Stephen Hawking:
Genius at Work
by Roger Highfield (Dorling Kindersley, £17.75)
I once went swimming with Stephen Hawking. Well, actually, I was in an outdoor pool, looked up—and there, to my amazement, was Hawking in his wheelchair, with his young son preparing to jump in the shallow end. It was in California—coincidentally, the same place that Roger Highfield also met Hawking for the first time. Highfield, former science editor of the Telegraph and editor of New Scientist, is now science director of the Science Museum Group. It is in this latter capacity that he has written Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work.
The book was prompted by the donation of Hawking’s office to London’s Science Museum. Much of the book’s content is inspired by objects from that office, such as Hawking’s blackboard of scientific doodles and his Oxford cox blazer, worn when he was thrown into the River Cherwell.