Hawking had not worked actively in string theory, but he was very keen to understand the new ideas.įollowing that meeting, he sent me off to read all the papers that Edward Witten, a famous string theorist, had written that year. I became a student at the time of the “ Second String Theory Revolution” in theoretical physics. I was quite nervous when I first met him, but he jumped straight into physics and soon we were discussing black holes. But as an undergraduate I never tried to talk with him, feeling much too junior and intimidated.Īfter I finished my fourth year, I was invited in to talk to Hawking, who was already using a speech synthesizer, about options for my PhD. He was already so famous that friends would come to my room just to watch him leaving and entering his apartment. At that time he was living in an apartment building just behind my student house. I first saw Hawking when I was an undergraduate. As a direct result, I chose courses on black holes and relativity for my fourth year of study at the University of Cambridge. In 1994, Hawking and mathematical physicist Roger Penrose gave a series of inspiring lectures about cosmology in Cambridge. When I was hesitating about my A-level choices, it was his book A Brief History of Time that convinced me to continue with physical sciences. Like many students of my generation, Stephen Hawking had already had enormous influence on me long before we ever met.
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