Lucy it's great to meet you and to talk about your father's book here Brief
Answers to the Big Questions. - Thank you.
They are big questions!
They are the biggest questions. We could have almost called it that, couldn't we!
The Briefest Answers to the Biggest Questions.
I mean he's not mucking around
here and what I kind of love about this book is that in relatively short
chapters he deals with the existence of God, origins of the universe and deals
with them in his usual brief and brilliant way.
I think it's very reflective of both the nature of my father as a person but also of his work
in that he was a cosmologist and cosmologists work on the grandest scale
of all, you know, their playground is the universe. So he was very comfortable with
tackling big questions, complex subject matters, but he also had this passion for
explanations. And he really liked to be able to explain things in a way that
people could understand but also in a way that people would relate to, so that
he could take an abstract concept and tell a person who maybe didn't have an
advanced scientific education why that topic mattered to them, why they had a
relationship with this big topic. I think that's very unique about him.
That ability to explain things in a way that's completely accessible, was that
always the way with your father? - Partly it was just his sense of humour.
He always had this dry sense of humour and this funny way of putting things.
I remember in the 1980s, so I was a teenager, quite a young teenager, and I
went on a trip with him to Russia and he was giving lectures then and these were,
you know, these were lectures for professional physicists in the Soviet
Union which was not a 'lorra laughs' at that time. And I do remember my father
giving this lecture and there was a simultaneous translator and halfway
through the lecture suddenly all the people who'd been listening to it in
Russian looked really confused because the translator had ripped her headset
off and walked out in tears because she just got so fed up with my father with
his terminology. Because my father at one point said 'The universe, it's just a
question of plumbing' and that apparently was the final straw for her, she couldn't
take it any longer. Because of course nobody really before this had ever,
not just in the Soviet Union or Russia, but anywhere, had ever tried using these
very evocative, descriptive but sort of run-of-the-mill phrases to
talk about cosmology and theoretical physics. So it was
something he was doing already he just did it on a grander scale and he decided
to write Brief History of Time.
That sense of humour you've mentioned is all the way
through the book, whilst he's explaining some quite complex science
he'll make a little joke about Brexit or something else.
And then when he does that, I can sort of feel him
looking out of the corner of his eye and giving a little twinkle, you know, just
kind of yeah don't take it too seriously, don't take it all too seriously.
Despite the fact that there is that sense of humor he's dealing with very serious
things and and he is an expert in his field and there is a very telling line
actually where again he's making a joke but he says these days
being an expert is not a great thing to be. We have this sort of slightly bizarre
situation at the moment don't we where people are being told not to trust
experts and that the validity of some scientists is being called into question.
Why is that do you think?
There is a thing about scientists coming out with
their very rational arguments about why things are the way they are and people
need to listen to that and not be put off by the surrounding noise which tries
to create a distraction and tries to promote an alternative agenda. For
example around climate change science; I mean really there is no doubt now
and yet there seems to be a concerted effort in certain areas to create doubt
which doesn't exist when you look at the scientific evidence.
One of the very clear messages towards the end of the book is about the importance of
fostering a new generation of scientists because there's been this dip in
interest in some of the purest sciences. And that is of course to do with
inspiring children which is very much to do with what you do in your life. How do
you go about inspiring children to sort of follow that path in life?
So I think my father makes the point very very well in the book. He says I'm not actually,
he's not advocating that all children become scientists, he said that's not
what the world needs, we don't need a whole world of scientists, we need a
world of people with a variety of different skills. However the world of
the future will be dominated by science and technology, I mean it is
already but it's going to be even more so in the future. And what he's saying is
that without basic scientific literacy, kids today will not be able to grow up
to be participants, to be citizens, to have a sort of stake in what happens to
them because they're gonna be huge decisions to be taken and he wants these
kids to grow up with the foundational science education to allow them to make
their own decisions. So that they're not swayed by alternative narratives, they're
not swayed by whatever you want to call it; false facts, fake news, twisted, so that
they've actually got the critical thinking skills to look at what they're
being told and say is this true, how do I evaluate what I'm being told, why would
somebody want to lie to me? Because otherwise you could become... if
all the scientific knowledge is concentrated let's say in a tiny super
elite then you've got an incredibly vulnerable population who will have no
way of assessing or evaluating the information they're getting. So that was
one of his very, very... and I think that relates to what we talked about earlier
with the expert question; that was one of his really passionate calls to action,
was to maintain the value of public education and he wanted education he
wanted everyone to have an access to a decent education.
He was a very humble man your father, so that despite his clear
achievements he would always sort of say Einstein was a genius and that he wasn't.
There's a very telling line where he says that in terms of legacy, in terms
of what he would be remembered for, what he really hopes is that he'll be
remembered as a good dad and granddad. Is that how you will remember him and is
that the thing that will last for you as a family and could you give us a little
insight into what life was like for you as a family away from the science that he was doing
So he was very engaged dad. And this is something really I realized
as I look back now, that whatever we were doing he wanted to do too. And if we were
planning something, he wanted to come. My brothers and I used to laugh, he
would get this look on his face if we would be talking about something we were
doing and he'd get this hopeful look on his face and we'd always describe it as
exactly the way Piglet looks in Winnie the Pooh
when Pooh and Christopher Robin are going somewhere and Piglet wants to come too, my
dad would be like that, like can I come as well? Which was very, very sweet. So that
kind of willingness to be where we were, to do what we were doing, and to engage
with what we were up to is very touching to me when I think back.
That that was something he always wanted.
He also mentions that before he had the the tracheostomy that meant that he lost his speaking voice
and of course we all now know the voice of Stephen Hawking so clearly from the
software that he uses, but he mentions that up until that point his voice had
been getting weaker and weaker and it was only his family who could really understand
him. And it made me realise that of course nobody else has really heard his
real voice. But do you remember that voice?
I do, yes. I do remember my father's
speaking voice. I think for some years, like everyone really, I so
strongly associated his voice with the synthetic American synthesized voice
that I sort of forgot about his other voice. And then I heard it on a
documentary, a very old Horizon documentary, and it really took me back. Suddenly I was like,
Oh my god that's dad's voice. It got to the point I remember that my older
brother and I were really two of the few people who could actually understand
everything our father was saying and even people quite close to him, I suppose
because we were kids and we were with him all the time and
and so we just carried on understanding and understanding and it
got to a point where we almost had to function as translators for him.
Sometimes even with his professional colleagues and dad would say something
and we'd have to say he just said da de daa and we didn't even know what the
words meant at times because we'd be sort of relaying important bits of physics
without really much idea of what it meant but we knew that was what he had said!
I think many people who have cared for a sort of father or mother or
somebody in their family will know that feeling of having to look after somebody
and act as an interpreter but not usually interpreting cosmology...
Exactly! 'He says that the origins of the universe...'
And I'd be eight, confidently going well you know really it happened like this.
We're talking about his physical voice, his voice,
his writing voice is so clear in this book.
It is. I know I think that's the... it is the voice of my
father in a book. I think that's really, really lovely.
It is absolutely him. I think all of us who knew him well, who read the book and
who've worked on it, I've said the same thing, it's like being immersed in his
world again. It's like having him there having a conversation with him.
Very enjoyable, very clear and very funny actually as well. Lucy, it's been so
fantastic to speak to you about your father.
Well thank you so much for reading and enjoying the book.