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Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking, Hodder & Stoughton

MOST people as famous as Stephen Hawking face forensically intimate scrutiny. But in its way, Hawking鈥檚 personality was as insulated as the Queen鈥檚, impermeably fortified by the role allotted to him.

There鈥檚 a hint in Brief Answers that he knew this: 鈥淚 fit the stereotype of a disabled genius,鈥� he writes.

But his easiness with this idea made me uneasy. While it was delightful to see how in everyday life he demolished the laziness that links physical with mental disability, he did so only by personifying the other extreme. We bought into the 鈥漰ublic Hawking鈥�: an unworldly intelligence, wry sense of humour, tremendous resilience against adversity 鈥� 鈥渟uch a mind in such a body!鈥� And then of course, there was that computerised voice (another part of his armour).

It perhaps suited Hawking that the media were content with these clich茅s 鈥� he gave little impression of caring for the touchy-feely. In the foreword to Brief Answers, Eddie Redmayne, who played Hawking in the 2014 biopic The Theory of Everything, reminds us that the physicist would have preferred the film to have had 鈥渕ore physics and fewer feelings鈥�.

I approached this book with some trepidation. You know he won鈥檛 go wrong with cosmology, relativity or quantum mechanics, but when Hawking stepped outside that comfort zone the results were often touch and go.

The scientific essays included in this book supply Hawking鈥檚 Greatest Hits: his work with mathematician Roger Penrose on gravitational singularities and their relation to the big bang; his realisation that black holes will emit energy (Hawking radiation); his speculations about the origin of the universe in a chance quantum fluctuation; the debate (still unresolved) about whether black holes destroy information.

Hawking, as fellow cosmologist and long-time friend Kip Thorne outlines in his introduction, helped to integrate some of the central concepts of physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and information theory. It is a phenomenal body of work.

Sometimes there is a plainness to his prose that is touching even when it sounds like a self-help manual: 鈥淏e brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done.鈥� His plea for inspirational teaching, his concerns about climate change and environmental degradation, his contempt for Trump and the regressive aspects of Brexit, and (albeit not in this book) his championing of the UK鈥檚 National Health Service, made you glad to have Hawking on your side.

A common danger with such collections is repetition. But the recurring and familiar passages are themselves quite revealing, for they show Hawking curating his image: the boy always taking things apart but not always managing to put them together again, the man who told us to 鈥渓ook up at the stars and not down at your feet鈥�.

There鈥檚 no doubt that Hawking cared passionately about the future of humankind and the potential of science to improve it. His advocacy resembles the old-fashioned boosterism of H.G. Wells in later life, tempered by an awareness of the dire potential of technologies in the wrong hands.

One of the most striking features of this book, however, is the lack of extracurricular context, from, say, art, music, literature, philosophy. In some pieces, this exposes gaps 鈥� for example, when Hawking begins an essay called 鈥淚s there a God?鈥� with 鈥減eople will always cling to religion, because it gives comfort, and they do not trust or understand science鈥�. God, he tells us (as no theologian ever did), is all about explaining the origin of the universe.

And on what grounds does he claim that most people define God as 鈥渁 human-like being, with whom one can have a personal relationship鈥�? Even if true, most people鈥檚 notions of a molecule also bear scant resemblance to what well-informed folk say on the matter, but Hawking would not have been happy with that.

There鈥檚 a sloppiness to the history too, even in science: for instance, he perpetuates the myth that Max Planck postulated the quantum to avoid the 鈥渦ltraviolet catastrophe鈥� of black-body radiation. Planck never mentioned it in his proposal.

鈥淗e cared passionately about the future of humankind and science鈥檚 potential to improve it鈥�

There鈥檚 worse. 鈥淧eople might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet the discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the Old. Just think, we wouldn鈥檛 have had the Big Mac or KFC,鈥� he writes, betraying an inclination not to probe more deeply. The remark appears in a defence of space exploration, but he shows no more readiness to examine the real reasons for the space race than to reflect on the realities of Columbus鈥檚 mission.

But this is all, in a sense, unfair. Hawking was a great scientist who had a remarkable life, and in another universe, without motor neurone disease (well, he did like the 鈥渕any worlds鈥� interpretation of quantum mechanics), we would have no reason to confer authority on his thoughts about all and sundry. Nor might the media have celebrated so wildly the anachronism of his journey into Stringfellows鈥檚 鈥済entlemen鈥檚 club鈥�. We would not deny his right to ordinariness, and would see his occasional arrogance for no more or less than it was.

There is every reason to believe Hawking enjoyed his fame, and that鈥檚 a cheering thought. That we seek to put him on a pedestal is our problem, not his. We should celebrate his extraordinary achievements, both personal and scientific 鈥� but to paraphrase Brecht鈥檚 Galileo, unhappy is the land that needs a guru.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎n ordinary genius鈥�