February 23, 4:15:  Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Colloquium: “Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind”

February 23, 7:30:  Princeton Lewis Science Library:  ”Biography of a Legend: Stephen Hawking.”  To be filmed by C-Span

February 26, morning:  Nassau Presbyterian Church: “Mind of God or Grand Design: What Can a Citizen of the Multiverse Believe?”

January 2-6    “Dear Prof Hawking” aired on BBC radio 4.

January 3       Interview with Associated Press Television News, filmed at Centre for Mathematical Sciences.

January 3       Interview with Associated Press for print media at CMS by Maria Cheng, medical writer.

January 3       NPR Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, recorded Dec. 27 from National Public Radio Studios in Los Angeles, broadcast nationally in the U.S.A.

January 4       BBC Look East interview filmed at my flat

January 5       Interview on national Today Show, live from Cambridge studio.

January 5       Interview for BBC Radio Cambridge, live from Cambridge studio.

January 6       Interview with Alok Jha, Science Correspondent from The Guardian/Observer

January 6       Scientific American — a lengthy excerpt from my book.

January 6       Interview for BBC World TV News from Cambridge studio.

January 7       Channel 4 News interview from London ITN studio

January 7       NBC-TV interview from London NBC studio, aired in the U.S. Jan. 9 on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.  Use link below, then type in Stephen Hawking in the search box lower left, then pick the one having to do with his 70^th birthday.

January 8       Review on Scientific American’s blog “Degrees of Freedom”

January 8       Review on Salon.com

January 8       Los Angeles Times review.  Reviewed as section lead.

January 8       Telephone interview withLuis Miguel Ariza, who writes for El Pais in Spain.  Article to appear In future.

JANUARY 8, AT STEPHEN HAWKING BIRTHDAY SYMPOSIUM

2 BBC TV interviews

Interview with  French television

Interview for  The Independent

Interviews with ITN, ITV, Anglia Television, and AFPTV

Several other short TV interviews

January 10     Albert Mohler article on AlbertMohler.com

January 11     Mention in Columbia Journalism Review

January 14     Mention on BigThink

Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind (in Great Britain, Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work)

Kitty Ferguson

Ferguson replaces the iconic but static image of cosmologist Hawking with flesh and blood in this vivid portrait.  This is familiar terrain for Ferguson, who built such good rapport with Hawking while researching her book Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything some 20 years ago, that he asked her to help edit his own book, The Universe in a Nutshell.  Hawking grew from a “rather lazy” student to a pioneering cosmologist in an era when the field was regarded as little more than a pseudoscience.  Diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) early in graduate school, he defeated the odds and will soon celebrate his 70th birthday.  Through interviews with Hawking and his colleagues and friends, Ferguson builds a complete picture of Hawking’s life, from his tireless work to explain our universe to his notorious driving, playful appearances on Star Trek, The Simpsons, and other shows, campaigning to improve the lives of the disabled, and his family life, with special attention to his relationship with his first wife, Jane, whose sacrifices allowed him to focus on his work.  In the end, Ferguson captures the very full life and work of one of the most vibrant minds of our time.

Stephen Hawking is one of the greatest scientists and popularisers of science of our time.  In a new biography, Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work (in the U.S.A: Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind), his personal acquaintance Kitty Ferguson gives a thorough account of Hawking the man, as well as of his extraordinary body of work in cosmology, especially in the areas of black holes and the origins of the universe that has changed and challenged our fundamental understanding of reality.

What lies at the heart of Hawking’s research throughout his life is a straightforward if ambitious goal: “A complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is, and why it exists at all.”

Ferguson opens her account with a flair for the original which makes much of the tome highly readable.  Rather than start at the moment of Hawking’s birth, she begins with a potted history of the issue that has preoccupied Hawking for much of his professional life — the search for the Theory of Everything — the scientific understanding that will unite the very large with the very small — cosmology with quantum mechanics.

The narrative of Hawking’s childhood is beautifully recounted, and Ferguson conveys a delightful sense of the close, if eccentric family life that he enjoyed whilst growing up in a dark, draughty and ill-cared for old house amongst doting parents and siblings.  His father’s concern that there’s no future apart from teaching in mathematics seems, in retrospect, absurd and endearing: yet the prodigiously talented Hawking, who like so many great minds was a mediocre performer at school, earns his way to a scholarship at Oxford University.  Hawking’s famous wit and self-assurance is nicely highlighted in an anecdote about how he persuaded the board at Oxford to allow him to transfer to their great rival Cambridge to pursue his doctorate.

The human element most obvious in the retelling of the life of Stephen hawking is of course the early onset of his debilitating illness, Motor Neurone Disease, symptoms of which first appear when he is a student in his early twenties.  With the prospect of an early death (doctors at first gave him only a few more years to live — he will turn seventy early next year) Hawking faced the choice of languishing in self-pity or concentrating his brilliant mind to work in the time available to him.  His academic career speaks for itself, and Ferguson is keen to emphasise the point that Hawking refuses to let his disability prevent him from living a full and active life that has included trips all over the world, including Antarctica; meetings with heads of state; several bestselling books; children and grandchildren; numerous academic awards and even an experience of a zero-gravity flight.

Ferguson’s challenge is to condense as much of an extraordinary seven decades of life so far as she can into 350 pages.  The human elements of Hawking’s childhood, marriage, fatherhood and illness are beautifully told, and there’s the very real feeling not just that Ferguson knows Hawking well and has done for a long time, but that she genuinely cares for him and his family.

Lay scientists may be more daunted by the account of Hawking’s work, and herein lies the most challenging task for Ferguson — how on earth to make the mind of a genius whose work in cosmology is so highly specialised readily understood to a mere few accessible to a wide readership?  For the most part, she succeeds in much the same way that Stephen hawking himself succeeded with A Brief History of Time.  There are excellently clear descriptions of the large issues and precious few off-putting mathematics and equations.  It wasn’t until the tenth chapter that I, who left maths and physics behind long ago, lost the thread of the argument and acknowledged that there are some things I simply won’t grasp no matter how patiently and simply they are relayed.  As soon as the narrative moved on I picked up the thread again. Hawking’s extraordinary work can be a challenge to understand and convey to readers of popular science, but it is rewarding to persevere, and learning about what motivates Hawking to work is what marks this book out as a worthwhile accompaniment to Hawking’s own canon of writing.

It helps to have a strong interest in science in appreciating this book; but then a biography about one of the foremost scientific geniuses of our age is unlikely to attract too many casual readers, and Ferguson pitches the balance between Hawking’s personal life and an explanation of his work about right.

One less successful aspect of Ferguson’s narrative is the patronising reassurance she gives the religionists that Hawking’s work doesn’t disprove their deity of choice.  It seems especially at odds with Hawking’s latest tome, The Grand Design (the biography follows a linear chronological path, and the book, and the furore it provoked in the popular press, is discussed in the  final chapter) which hit the headlines for its claim that Hawking’s understanding of the origins of the universe requires no divine creator.  Ferguson’s reassurance on this point seemed incongruous, as the pious are unlikely to take an interest in a biography of Hawking, and it may have been better to duck the issue altogether.

The overriding sense is that Kitty Ferguson has, through self-evident admiration for Hawking and his work, endeavoured to understand the great scientist as a human being, and has directed her warm but by no means gushing biography at similarly interested lay readers who also harbour an interest in the fundamental questions that have gone some way to being answered by Stephen Hawking, who has laid the groundwork and set challenges for future generations to unravel.

The story and science of one of the most extraordinary, celebrated, and courageous figures of our time.

Rights have been sold so far to Bantam-Transworld (English Language except for North America); Flammarion (French World); Rizzoli (Italian World & eBook); China Times (Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. Chinese traditional characters); Hunan Science & Technology (Chinese simplified characters); and Saraiva (Portuguese language for Brazil).  Unabridged English language audio rights have been sold to AudioGo.   At Bantam-Transworld the book will reach the copy-editing stage in mid-to-late June and be published in hard cover in the fall.