Black Holes And Baby Universes And Other Essays

Description

Covering subjects ranging from the personal to the wholly scientific, this is a collection of Stephen Hawking's essays and other pieces, revealing him as scientist, man, concerned world citizen and imaginative thinker. He recalls his first experience of nursery school, punctures the arrogance of those who think science can best be understood only by other scientists, explores the origins and the future of the universe, and reflects on the phenomenon of his bestselling book, "A Brief History of Time". Some of the pieces reflect familiar material in fresh ways, while others are entirely new - including the lengthy transcript of Hawking's conversation on "Desert Island Discs".

In 1963, Stephen Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. He held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663, for thirty years. Professor Hawking has over a dozen honorary degrees, was awarded the CBE in 1982. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Science.

Is the universe going to expand into eternity or will everything collapse in one Big Crunch in which physical laws become meaningless? Stephen Hawking, author of the phenomenal bestseller A Brief History of Time, sheds light on the darkest regions of space and time and considers an extraordinary array of possibilities for our future? * The Times * Stephen Hawking has done it again. In A Brief History of Time he succeeded in interesting the widest possible audiences in the most abstract of theoretical astrophysics. Now he has once more broken out of the scientific ghetto to claim the intellectual and cultural high ground for science... Black Holes and Baby Universes takes us still further, almost over the limit...Turn to Stephen Hawking if you would look outward, to the ends of the universe * Independent on Sunday *