Come on you guys a family picture here you go
All the great scientists, and this is one of them Kepler and Galileo Newton. Yeah, we got one right here, it's fantastic amazing
My name is Steven Pollack and
For the past 50 years I have traveled the world
Studying and lecturing about time and space and the laws that govern the universe
Break a leg
This film that's a personal journey through my life told in my own words
Come with me, and I will show you how I live and work today
And tell you the story of how I became Who I am
Welcome to my world
So you're going to take the lunch in the cafeteria I
Think it would kill him if he was in a home being cared for by nurses. I think that would be there for him
He likes to flare cheese that what he wants to of his life. He loves the danger of flying
He was going to space and he's been in submarines
Who's just the most craziest man?
He's got a lot of guts sitting in
Just through here ISM the nurses room so if anything medical happens or just grab a phone phone 999
But there is not much. We can actually do because Stephen is on a nippy, but she or Yvonne is that foul
The only other thing we could do and we do have and we have oxygen cylinders, and we can give him oxygen
but if he's in
Toe state then we will have to let him go
I have lived over two-thirds of my life with the threat of death hanging over me
Because every new day could be my last I
Have developed a desire to make the most of each and every minute
Although m71 now I still go to work everyday at Cambridge University
Connected mind has been vital to my survival as has been maintaining a sense of humor
When an I went my job interview I
Thought he was going to ask me about my past medical history and what I've done before in care
That he didn't he asked whether I could cook poached eggs
I
Was 19 at the time and I lied because I didn't know how to cook my eggs, but I got the job straight away
We're not going to work anymore if I just gonna go see a friend
well family
Stephens been there through the years of me growing up and like turning into an adult
So he's been there food most of the important stages of my life
I've had a very privileged life. Thanks to Stephen
Ginger
As you can see the gradual advance of my illness has meant that I am totally
Reliant on those around me
71 years ago life started that way too I
Was born in 1942
Exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo
My parents were both at Oxford University
Where my father studied medicine?
He later specialized in tropical diseases
That is often said that a person's early years are a good indication of how they will turn out
Perhaps my eldest sister Mary who remembers me best I
remember Stephens very bright always into things I
Remember my father made me a doll's house so Steven putting both plumbing and lighting
You like to win
He liked to win in everything
We all learnt to play
Drafts I beat Stephen once
Once at drafts, and he immediately took up chess, and I never beat him at that again
I
Also spend a lot of time laying on my own as a boy I
Had a passion to understand how things worked from toy trains to the whole universe he
Would spend a lot of time looking at the sky looking at the Stars and wondering where
eternity came to an end he
couldn't conceive
that there could be something without a
finish
Own life was always stimulating for me and my siblings my
Mother and father were intellectuals, but naturally they expected their children to follow
This my parents we're moving in the Highgate Hampstead intelligence so that sort of circle
We always talked
Everyone talked everybody argued we used to argue theology or not. It's a great thing for kids because you don't need any facts whatsoever
To outsiders the hog household was considered eccentric
But for me
That was the place where my mind was constantly
challenged
There were books everywhere
Bookshelves that would double banked
Bookshelves that had on top of the upright books rows of other books shoehorned in wherever there was space
It was a less conventional house one in which the children had a great deal of freedom
And I remember being quite gobsmacked by the conversation over lunch
It was about subjects which were never talked about in my house sex on the sexuality
arguments for and against abortion and various other subjects that were quite unusual
As I developed into a teenager my parents taught me to always question things and think big
Stephen devised and remember this was in the early 1950s not just one, but two computers, which we built from scratch
It was about the size of a half depth fridge
But about as tall and about as wide
It solved logical problems posed in binary if this condition is true and that condition is true all that condition
Instead is true then and it would give you the what the then meant
At school my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein even though I was only ever halfway up the class
It was I like to think a very bright class
It's always assumed Stephen will go to Oxford
Birth my parents had been to Oxford
You know he was extremely bright. There's never any doubt about this
He and my father had a difference of opinion about what he should study
Father so the good thing is Stephen did medicine
But Stephen was not intimate and he did was awful doctors to get
so they compromised
We agreed on the degree in Natural Sciences
specialising in physics
The prevailing attitude at Oxford at the time was very handy work
You were supposed to be brilliant without effort
Or to accept your limitations and get a fourth class degree
The work art again a better class of debris was regarded as the mark of a grey man
the worst help that in the oxford vocabulary I
think Stephen I felt both of us right into that category that there was no need to work or appear to work and
Steve was a very funny guy. He was able to appreciate jokes and tell jokes the whole time and
spontaneous humor
Was really his forte
At Oxford I joined the rowing club and became macaques I
Relished in the freedom the Sneed and of course calling the shots
The rowing club also introduced me to one of my favorite pastimes at Oxford
Our Dean
I
Once calculated that I did about a thousand hours work in the three years
I was there an average of an hour a day
I'm not proud of this lack of work
I am just describing my attitude at the time, which I shared with most of my fellow students
Within the whole year people gradually thought of Steve as being the brilliant guy in the year
But he was brilliant in the sense that he could make off-the-cuff remarks, which were deep
So he was definitely a standout person of intellect
The question always was whether he would use that intellect to go anywhere
Well if the number of champagne receptions one goes to the
Semester of success then it would seem that I have made it
Tonight I am guest of honor at the launch of a supercomputer called cosmos in Cambridge
Cosmos is one of the most powerful computers in the world
And will enable us to better understand our place in the universe
Stevens perhaps the world's most famous scientist and no
One can deny that it's fantastic to have his support
It really is a big day for theoretical cosmology in the UK
The notion of fame the Sakura thing to me
In my mind I am a scientist who has been lucky to work on some of the
fundamental mysteries of our universe
Sometimes I wonder if I am as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries
As my student days were in full swing I was gradually becoming aware that all was not well
During my final year at Oxford I had noticed that I was getting rather clumsy in my movements
When I fell over once or twice for no apparent reason?
But then one evening
late at night
something more serious happened I
Recall the time the steam fell down the stairs
He fell down set all the way to the bottom
Keep lost consciousness, and then he couldn't remember who he was
He couldn't remember where he was so it was a very serious thing
When I look back at that fall, I didn't realize at the time that was a warning sign of things to come
But I recovered and soon had more pressing things on my mind
Despite my relaxed attitude to study I
graduated with first-class honours and left Oxford for Cambridge University to begin my PhD
Yet, little did I know I?
Would soon be diagnosed with a crippling illness that will change my life forever
Well Stephens speed of communication
Has very gradually slowed down a few years ago
He was still able to use his hand switch and able to communicate by clicking this switch on his wheelchair
When he wasn't able to do that anymore we switched over to a switch that he'd mounted on his cheek
But with him slowing down with that. We've pushed his sponsors, and so they've been looking into facial recognition
This is a high speed camera which will allow us to see very fine details and the facial expressions
And this will help us to improve the rate of your speech and input
I have had to learn to live with my slow rate of
Communication I can only write by slitting my deep muscle to move the cursor on my computer
One day, I feared this muscle will fail, but I would like to be able to sleep more quickly
Even me to change it to English antithetic
Yeah, I'm the thing
Yeah
So it's a little hasty then
Yeah
Uh-huh okay, mr.. Toasty, but sometimes he can make a mistake
And then he deletes it and then he makes another mistake and deletes it and you know it can be frustrating
they're watching and he can see the frustration on his face as well I
Am holding with the current generation of software experts can harness what little movement
I had left in my face and turned it into faster
Communication your current piece of software is a little dated well
It's a lot dated, but you're very used to using it
So we've changed the method by which your next word prediction works
And it can pretty much pick up the correct word every single time even if you're even if your letters away from
a
Previous version I really like it
That's amazing that I think it's actually gone brilliantly the stuff that we showed him he was excited about
Anything better than what he's doing. I think is going to be a success and anything that doesn't
Complicate Stephens life any more than it is I think that will be a success as well
The
1962 age 20 when I arrived at Cambridge to begin my
PhD I was also desperate for my voice to be heard as I embarked on my first real
scientific challenge at
The time through theories battle to correctly describe the universe
The steady state Theory held that the universe had always existed and will exist forever
But there was another more exciting idea
The Big Bang Theory suggested that the universe had begun with a huge explosion I
Decided to try to see if I could shed any light on how the Big Bang came to me
But by now the immediate challenge I was facing was to keep control of my body
My movements were becoming even more erratic though
I was determined not to worry my family so I try to keep it to myself
Stephen went home for Christmas after one term and
The symptoms that he had had become too severe to hide from his parents
His father insisted on taking him to I think the family doctor first and then that doctor
recommended a specialist in London
So after Christmas Stephen and his father went to London and st. Bartholomew's Hospital I
Was in hospital for two weeks and had a wide range of unpleasant tests
They took a muscle sample from my arm and stuck electrodes into me
Then they injected some live with into my spine until x-rays
Eventually, I was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Otherwise known as motor neuron disease or ALS
the prognosis was not good I
Was given two to three years to live
It was always hard to tell how Stephen took it because one thing he wouldn't talk about it
If you can't do anything about it you probably don't want to talk about his joy
Or have people talk about it
He did seem pretty depressed, and I don't he accepted it emotionally
The whole founder went to pieces
It was such a shock for everybody my aunt turned white in the night, and we all thought it
He'd be you know he was not going to be able to live for very long
Not knowing what was going to happen to me or how rapidly the disease would progress I was at a loose end
The doctors told me to go back to Cambridge and carry on with my research
But I was not making much progress in any way I might not live long enough to finish my PhD I
Felt somewhat of a tragic character, I took to listening to partner
Partner the Annunciation of death made a great impression on me when I first heard it as I had not developed
motor neuron disease I
Identified with it and still do today
But as it turned out
IW type at
Hearst the disease seemed to progress fairly rapidly as
time went by however that seemed to slow down I
Also began to make progress with my work
But what really made a difference
Who was falling in love with a girl called Jane Wilde who might had met about the same time I was diagnosed
This gave me something to live for oh
He was great fun. He was eccentric I
was really drawn to his very wide smile and
his beautiful grey eyes I
Think that's what made me fall in love with him
We were going to defy the disease we were going to defy the doctors and we were going to challenge the future
Jane was beautiful and gentle and seemingly undaunted by the harsh reality of my illness
Falling in love and getting engaged was the motivation that I needed
if I were to get married I had to get a job and to get a job I had to finish my PhD I
Therefore started working hard for the first time in my life
To my surprise I found I liked it
First even found his groove. He'd found his trajectory and when Steven finds a trajectory he pursues it
I was terribly exciting because he had been so depressed and here he was with a new lease of life
Perhaps because I realized I might not have much time I
Renewed my efforts at Hackl the big question in cosmology in the early sixties
That the universe has a beginning or not
Many scientists were instinctively opposed the idea of a big bang because it implies the moment of creation
The hand of God
For me though
Religion has no role to play in physics
So I wondered if the Big Bang could have happened on its own without the need for a gotta get it going
The key was in the theory of black holes
at the time
physicist Roger Penrose who was working on what happens when a star collapses
under the force of its own gravity
Penrose claimed the star would crush itself to a tiny point of infinite density
Where his entire MIT self would come to a stop?
He called it a singularity
the heart of a black hole
When I was doing this work on the gravitational collapse of black holes I never heard of Stephen
So I had a little private session, and he was somebody who picked up my ideas quickly
He sort of stood out as being somebody who asked extremely awkward questions to remember that
I worked relentlessly to see if I could have lied the notion of a singularity to the entire universe
then suddenly I had it I
Imagined going backwards at the beginning and worked out that right at the start the universe would have been a
singularity to
Hear time stops, you've reached the true beginning of everything
There is no previous time in which the universe could have had a cause
It's continuously created itself in
the Big Bang
The work that Stephen dead basically showed there was singular state
Which couldn't have come from a previous?
Universe so you could say it is a theory which tells you that the universe had a beginning
By addressing the question of creation that
Physicists had avoided I had
Controversially showed the laws of nature suggest there is no need for a creator or God
The universe just came into existence all by itself
My findings about a big bang and the possible beginning of the universe
gave me the results I needed to enhance my PhD I
Applied for a research fellowship at mondo and Keith College which proved successful
The money from the fellowship meant that Jane and I could get married which we did in July 1965
We had the maximum number of guests in the tiny Chapel
Stephen was walking with a stick and
he was losing strength in his arms and we went off for our honeymoon to
upstate New York to a physics conference at Cornell University
and
There I got to know that a goddess in Stevens life with whom I was sharing the marriage was physics
After returning from our honeymoon Shane, and I bought a house in little st. Mary's late than the center of Cambridge
In March
1966 I completed and submitted my PhD thesis with the help of Jane who had spent many
Painstaking hours at the typewriter typing it up
The findings in my thesis greatly enhanced my reputation and cosmology
Stevens profile certainly did make
rocket
It's important to know that there was a big bang
because that governs our
cosmology
It's also important to know what it was like and why it was like what it was like
Because when you trace back everything in nature
You get ultimately to the Big Bang and the fact that it was a singular state is very much part of that understanding
You know just do a quick recap
Off of my PhD and my early work went some way to answering how our universe began
But there is still plenty more to find out
black hole
Artistry but slowly at Cambridge I met her a new generation of cosmologists
Who are tackling ever tougher questions? It's this work that I enjoyed the most
Well the fourth child solution doesn't exist because the radius
And I have to think about it
He's in office every day, and I mean it's basically fast PhD students. It's great
I mean he's there for us if we wanted to kind of ride so no no I mean it's a it's
a great privilege
I have always wanted to share my enthusiasm and excitement
There is nothing like the Eureka moment of discovering something that no one knew before I
Won't compare it to sex but it lasts longer
My next major Eureka moment happened when I was least expecting it
In the autumn of 1970 I had been concentrating my research on black holes
By now Jane and I had food children Robert aged 3 years and Lucy who had just been born
One evening in November as I was getting ready for bed an idea charged through my brain
Only cosmologists would truly grasp it, but it would greatly enhance my reputation I
was sitting on one side of the bed and Stephen was sitting on the other side of the bed tussling with his buttons and
This was one evening
when he took longer about it than usual so I finished feeding the baby, and then he said I
Think I've sold a problem
Suddenly I had a revelation about what happens when two black holes collide and merge I
Realized that the surface area of the new black hole could only get bigger that could never decrease in size
This may sound like an obscure discovery, but it revealed some fundamental properties of the universe
Even though few physicists could understand it at a time for me. That was very exciting I
Was writing the rulebook for black holes
now my voice would really be heard I
Knew he'd done something very important
So I was absolutely thrilled and this of course made his name in a big way in physics
He'd been recognized as somebody with great potential
But now he really had a discovery to his name
By the early 1970s
My career in cosmology and my understandings of the universe were beginning to blossom
But as my mind grew in confidence my body was going into a rapid decline
At home
I was reluctant to ask for help from outsiders
And was relying upon Jane more and more to help me get up in the morning get dressed and get to work
and when I bought a Cambridge I needed my students to help me -
Yes, I first met Stephen in
1972 at Cambridge when I became his PhD student
He was in a wheelchair, but a push wheelchair
And so I also had a role in in in helping him with eating and moving around
In coffee and tea and things like that so it was a rather unusual relationship
In those days Stephen of course was still speaking with his voice, but his voice was still weak
So it wasn't so easy to hear what he was saying
Oh
Yeah
And indeed when I traveled with Stephen I would often
Be acting as an interpreter so Stephen would say something and if the person he's speaking to couldn't understand. I would then repeat it
Although I was becoming increasingly trapped inside my dysfunctional body
Fortunately my mind was unaffected I
Had a new big question I felt compelled to find the answer to
My reputation in the field of black holes was established as we entered a golden age
But my next discovery would throw all of cosmologists findings to date up in the air
The
calculations I was working on
Involved what happened to particles on the edge of a black hole that were sucked in and disappeared
To my great surprise, I found that some particles could escape the black hole
Which seemed to make a mockery of the known laws of physics?
At first I thought this must be a mistake I
Do remember when he was working on this problem?
And did I even remember when he told me he was working out with quantum effects of these black holes?
And he seemed to be getting this flux of particles coming out when Stephen is thinking about a problem. He will become
Obviously obsessed with it it
Was a very intense period it was when he could be surrounded by children and not notice
What was going on because he was like rodents tinker with his head in his hand often
accompanied by
Wagner blaring out from the loudspeakers
He used to drive me spare
Finally after months of the thought at work, I found what I was looking for
Contrary to all previously held theories and black holes. I discovered that they must emit particles
Like the hot body losing heat
this evaporation meant in theory a black hole could eventually disappear I
Announced my findings on st. Valentine's Day the
1974 at a cosmology
conference in Oxford to a packed audience
He came to an end
And there was absolute silence in the lecture hall
And I can see it now
the chairman of the lecture jumped to his feet and
Instead of saying oh, I must thank professor Hawking for his remarkable lecture. He said this is preposterous
I've never heard anything like it
The whole place was abuzz people couldn't believe what they had heard
My controversial discovery initially shocked the world of physics
But
eventually it became accepted and known as Hawking radiation I
Am proud to have discovered it
This was a remarkably important result because it was a result which
Unified relativity theory and quantum theory and thermodynamics and
Physics is really all about unifying ideas these three subjects seemed to be brought together
And this was the first time we'd seen that kind of unification
Every now and then in physics you get a result which is it's so beautiful. It really is like rolling candy on the tongue
Oh, I was enormously proud
enormously proud of what Stephen had achieved
After I announced my theory of Hawking radiation
and the later discovery of exploding black holes a
procession of international awards followed in the spring of
1974 I was inducted into the Royal Society
one of the most prestigious bodies of scientists
my name now had alongside Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin a
Year later. I received the gold medal for science from Pope Paul the sixth
Age 32 I was thrilled to have such high-profile awards to my name an exciting new
opportunities beckoned
The 1974 door started to open for me
When I was invited on a visiting professorship to the California Institute of Technology
in Los Angeles
This meant moving with the whole family for the academic year and the lore of the American West Coast was irresistible
We were in the midst of a revolution in the application of quantum physics to black holes
I was simply hoping to have a year in which the result would be better science done by Caltech
scientists by my research group and others and better science done by Stephen
life in California was very different from Cambridge I
Now had a large salary in a big house just a stone's throw from the University
Well America could have been on another planet. We were living in the lap of luxury
no, expense spared to make us welcome and
This great gift of an electric wheelchair provided for Stephens use
Yet, although we had all the mod cons that America could offer us
It was becoming clear that the demands of home life on change were becoming too intense
Looking after two young children and trying to cope with my
ever-increasing disabilities were causing too much degree I
Could not see my way
Through what it was going to demand of me?
And this wonderful idea came to me if we were going to go to California and the students were going to come too
Why didn't we offer them a bed in our house in return for some help with Stephen?
Of course it's not the normal relationship between a student and the PhD supervisor
But for me that was a good deal because I live rent-free in
Exchange for sort of helping Steven out around the home you know bath times and helping human ills and things like that
But the excitement of a new life in California was harshly interrupted by my motor neuron disease
The physical symptoms took an irreversible turn for the worst
That was the year in which he lost the use of his hands when he arrived
He could still write equations though with some difficulty by the end of the year
He couldn't so it was in terms of his physical development
It was more difficult period on the other hand in terms of his mental development as he gradually lost the use of his hands. He
further developed his unique ways of thinking by manipulating shapes and
Topologies in his head and became even more advanced than the rest of us
By losing the finer dexterity of my hands
I was forced to travel through the universe in my mind and try to visualize the ways in which had worked
He could move at lightning speed across the frontiers of knowledge and see things that nobody else could see
the disability forced him to
carry himself in new ways new directions
Turning problems over in my mind has been my main method of discovery for nearly half my life now
while all around me people have passed away deep in conversation I
Have often been
Transported afar lost inside my own thoughts
Trying to fathom how the universe works
When we returned from California in the summer of
1975 much of the future living with my illness seemed uncertain
So then I took comfort in the security of a happy family life
And to make whole life is here we realized my disabilities meant that we needed a student living with us full-time
I
Knew the Steven Hawkins brain scientist, and I was told that he was severely disabled
I was told that his voice was very weak
So it would probably take about a week before you know I could understand what he was saying of course because of the Stevens
Circumstances you could say no day was really normal
Steven had these massive batteries that was wheelchair and of course he had spares
And so I loved it as many as I could on the bottom of Steven's wheelchair
And Steven didn't know what I'd loaded it down so happily now
I didn't want have to carry the thing so he starts up the hill and I seem turning the Carter and he's about
10 about 20 meters away, and I see him slowly tipping backwards
And he fell over in the bushes
Yeah, this was somewhat alarming to see the master of gravity being overcome by the Earth's gravitational field falling into the
Into the bushes so I went up to retrieve him, but he was of course quite upset
It was perhaps good that I couldn't understand all that he said at that occasion
Although my increasing disabilities were greatly affecting my life more and more I
was clearly reluctant to accept nursing care I
Was convinced that I could build a team of people around me who could care for me in their own way
We didn't have any nurses at all in the department that was part of my role. I would look after him
Well I had to wipe his nose become his hair for him if it was falling down into his eyes
And I could see that when he was eating or drinking
this could
Cause a problem and a very big one for me because I didn't have any nursing
training whatsoever
You would have these coughing fits that would be quite
severe and it you know you sort of think he's gonna choke and die at any moment I
Felt responsible to try to give him the best care I could but it was Gary faking what might happen to him
But one night Stephen have a most horrendous choking thing
And I just didn't know what to do and everything just shook windows rattled doors shook
It was the most terrifying experience, and it was really critical
Although I was able to live and work as I wanted I was never really able to understand
The stringent was placing on the people around me
especially my wife Jane I
Was beginning to feel that there were two phases to our situation
One was the public image the wunderkind of physics
Who had
overcome motor neurone disease
Who was whizzing around the world in his wheelchair to receive honors and medals and?
The other side the other face was a home situation
where sometimes
The illness forced us into our own little black hole
The decline in my health was a stark reminder that time was against me
Yet despite the pressures on my family. I was determined. I realized a lifelong ambition
by writing a pop lore book about how the universe had begun I
wanted the book to be read by millions of people around the world like a best-selling Airport novel I
Did not think it would work. I did not think it would work because
Basically if you look at all the other books in airports there are none like that
However I felt sure that the mass market would want to know about how the universe began
by
1984 I had completed the first chapter
There was great interest in him
He was a great public figure so actually every publisher in town was interested in the book
I guess we had a contract ready for him to sign, and I had heard that he was gonna be in Chicago
So I was there and waiting and then this car pulls into the parking lot and this gentleman gets out
And he goes back to the passenger door and scoops
What looks like a kind of life-sized broken doll into his arms and brings it back to the wheelchair and kind of gently?
eases the doll into place and
Suddenly the doll becomes animated as soon as that hand is on the controls the thing literally it kicks into life
Spins around two three times and takes off and then Brian shouts to me. I've gotten out of my car
He says is that you is that Peter Quezada, and I said, yes, it's me. He says well quick follow us. That's professor Hawking
I
signed up with Peter and set to work completing the first draft of my book I
Try to simplify the physics as best I could and by the end I was pleased and felt. It was in pretty good shape
But Peter wasn't convinced I
Was pretty disappointed. Yeah, I thought this is gonna be really difficult
But I just decided we'd made a substantial commitment to it and by god
We were going to do this book, so let's just start slogging and then maybe Lightning would strike or something
wonderful would happen
Lightning did indeed strike, but not in the way that Peter and I were holding
That summer I had taken a break from rewriting to travel to Switzerland on holiday
But while I was there I caught a chest infection
That developed into pneumonia and quickly became very serious
I was put into a drug-induced corner a nun to a life-support machine
The doctor thought I was so far gone they offered a Jane's attorney off the machine
But she refused
Finally they insisted that I was flown back to Cambridge I
Remember very vividly walking through the doors and being really quite rocked
by what I saw when I got in there and
I realised that Stephen was really very very ill
Things were not looking good
He could have died
We were just told that he couldn't breathe and of course we knew how weak he was at that time
and he had been ill before and
We all knew that he was on borrowed time
The weeks of intensive care were the darkest of my life I
Felt I had always fought my illness so hard that I was not prepared again, so easily
Slowly the drugs began to work on the infection past, but the surgeons had to perform a tracheotomy
to allow me to breathe which made a small incision in my windpipe and
Connected me to a ventilator via the hole in my throat
as a result I was now robbed of the ability to talk I
Faced a life unable to properly communicate
it was a very worrying time for everyone around him, and you're thinking do you think I'll ever be able to talk again or
How will you work? If you can't talk?
So yes, it was a very bleak time
All hopes of finishing my book and perhaps in my career seemed to be over
It was very tense for everybody it was incredibly tense
it was difficult to think that Stephen was going to come out of there and
Be okay
As the weeks of my recovery turned into months
that became obvious to me and everyone around me that being on a ventilator meant that I needed constant care and
monitoring
to keep alive
This was a very big realization that things were going to dramatically change
And that this was going to be needing
24-hour day nursing care their lives would never ever going to be the same again
Once nurses came into the house
Life changed
and
That was very difficult for all of us for me for the children
Home was no longer home
There was no privacy no privacy because the walls were listening to everything
Despite the intrusions on family life with the nurse's help, I grew stronger
Yet, I still felt trapped inside my body
For a time at home
I could communicate only by raising my eyebrows when someone pointed a letter Sun occurred
All thoughts of work and finishing my book drew distant
Let them fly it unexpectedly a bloomer of hope came from across a water I
Got a call from a physicist, and he said I know you're working on computer systems for people with ALS
Says, I've got someone in England. He's a professor of physics who lost the ability to speak and he needs a system
The system was called equalizer and the top part of the screen was a set of letters rows of letters and
On the bottom part of the screen was rows of words
36 very frequently used words
So he could choose
The top part or the bottom part he learned that very quickly I was blown away by it was he was
scanning just amazingly fast I
Had enough movement in my right hand to be able to click the computer system and write the words, I wanted
Finally I was free to communicate again I
Was able to make up the lost time that my illness had forced upon me I
Had a stack of notes from Peter glossary
suggesting changes and clarifications to my book
But I needed practical help with hurry right at my end someone who could act as a go-between
The people in states were speaking on loudspeaker phone in his office and
Stephen was writing using his new computer system on the screen, and the new ins say what he was saying over the phone
We're just sort of cobbling it together, I think is probably the right turn I had no idea
What was going on on Stephens side of this where it seems that he was persuading Stephen that this was okay?
Helping Stephen off the walls of Stephen started thinking why the hell am I spending all this time
making this idiot understand this basic stuff
After months of work the rewrite was complete
None of us really knew whether the book would be liked and would sell as we all hoped for all we could do now was
Given a title a brief history of time send it off to the printer and wait
But to everyone's surprise the book sold coffee after coffee
And very quickly book shops were selling out
When it hit the bestseller list you're obviously surprised it was a pleasant surprise, and it said it was a surprise
I didn't think it you'll find anybody. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll say oh yes
We knew all along this was going to be a major hit
I had no expectation that there'll be the number one best-selling book in the world. I mean not just here, but Germany, Slovenia
France Italy everywhere in the world there was the hope that
someone had found the mystery of life and from then on it was just a race to keep the book in print and and
kind of
marching towards a million copies sold
It was very gratifying
You know in the 38 years that I've been in this business
I don't think I've ever had a book that
stayed at the top of the bestsellers that long I
Was amazed at to how well it did I think it worked he inspired people?
he gave people some overall sense of the birth of the universe and
It made this subject become a subject of conversation among people in all walks of life
professor Stephen Hawking's book a brief history of time and unlikely but
successful
Publishing phenomena a brief history of time has sold about 8 million craft a popular book about his theories is already topping the American
bestsellers list the hugely successful of brief history of time by Stephen Hawking
A brief history of time stayed in the bestseller list for over four years and entered into the Guinness Book of Records
For doing so a date over 10 million copies have been sold worldwide
Over the next few years a lot of fuss was made about my book I
Became famous nationally and around the world as it was translated into 40 different lengths, which is
the life is welcome professor Stephen Hawking I
Was invited on the chat shows when I think people do think of you as a genius not just as a disabled genius and
I had made a cameo appearance on Star Trek
My favorite sci-fi so you are bluffing wrong again Albert
I
Enjoyed the media attention
And witnessing everyday people getting more involved in understanding the physics of our universe
But soon the press wanted to know more about me my illness and my family life
He wanted this worldwide celebrity he enjoys that and part of his whole outlook on life
And his science is that it's fun and celebrity was fun
And he embraced it in a way that was not necessarily very good for the family the children
So this was a further real problem in the marriage
We were engulfed and swept away by this great wave of
fame and fortune
And I have to say that really it all got rather too much for me to cope with and
I suppose that's when we ceased to be as happy as we had been and
then we marriage broke up I
felt as if a rug
Not just had been pulled up from under my feet
but the earth had opened up under that rug and swallowed me up, but because the marriage had been my raise on debt and
It took me quite a little while to recover my sense of my own identity
It was clear that my life and chase were beginning to follow different paths
the
1990 we separated and were divorced in
1995
In the same year I announced my engagement to Elaine Nathan and married again
The lead had been one of my nurses from the start of my 24-hour wraparound care
Over the years we had become extremely close as Jane and I drifted apart
Each seeking comfort and love through new relationships
If vain became closer to Steven than any of the other nurses
When he traveled he would refer to have her with him over the others it became a close relationship
My marriage truly was passionate and tempestuous she saved my life on several occasions
And we were together for 11 years before divorcing in 2006
The low point was when the press trended unsubstantiated allegations that I had been the victim of domestic violence
To my mind this was a gross invasion of our privacy
It was an extremely hurtful and damaging time for us both
Unfortunately being in the public eye can have its drawbacks
Living a very public life does however have the sub-sites tool?
At work. I am often visited by famous people who share an interest in space in the universe we live in
Sometimes if astronauts drop by
My voice is listened to
Because I did something
43 years ago
And I have the sense of humans reaching outward and succeeding
But I believe that he is valued more
because he has the
the pure
analytical combined with the philosophical
That comes from his understanding of the beginnings and the ends of the university
You
I am convinced that one day humans will have to colonize other planets in order to survive
Space travel will become an everyday necessity
Until then I hoped of me one of the first ordinary people to blast off into space
but I will need a little help I
Just couldn't think of anybody in the world that would rather send his face and Stephen Hawking and
You know we'd haven't offered anybody a free ticket
But it was the one person in the world that we did we felt. You know we would love to invite you to space
And it was incredible when he accepted and I went up and saw him that day
And he told me to hurry up and get the spaceship built because he wasn't gonna live forever and hopefully next year
We'll take him up
And I think that you know he feels that if he goes into space personally he can he can lead the way
My folks first miss Randall happened with me throughout my life, but
As my wheels are still firmly planted here on planet Earth I will keep on dreaming
As I am now considered a so-called
famous person more and more of my time is taken up with my public life for
This I rely Bradley upon my team around me
You are really the gatekeeper in this role you
Get the general fan mail
hero-worshipping him really then you get people who are obsessed with religion and God and the fact that professor Hawking doesn't appear to have a
God as such that they can
Feel comfortable about so you get a huge range of what we call the God letters
And then you get letters from the disabled
serious
Scientists mostly people full of admiration for professor Hawking and what he has achieved
he is a great iconic figure and
He enjoys his public appearances, and it's great that you know he's still very engaged with everything. That's surrounds him
Not found indeed this is a pity because if they add I would have not a Nobel Prize
If you had asked me 40 years ago if I ever thought I would be talking in front of a sellout crowd
And be a part of poplar culture. I would have left
But if my getting involved with the zeitgeist that is upon us
Has encouraged people to Western our Universal than I am okay?
The world's smartest man. What are you doing? If you are looking for trouble you found it. Yeah, just try me
He's willing to teach people in whatever way he has to teach people you can't take yourself, too
Seriously, no matter how intelligent or how important the work? You're doing is
Whenever I do a talk show I'm trying to think of ways to do things that are completely different and completely
Ridiculous most people see dumb and dumber and they assume that that's who I am so I thought well wouldn't it be wonderful to like
Partner up with the smartest man on the earth
He was wonderful he was just fantastic
I was expecting to be so him to be so serious about himself
And I think it was a relief for him to to completely make fun of the whole thing
It's amazing don't bother trying to explain it to them the people
Yeah did a great job of doing the lines that I had written, and and and he was just gung-ho the whole time
No, you're a genius
You are after we did the routine
We kind of struck up a friendship
So I was invited to his home and one of the funny highlights of the night was that was it well well
We're having dinner. I asked him you know just for a picture could you could you run over my foot with your wheelchair and that?
So I have a picture of me grimacing in agony and stuff
So it was wonderful
Wonderful to be there wonderful to talk to him and ask him important questions like
How many Higgs boson does it take to screw in a light bulb and?
I think he's still struggling with that
That has been a lot of fun and also very strange to see myself depicted in so many ways
But perhaps the strangest is to have had part of my early life
portrayed by an actor I
Felt a huge ownership responsibility to get that part of his life right there was so much that happened to him is a terrifying prospect
To have a completely functioning mind inside a body that locks you ain't that keeps you
stationary
One of the things I wanted to get right was to show the
stages of the progression of his condition and where the instability and fear came from
The very obvious details such as being at the top of a flight of stairs that suddenly becomes the most
Enormous obstacle that and being on any sort of uneven ground those feelings of vulnerability
He's incredibly stoic, I think that was probably the case when he was younger as well
I think he rolled up his sleeves and got on with it and look at the results I mean
It's self-evident the man became
a spokesperson for the most complex ideas
But cinnamon
It's the dog
One advantage of being a public figure is being asked to special things
Today I am center stage at the open ceremony of the Paralympic Games, and it's an honor to do so
Ever since the dawn of civilization
People have craved for an understanding of the underlying order of the world
there ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe's and
What can be more special than that there is no boundaries?
And there should be no boundaries a human endeavor
The Paralympic Games are all about transforming our perception of the world
We are all different
There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same view and spirit
A letter difficult life may seem there is always something you can do and succeed at
The games provide an opportunity for athletes to excel to
Stretch themselves and become outstanding in their field
So let us again her celebrate excellence friendship and respect
Good luck to you all
Having lived on this wonderful planet for over
71 years I feel my proudest achievement has been to inspire people to think about the cosmos and our place in it
Since I believe there is no afterlife
I think it's important to realize we only have a very short time alive and should make the best of it
today I enjoy time together with family and friends
and despite my
Disabilities, I'll always keep wondering about the mysteries of the universe
Stephens been ill since he was 20 you come to terms with
Impending bereavement, and then suddenly find that it's not that impending after all
I'm sure was plenty no we'd like to know about I think how awful. It would be to come to the end of questions
Stephen will carry on until they push him underground
You didn't just stop your mind
Seema's always had this
Determination to survive I guess and every time Stephen gets critically ill I always think oh dear
I hope you know are you gonna get through this time and he always does?
He's just got this tremendous determination to to live and I do think there is such a thing as the will to live
There are several components just long survival one is that he's by a very large margin
The most stubborn person I've ever met
He is one of those very few people
Who can see far beyond the borders of current knowledge?
And see how things really work and set the directions for other people's research in
Attempts to prove him right or wrong
To recover from a broken marriage it was very very difficult
at first
We were in touch
But then it got very very difficult
But lately we have been able to associate. I call on him perhaps once a fortnight
All those years with Stephen were a huge part of my life they were my young years
They were my children
and
I can't just wipe those from the record, and I wouldn't want to
It would be
self-destructive
To wipe those away, and I'm very very proud of what Stephen has done
Life has thrown at me both. Good times and bad
Perhaps it is human nature that we adapt and survive
As
For me I have lived with the prospect of an early death most of my life. I
am not afraid of dying, but I'm in no hurry to die I
Have so much, I wanted to find out first so
For now goodbye and thank you for coming on a journey through my world
You
