Hawking Hawking

The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity

De: Charles Seife

Narrado por: Tom Perkins

When Stephen Hawking died, he was widely recognized as the world's best physicist, and even its smartest person.

He was neither.

In Hawking Hawking, science journalist Charles Seife explores how Stephen Hawking came to be thought of as humanity's greatest genius. Hawking spent his career grappling with deep questions in physics, but his renown didn't rest on his science. He was a master of self-promotion, hosting parties for time travelers, declaring victory over problems he had not solved, and wooing billionaires. Confined to a wheelchair and physically dependent on a cadre of devotees, Hawking still managed to captivate the people around him - and use them for his own purposes.

A brilliant expose and powerful biography, Hawking Hawking uncovers the authentic Hawking buried underneath the fake. It is the story of a man whose brilliance in physics was matched by his genius for building his own myth.

©2021 Charles Seife (P)2021 Tantor

Amazing book

Marvelous book. Full information and insights about Hawkins as a man, as a scientist and as a legend and pop figure. The book also contains very high quality explanations of the scientific contributions of both Hawkins and several of his peers. Above all, the book provides deep insight about human nature in general and the game of mirrors of personal identity.

Two Things I Disliked

The biography is fine for a quick overview of Hawking’s life, but two things kept bothering me:

1) His life is told in chapters each covering a phase of Hawking’s life, but they are arranged in reverse chronological order. So for example we are told about Hawking’s relationship with his first wife at the time of his death. Then their marital difficulties are recounted again to provide context for his second marriage to his nurse, then again when he needs full time nursing, then when we reach the chapter covering their early marriage, and finally again when they meet.

This is not the only subject that is given this treatment, and I cannot understand what was meant to be gained by this unconventional organization.

2) The narrator has a pleasant voice, but often falls into a sing-song cadence, especially when quoting dialog. It reminded me of how someone who isn’t comfortable speaking to children might address an 8 year old.

I got through it because I was interested in the science, but once you reach the later parts of the book (before he was a scientist) there wasn’t anything about physics.