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Authors: Jane Hawking
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mutual.
While I applauded Stephen’s refusal to be drawn into small talk, I was nervously aware that his arrogance was in poor taste and was putting me in danger of losing me my friends, if not my
relations. There came a stage when I even feared that he was jeopardizing my chances of any future academic activity. I was content to abandon all my budding hopes of a career in the Foreign Office
for his sake, but I was unhappy about letting him destroy whatever opportunity I might have had for pursuing some sort of research. When I took him to meet my supervisor, Alan Deyermond, who was at
that time encouraging me to think about doing a PhD in medieval literature, Stephen really excelled himself. Waving his sherry glass around as if the point he was making was so obvious that only a
fool could disagree with it, he revelled in the opportunity to tell Alan Deyermond and all my contemporaries that the study of medieval literature was as useful an occupation as studying pebbles on
the beach. Fortunately, as Alan Deyermond was also an Oxford graduate, he willingly picked up the gauntlet thus offered and gave Stephen a good run for his money. The argument was inconclusive, and
both sides parted on remarkably amiable terms. When I protested on the way home in the car, Stephen shrugged. “You shouldn’t take it personally,” he said.
Stephen’s conviction that intellectual arguments were never to be considered a personal matter was tested during that same year. Professor Fred Hoyle, who had rejected Stephen’s
postgraduate research application, was at the time pioneering the use of television to popularize science to great effect. He had become a household name and his success was enabling him to put
pressure on the government to grant him his own Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. It was a foregone conclusion that if his demands were not met, he – like so many other British scientists
– would join the brain drain to the United States. He had power and popularity, and his recent theories were eagerly followed in the press, especially those which he was developing with his
Indian research student, Jayant Narlikar, whose office was near Stephen’s on the old Cavendish site in Cambridge.
In advance of publication, Hoyle’s latest paper, expounding further aspects of the theory of the steady-state universe which he had developed with Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, was
presented to a distinguished gathering of scientists at the Royal Society. Then the forum was opened to questions, which on such occasions are usually fairly deferential. Stephen was present and
bided his time. At last his raised hand was noticed by the chairman. He, a very junior research student who as yet had no academic research of any note to his credit, struggled to his feet and
proceeded to tell Hoyle and his students as well as the rest of the audience that the calculations in the presentation were wrong. The audience was stunned, and Hoyle was ruffled by this piece of
effrontery. “How do you know?” he asked, quite sure that Stephen’s grounds for disputing his new research could easily be dismissed. He was not expecting Stephen’s response.
“I’ve worked it out,” he replied, and then added, “in my head.” As a result of that intervention, Stephen began to be noticed in scientific circles, and thus he found
the subject for his PhD thesis: the properties of expanding universes. Relations between him and Fred Hoyle however never advanced after that incident.
Arguments notwithstanding – scientific, impersonal or otherwise – everything we did in the course of that academic year contributed to a common purpose, our forthcoming marriage, for
which a date in July 1965 was set. As it was by no means certain that I should be allowed to stay in Westfield as a married undergraduate, my top priority was to win the consent of the college
authorities. Without it, the wedding would probably have to be postponed for another year,
While I applauded Stephen’s refusal to be drawn into small talk, I was nervously aware that his arrogance was in poor taste and was putting me in danger of losing me my friends, if not my
relations. There came a stage when I even feared that he was jeopardizing my chances of any future academic activity. I was content to abandon all my budding hopes of a career in the Foreign Office
for his sake, but I was unhappy about letting him destroy whatever opportunity I might have had for pursuing some sort of research. When I took him to meet my supervisor, Alan Deyermond, who was at
that time encouraging me to think about doing a PhD in medieval literature, Stephen really excelled himself. Waving his sherry glass around as if the point he was making was so obvious that only a
fool could disagree with it, he revelled in the opportunity to tell Alan Deyermond and all my contemporaries that the study of medieval literature was as useful an occupation as studying pebbles on
the beach. Fortunately, as Alan Deyermond was also an Oxford graduate, he willingly picked up the gauntlet thus offered and gave Stephen a good run for his money. The argument was inconclusive, and
both sides parted on remarkably amiable terms. When I protested on the way home in the car, Stephen shrugged. “You shouldn’t take it personally,” he said.
Stephen’s conviction that intellectual arguments were never to be considered a personal matter was tested during that same year. Professor Fred Hoyle, who had rejected Stephen’s
postgraduate research application, was at the time pioneering the use of television to popularize science to great effect. He had become a household name and his success was enabling him to put
pressure on the government to grant him his own Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. It was a foregone conclusion that if his demands were not met, he – like so many other British scientists
– would join the brain drain to the United States. He had power and popularity, and his recent theories were eagerly followed in the press, especially those which he was developing with his
Indian research student, Jayant Narlikar, whose office was near Stephen’s on the old Cavendish site in Cambridge.
In advance of publication, Hoyle’s latest paper, expounding further aspects of the theory of the steady-state universe which he had developed with Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, was
presented to a distinguished gathering of scientists at the Royal Society. Then the forum was opened to questions, which on such occasions are usually fairly deferential. Stephen was present and
bided his time. At last his raised hand was noticed by the chairman. He, a very junior research student who as yet had no academic research of any note to his credit, struggled to his feet and
proceeded to tell Hoyle and his students as well as the rest of the audience that the calculations in the presentation were wrong. The audience was stunned, and Hoyle was ruffled by this piece of
effrontery. “How do you know?” he asked, quite sure that Stephen’s grounds for disputing his new research could easily be dismissed. He was not expecting Stephen’s response.
“I’ve worked it out,” he replied, and then added, “in my head.” As a result of that intervention, Stephen began to be noticed in scientific circles, and thus he found
the subject for his PhD thesis: the properties of expanding universes. Relations between him and Fred Hoyle however never advanced after that incident.
Arguments notwithstanding – scientific, impersonal or otherwise – everything we did in the course of that academic year contributed to a common purpose, our forthcoming marriage, for
which a date in July 1965 was set. As it was by no means certain that I should be allowed to stay in Westfield as a married undergraduate, my top priority was to win the consent of the college
authorities. Without it, the wedding would probably have to be postponed for another year,
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