Univ Record 2018

highly on the Mensa test
was an early verification that
his brain was unharmed.
The final diagnosis of ALS
took place about 12 months
later.
It is important to note
that Steve has said he was
fairly lonely and bored in his
early undergraduate years.
However, he was recognised
by all of us, his 100 or so
peers at University College,
that he was the most
intelligent person we had
ever met, while the rest of us
were “just ordinary people”;
and especially after the first
year, he joined us in many of
the College activities. He was after all two years younger than most of us, and we mostly
did not have his strongly intellectual family background, which perhaps restrained him
initially in all the non-physics adventuring of typical undergraduates.
Regarding the final exam from Oxford, the rest of us knew as soon as we found his
name on the “viva” list for a first class honours degree (after the grading of the written
exams), that he would get his First and go on to his first choice for graduate work,
Cambridge, then the mecca for cosmology.
The rest is well-known history, as Steve returned to mathematical physics for his
life’s work, and taught the whole world his wonderful example of determined success
in the face of extreme physical adversity. As physicists we will be always grateful for his
efforts in developing detailed theories of our universe and driving our understanding of
the cosmos forward; putting into words explanations that could be mostly understood
by other non-scientists. Those explanations were able to excite the imaginations of the
general population, making them value the sense that humans can better understand
the immensity of the universe, and the place of humans there. He was THE human
“supernova of our time”.
We last met about four years ago in Cambridge in his office and at home – it was
delightful to find that his strong sense of humour was undiminished – I think a strong
force in helping him overcome his heath adversities. He immediately decided that us four
University College physics undergraduates (Derek Powney, Richard Bryan, Steve and
myself) should get together again – we began the process, but tracking down Powney
and Bryan took more time than we had available to us – too bad the meeting never
happened. I just close with a photo of our meeting in his office at that time, soon after
the release of the movie Hawking (2013), directed by Stephen Finnigan.
Stephen William Hawking was born 300 years after Galileo’s death day, 8 February,
and died 139 years after Einstein’s birthday (14 March) – an example of temporal
antisymmetry.
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