A Brief History of Time

For 60 years, since Einstein revolutionised our understanding of the cosmos and Planck and Heisenberg undid the certainties of par­ticle physics, scientists have been chasing a chimera - the Great Uni­fied Theory that would describe and relate all the forces of the un­iverse and, in the process, lay bare the secrets of nature. Now a pro­foundly disabled man has the quarry in sight; and it is no - chimera, but a real beast, waiting to tear our philosophies apart.

A dull bumping noise and a mechanical whine from the corridor announce that Professor Stephen Hawking is ready to start his day's work. A nurse comes into the office, followed by an electric wheel­chair with a large metal box on the back and a computer screen at­tached to the left arm. The seat is covered by a sheepskin mat on which rests what appears to be a bundle of clothes that have, by some extraordinary coincidence, formed themselves roughly into the shape of a man.

So the skeletal hands projecting from the crossed arms of the tweed jacket and the angled, alert head that emerges from the check shirt all come as a slight shock. The left hand is controlling the chair with a joystick on the right chair arm, while the right hand clicks away furiously at a computer control pad. Suddenly, a hard, inflectionless voice with a curious Scandinavian American accent issues

from the chair. «Hello. How are you?» The voice is emitted from speakers on the metal box. Hawking calls up words on the screen, then sends them to the computer to be spoken. The process is slow -he manages about 10 words a minute - but can be speeded up if you read the words straight off the screen. I look over his shoulder to see what is coming up next.

«I want a dove...» it says. His secretary, Sue Masey, seems baffled. We wait nervously. Suddenly the voice bursts forth again. «I want a dove-grey van».

He had just wanted to specify the colour of a specially equipped van he is buying with the money he will receive for the Israeli Wolf Prize in Physics. In addition, his secretary reveals, he wants power steering, a stereo cassette and any other gimmicks that might be available. The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University is a sucker for gadgets.

He is also the man most likely to produce an explanation for the entire history of the universe within the next few years. By his own estimate, there is a fifty-fifty chance mankind will soon come up with the answer and, by everybody else's estimate, you can substitute the name «Hawking» for «mankind». If, of course, he lives.

For the terrible fact is that the intellect of one of the two or three greatest physicists of the century is sustained by an almost defunct body. Over the past 25 years motor neurone disease has caused a slow but savage deterioration in his condition. At 21 he was stum­bling, by 30 he was in a wheelchair. He has some vestigial move­ment in his head and hands, and, disconcertingly, an immense, wide toothy grin.

Having dealt with his van problem, Hawking announces that he will have lunch at his College, Gonville and Caius. He then reverses out of the tiny office to have coffee in the shabby common room with the other members of the department.

Few people there pay any attention to the slumped, fragile figure with its whirring chair and the sudden loud interjections of its elec­tronic voice. The talk is of equations and theories. One neighbour is announcing that Einstein's relativity was incomprehensible to him when explained in the usual layman's terms of clocks and spaceships,

and it was only when he started doing the maths that it all became lt Hawking has now reversed this process by producing the best-filing book A Brief History of Time, a non-technical guide to his thought, entirely free of mathematics.

Suddenly he announces he must prepare for his lecture and

whirrs off.

(Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times)