiver until she died at the age of thirteen. The family moved south to Devon when my mother was twelve. Like my father’s family, hers was not well off. Nevertheless, they too managed to send my mother to Oxford. After Oxford, she had various jobs, including that of inspector of taxes, which she did not like. She gave that up to become a secretary, which was how she met my father in the early years of the war.
I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo. I estimate, however, that about two hundred thousand other babies were also born that day. I don’t know whether any of them was later interested in astronomy.
I was born in Oxford, even though my parents were living in London. This was because during World War II, the Germans had an agreement that they would not bomb Oxford and Cambridge, in return for the British not bombing Heidelberg and Göttingen. It is a pity that this civilized sort of arrangement couldn’t have been extended to more cities.
We lived in Highgate, in north London. My sister Mary was born eighteen months after me, and I’m told I did not welcome her arrival. All through our childhood there was a certain tension between us, fed by the narrow difference in our ages. In our adult life, however, this tension has disappeared, as we have gone different ways. She became a doctor, which pleased my father.
My sister Philippa was born when I was nearly five and better able to understand what was happening. I can remember looking forward to her arrival so that there would be three of us to play games. She was a very intense and perceptive child, and I always respected her judgment and opinions. My brother, Edward, was adopted much later, when I was fourteen, so he hardly entered my childhood at all. He was very different from the other three children, being completely non-academic and non-intellectual, which was probably good for us. He was a rather difficult child, but one couldn’t help liking him. He died in 2004 from a cause that was never properly determined; the most likely explanation is that he was poisoned by fumes from the glue he was using for renovations in his flat.
My earliest memory is of standing in the nursery of Byron House School in Highgate and crying my head off. All around me, children were playing with what seemed like wonderful toys, and I wanted to join in. But I was only two and a half, this was the first time I had been left with people I didn’t know, and I was scared. I think my parents were rather surprised at my reaction, because I was their first child and they had been following child development textbooks that said that children ought to be ready to start making social relationships at two. But they took me away after that awful morning and didn’t send me back to Byron House for another year and a half.
At that time, during and just after the war, Highgate was an area in which a number of scientific and academic people lived. (In another country they would have been called intellectuals, but the English have never admitted to having any intellectuals.) All these parents sent their children to Byron House School, which was a very progressive school for those times.
I remember complaining to my parents that the school wasn’t teaching me anything. The educators at Byron House didn’t believe in what was then the accepted way of drilling things into you. Instead, you were supposed to learn to read without realizing you were being taught. In the end, I did learn to read, but not until the fairly late age of eight. My sister Philippa was taught to read by more conventional methods and could read by the age of four. But then, she was definitely brighter than me.
We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house. Fortunately, he was not hurt, and the house was not badly damaged. But for years there was a large bomb site down the road, on which I used to play with my friend Howard, who lived three doors the other way. Howard was a revelation to me because his parents weren’t intellectuals like the parents of all the other children I knew. He went to the council school, not Byron House, and he knew about football and boxing, sports that my parents wouldn’t have dreamed of following.
Another early memory was getting my first train set. Toys were not manufactured during the war, at least not for the home market. But I had a passionate interest in model trains. My father tried making me a wooden train, but that didn’t satisfy me, as I wanted something that moved on its own. So he got a secondhand clockwork train, repaired it with a soldering iron, and gave it to me for Christmas when I was nearly three. That train didn’t work very well. But my father went to America just after the war, and when he came back on the Queen Mary he brought my mother some nylons, which were not obtainable in Britain at that time. He brought my sister Mary a doll that closed its eyes when you laid it down. And he brought me an American train, complete with a cowcatcher and a figure-eight track. I can still remember my excitement as I opened the box.
Clockwork trains, which you had to wind up, were all very well, but what I really wanted were electric trains. I used to spend hours watching a model railway club layout in Crouch End, near Highgate. I dreamed about electric trains. Finally, when both my parents were away somewhere, I took the opportunity to draw out of the Post Office bank all of the very modest amount of money that people had given me on special occasions such as my christening. I used the money to buy an electric train set, but frustratingly enough, it didn’t work very well either. I should have taken the set back and demanded that the shop or manufacturer replace it, but in those days the attitude was that it was a privilege to buy something, and it was just your bad luck if it turned out to be faulty. So I paid for the electric motor of the engine to be serviced, but it never worked very well, even then.
Later on, in my teens, I built model airplanes and boats. I was never very good with my hands, but I did this with my school friend John McClenahan, who was much better and whose father had a workshop in their house. My aim was always to build working models that I could control. I didn’t care what they looked like. I think it was the same drive that led me to invent a series of very complicated games with another school friend, Roger Ferneyhough. There was a manufacturing game, complete with factories in which units of different colors were made, roads and railways on which they were carried, and a stock market. There was a war game, played on a board of four thousand squares, and even a feudal game, in which each player was a whole dynasty, with a family tree. I think these games, as well as the trains, boats, and airplanes, came from an urge to know how systems worked and how to control them. Since I began my PhD, this need has been met by my research into cosmology. If you understand how the universe operates, you control it, in a way.
From the Hardcover edition.
Most helpful customer reviews
54 of 54 people found the following review helpful.
A history brief, simple and sweet
By Ashutosh S. Jogalekar
Stephen Hawking is not only a great scientist but he is also an exemplar of grit, optimism and good humor. He is as famous for his triumph over a devastating disease and his determined survival as he is for his scientific brilliance. His book "A Brief History of Time" introduced millions of people to the wonders of the universe. This short memoir now introduces people to his own life which has not been any less wondrous. Those who have read the biographies by John Gribbin and Michael White or by Jane Hawking may not find much that is new in here, but the book definitely benefits from Hawking's simple and illuminating writing style and dry sense of humor. Suffering from an illness like ALS can definitely lead someone to express themselves with economy and clarity.
As the title indicates, the book is very short (144 pages) and is divided into even shorter chapters. Each chapter is more like a snippet that focuses on one particular topic. The earlier chapters deal with Hawking's upbringing in London as the son of caring and slightly eccentric parents, his education at Oxford and Cambridge and his initial struggles with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Hawking gives us a good idea of the pioneering research on black holes and the Big Bang which he did with Roger Penrose and others. There are also anecdotes about other scientists like Richard Feynman and encounters with celebrities like Popes and Presidents. Hawking talks unflinchingly about his disease without a hint of self-pity, and this is a quality that continues to make him so widely admired, sometimes to the point of reverence.
The later chapters deal with his current research on quantum gravity, his various trips to different parts of the world (including a few weeks spent every year at Caltech) and his two divorces. One revealing part of the book is Hawking's description of the several occasions on which he was on the brink of death; it was only the dedication of his wives, Jane and Elaine, that saved his life. Old and new photographs (some showcasing Hawking's bawdy sense of humor) enliven the narrative. The book ends on a characteristically optimistic note. Hawking says that his devastating illness has not held him back from fully living life and he is grateful for his gifts and for the support others have given him. There's some useful advice there for all of us.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Part personal and part his science...FASCINATING!
By Luchi1012
Ever since I saw the movie, "Theory of Everything", life of Stephen Hawking, I have been a bit obsessed with him. I read this book twice, first from the library, then my own copy :). His life is an amazing story. He was diagnosed with ALS at 21 and given 2-3 years to live! He was born January, 1942 and is already 73! He is still working, writing books and traveling. Years ago he lost his ability to use his hands and later lost speech. His brain is a genius living in a body that can't do much but keep him alive. Witty and clever and at times charming, he has received almost every honor available to a scientist by governments, institutions, and churches. The book is brief and gives some insight into his life-very interesting- has a few chapters on his science--which goes over my head--but fascinating to know what his passion is. It has lots of great pictures of family and professional colleagues. I am so glad he has lived long enough to contribute so much to his field. (And to be around for his three children, of whom he is rightfully proud.) Now I am reading his ex-wife's book about their 25 year marriage, on which the movie was based. WOW!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Very inspiring!
By manoj awasthi
Just finished up reading the autobiography of the great physicist Stephen Hawking. His biography is true to its title - it's brief. It's awe-inspiring though.
He has kept the book less technical and more focussed on his personal as well as professional life.
I will not brief the book here but would mention about last chapter which is titled "No Boundaries". In this chapter, Hawking writes that while he contracted Motor Neuron disease when he was just 21 and while he did feel that it was unfair at that time - fifety years later - while writing the book he is quietly satisfied with his life. He got married twice, has three accomplished children, has been successful in scientific career and is one of the best known scientist in the world (of the order of Albert Einstein), has traveled to all continents except one (Austrailia, not Antarctica), has met representatives from many countries, has been awarded for his work in Physics, couldn't get Noble Prize only because his work in theoretical physics is hard for experimentation, and people love him.
There is a movie to be released may be this year or next based on this book. Search for: The Theory of Everything Official Trailer (2014)
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